When to Walk Away from a Sexless Marriage

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Guide to when to walk away from a sexless marriage

The decision to end a sexless marriage can be a gut-wrenching one.

You question the consequences: What it will do to you? What will it do to your family?

You question whether sex is a big enough reason to walk away.

First, I want to address that a sexless marriage can indeed survive and can be transformed into a sexually fulfilling one. How do I know? Because I see it happen all the time with my client couples in my coaching practice, so I am biased to the conclusion that it’s solvable.

But one thing is clear: it’s solvable when both you and your partner value your relationship and both are willing and committed to work on this together.

The truth is that lack of sex in a long-term relationship comes with the territory — the territory being a long-term relationship that goes through different phases over the years and decades of its existence. Sex dying is a common feature of all of them. It’s biology.

Reviving it, however, takes another set of skills rooted in intimacy: addressing issues openly and vulnerably, seeking support, and creating your relationship and sex life to suit you.

In this article, I am going to break down the details about sexless marriage, when to work on it and when to walk away:

  • What qualifies as a sexless marriage

  • The pain of a sexless marriage

  • What to try before walking away

  • When to walk away

  • What problems masquerades as unsolvable and how to solve them

What Is a Sexless Marriage?

The typical definitions of a sexless marriage revolve around quantity. It has been generally defined as having sex fewer than 10 times a year.

But that is not the only definition.

If sex is about connection, closeness and intimacy for you, a marriage where you go through the motions to have sex, or do it out of duty, without truly wanting to enjoy the connection and the closeness, is a sexless marriage in all but name.

Therefore, the definition of what counts as sex or the lack of it is a personal one. Some count sex as the number of times they’ve had an orgasm together. Others decide that having sex devoid of connection is not worth having, however many orgasms they’ve had.

A sexless marriage can be temporary (six months to a year) or it could be the state of a relationship for decades.

A sexless marriage could have a variety of triggers:

None of these triggers are unsolvable. When they are caught early and addressed in an open and vulnerable way, especially with the help of an expert, couples can (and do) find their way back to each other — and to a robust and passionate sex life.

Despite the different triggers for a sexless marriage, there is one reason that it continues being sexless — and it’s due to the inability of the couple to solve the challenge or grow through the situation on their own. They lack intimacy skills, which compounds the sex problem into a relationship one.

If this continues for more than a year, the chances of transformation weaken as couples naturally get sucked down the “death” spiral of intimacy-destroying behaviors that eventually undermine the rest of their romantic relationship.

There are couples for whom a sexless marriage may not spell disaster. That’s true for couples who may be having sex purely for reproductive reasons, to have a family, and not for romantic ones. Once childbearing is completed, sex may not be important. There are couples in a marriage where one person is gay and the other heterosexual, and sex is not the purpose or bond of such a marriage. There are couples who may both be asexual and do not find sex to be an appealing option.

It is for those couples who value sex as an important — if not a crucial — ingredient of a romantic relationship that feel the pain of a sexless marriage.

The Pain of a Sexless Marriage

A sexless marriage may be painful for various reasons, and usually a combination of most of these:

  • Rejection. One partner might feel deeply rejected by the other — and it’s so much more than about sex. It’s about being validated by your partner as being attractive and desirable. It’s about made to feel wanted and necessary in your partner’s life — like it matters to your partner that you are a part of theirs, that you’re needed in more ways that just taking out the garbage or caring for the kids. It’s also a rejection of your involvement in your partner’s joy, pleasure and satisfaction.

  • Loss of closeness. Sexual intimacy is more than about the physical act of sex and orgasm. The reality is that sex lubricates the relationship and makes you feel like a team against the rest of life. It acts as a way to get closer. Therefore a sexless marriage is a rejection of bids towards closeness. The rejection of that closeness ends up removing a way for the couple to come together as more than just parents and keepers of the house.

  • End of a dream. The dream of spending a lifetime with a lover in a deep romantic and sexual bond runs deep for many people. By severing the romantic aspect, a sexless marriage shatters that dream — as well as the ability for that partner to share themselves romantically and sexually with their beloved. The grief and pain are very real and can feel like an amputation of a vision of their life that they have deeply held for a long time.

  • Loss of a common bond. Sex has the potential to be a safe space in the relationship where you can be vulnerable with each other and show up naked physically, emotionally erotically in ways that you cannot with others. Sexual vulnerability and intimacy makes lovers out of two people, taking the relationship further than sharing household duties, child and pet care, and being each other’s emergency contact. In a monogamous relationship, opening up to each other through pleasure and expression of desire breeds closeness unlike anything you get to share with anyone else. Most couples do not explicitly discuss the importance of sex as a bonding mechanism at the beginning of the relationship, simply assuming that it is. So it can come as a deep shock when one partner decides that sex is no longer of importance for them and refuses to work on sex.

  • Loss of security. Sex is a glue in a romantic relationship, a place where couples can unite with each other just to be with each other, reinforcing the safety of their relationship. It sends a message that “we’re ok!” A sexless marriage sends the opposite. Couples in a sexless marriage doubt their commitment to each other and fear the end of the relationship is around the corner. This translates into constantly living on the edge, in a perpetual state of stress and fear. Loss of security is one of the last stages of the “death” spiral of intimacy-destroying behaviors.

  • Loss of touch. Touch is a human need and a powerful way to feel safe, relaxed and close with each other. Couples who stop having sex often stop touching altogether. Lack of human touch can cause anything from irritation and feeling on edge to depression and withdrawal. (Read how the first-time parents Alan and Grace worked through his depression due to loss of touch when their son was born)

  • Sexual frustration. Sexual frustration need not be only because of the lack of sex; obligatory sex devoid of emotional connection can cause deep sexual frustration. It can also stem from having a lack of opportunities to be sexual with each other and express their sexuality. Sexual frustration often manifests as a persistent state of irritation, agitation, and stress.

  • Loss of confidence and self-esteem. It’s hard not to take personally the rejection of sexual requests, lack of sexual intimacy and touch as well as opportunities to be sexual. It creates a feeling of being unworthy, unwanted, undeserving, and unappreciated that seeps into the rest of the relationship. Additionally and crucially, the lack of sex leaves people feel unsafe in their relationship, which further catapults them into insecurity, wondering and fearing if their partner will walk away. All of this compounds into an erosion of their sense of self, their ability to confidently show up in their relationship and in the rest of their life — including career, taking care of children, and dealing with life’s challenges. Couples stuck in a sexless marriage are often more brittle and reactive, unable to deal with the smallest stressors between them, because the weight of the situation takes up so much of their energy.

What to Try Before Walking Away

Sexual desire in a long-term relationship naturally changes over time and having different levels of desire is normal. All of these are normal and common experiences.

Not everyone is equipped to deal with changes in an open and vulnerable way, especially if intimacy felt like a strain in the relationship at other times.

If you want to stay in your marriage and enjoy a sex life together, you can make that happen. The resources and services are available to support your journey:

  1. When lack of sex is a recent issue: If changes in sex have occurred in the last six months to a year, talking to your partner can solve the problem. Look at it holistically together. Is the lack of sex about the quality of sex, and what needs to change? Is it related to external issues such as the birth of a child or health issues, and what needs to change? Seek out books, get an online course. Spice things up. Go on vacation. Get toys.

  2. When lack of a sex compounds with emotional gridlock: When it’s been more than a year or if sex has been an ongoing source of conflict, differences in libido get tangled up with emotions such as lingering resentment and pain of rejection. Talking it through on your own is not enough. Free content or books will not get to the root of your problem — because they often reside in your blind spot, the same blind spot that is fueling the conflict. Talking more about sex and your emotional hurts will get you further into trouble. It’s important to seek support to break out of these patterns, or they will get worse over time, hurting the rest of your relationship through the cascading effect of intimacy-destroying behaviors.

  3. Work through this together as a couple: One of the most common mistakes that couples make around sex and sexless marriage is working on it by yourself. The reality is that sexual desire for each other in a relationship is a couples issue — and it needs to be addressed together, with both people in the room, understanding each other’s needs and learning to work through the gridlock. When you address it as a team, magic can happen.

When to Walk Away from a Sexless Marriage

There are real reasons to walk away from a sexless marriage — and they actually have nothing to do with sex. They have to do with how you relate to each other and whether your relationship is a partnership.

  1. Contempt. When the sex problem has devolved into a situation where one or both partners express contempt towards the other, and they cannot find within them the ability to see the goodness and good intention in each other, it’s time to walk away. Contempt is the biggest predictor of divorce in a relationship, according to 30+ year research by the Gottman Institute. For things to turn around, you need to be willing to reconnect emotionally by finding the “rightness” in each other’s perspectives and getting curious about your partner’s heart. If you’re not able to get past the point of contempt because too much pain and hurt have occurred, it’s time to let go of the relationship. Staying on will only further the hurt, and not just for the adults. When children see one (or both) parent(s) treat each other with contempt, this perpetuates the cycle of abuse in relationships. It’s time to let each other go.

    • Contempt can sound like:

      • ‘You have the sex problem, I don’t. Go fix it yourself and then we can talk.’

      • ‘ALL you want is sex!’ followed by an eye roll.

    • Contempt can look like ignoring requests to discuss sex and your needs with “I don’t need to talk about this. You deal with this yourself.”

  2. Refusal to grow. A relationship is not a train on tracks, following a set path to a destination. It’s more like a boat, forced to navigate different weather and current patterns. Sex in a long-term relationship goes through various stages and evolutions, naturally dying and then calling to be reborn. Passionate and connected sex is about growth and expansion. If you or your partner are not willing to grow to learn to deal with changes and find each other again and again and again, it’s time to let go.

    • Refusal to grow can sound like: ‘I am not changing. Take it or leave it.’

    • Refusal to grow can look like not wanting to discuss the issue and look for ways to make it better, as well as refusing to see an outside expert who can help you grow.

  3. Lack of care for each other. When one partner does not care about the emotional and sexual needs of the other partner and is not interested in pursuing any support to help both of you find common ground to make sex work, it is good reason to let go. Lack of care often goes hand in hand with loss of respect for each other and contempt. For a partnership to work, both people need to be interested in meeting each other’s needs and caring for each other.

    • Lack of care can look like continuous stonewalling, silence, and avoidance of topics.

    • Lack of care can look like continuing to have sex with each other knowingly that it hurts the other partner (because of pain during intercourse sex or otherwise).

“Decoy” Sex Problems That Masquerade as Unsolvable and Can Be Solved

There are what I call “decoy” sex problems — problems that appear unsolvable to you, your peers, even the media — but are very solvable for an expert. I know, because I have a decade of experience solving these very problems to couples.

  1. “Incompatibility.” When couples have been stuck in endless circles around sex, it starts to seem that they are incompatible, which is why I put this in quotes. When you look at the surface behavior of one person wanting sex more than the other, it’s easy to make that conclusion. Most of the time, however, it’s an illusion, a symptom of something else that you cannot see from the inside. So many couples who graduate from our work having created passionate and frequent sex come to me thinking that they’re incompatible, and it’s not the case at all. What is incompatible to an expert is very different.

  2. “Losing passion.” It feels intractable — you had it, now you lost it, and it will never come back. What is true is that the passion and butterflies of the beginning stages of a relationship will never come back. However, what you can create together is richer, deeper and more satisfying that anything that you experience in the beginning. Using an intentional process that transforms couples lives, I’ve seen hundreds of couples find this deep passion with each other after 10, 20 and even 25+ years together. It can be done.

  3. “Losing libido.” Changes in sexual desire for women in a long-term relationship is one of the most common issues. Most women — and their male partners — believe that it’s a sex issue. But when we dig deeper, we see a different picture: usually it’s one of an exhausted woman, run ragged by responsibilities, having no energy for sexual desire. She has what I call the “Empty Cup” syndrome. From my own survey on the “faces” of low libido in women, more than 70% of those taking it marked that their libido is a result of these three:

    • “Sex feels like so much hard work because it takes so long for me to “get in the mood” after a heroically busy day. I barely even have a moment to myself in peace, and I have no sexual energy to give to my partner even though I really love him and want to show him my love. It’s been like this for years that I have not felt sexual.”

    • “I cannot relax or turn my mind off during sex, and I can’t get into it at all. Then it’s just all performance and hard work for me, while he gets to enjoy himself. I definitely don’t crave sex; it’s more that I dread it.”

    • “I don’t remember the last time we were romantic with each other — it’s all parent talk, house responsibilities, what each of us have done wrong, and work stuff. I don’t feel cherished, adored or like a woman, and wanting him sexually is the last thing on my mind.”

    If the romantic connection with your partner is tenuous and the experience of sex average at best, you naturally won’t want sex (watch my free video series How to Want Sex Again where I go over this and more). Moreover, when the resentment cup runneth over from all of these, it has a disproportional effect on the libido cup. Unresolved resentment will make sexual desire disappear, fast. All of this, however, is very solvable, as I’ve seen with my clients. In fact, helping solve this area makes me one of the very few and thus sought after experts in the world on women’s libido.

If you experience any of these, there is hope.

Most couples who work with me come at the brink of divorce, looking for that last full-out effort to rescue their sexless relationship. They come having worked with 3-5 couples therapists, to no avail. Couples in their 50s and 60s who have been married for decades come to rescue the dream of having a life partner for life. Couples who just had a child come to me to get support so that they can spend the rest of their lives together. Even dating couples who want to spend their lives together but for whom lack of sex makes them doubt their commitment find solutions here.

These are not “miracle” recoveries, but products of well-designed expert support, guiding these couples to safety first … then helping them find their way to passion and excitement like they’ve never experienced before.

In the age when it’s easy to find new partners on an app or open a relationship, it takes courage to pursue fixing something that’s so important and not so easy to fix. It takes courage to admit that sex and being lovers is important to you and your relationship, that it’s a non-negotiable. I call these couples “intimacy warriors” because it’s so much more than about sex. It’s about following their hearts and living out their life in a way that’s most fulfilling.

Dare to follow your heart. Dare intimacy.

P.S. When you’re ready to find your way back to yourself and your partner, here are a few options for you: