When the Sex Stops: Why So Many Marriages Quietly Drift

16 May

Written By Sabrina Peters | Psychologist & Couples Therapist

It rarely happens all at once. Most couples don’t sit down one day and decide to stop. It just… slowly stops. Life gets busy. A baby arrives. One of you is exhausted. The other stops asking. A few months pass. A year. Two.

And then one quiet evening, you realise it’s been so long you can’t remember the last time.

If you’re nodding along, you are not alone, and you are not broken. Sexless or low-sex marriages are far more common than most couples realise. Drawing on the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey and follow-up research, clinicians estimate that around 15 to 20 percent of married couples are in what is defined as a sexless marriage, typically meaning sex fewer than 10 times a year. A 2017 study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that 15.6 percent of married people had not had sex in the previous year at all. Many more sit in a low-sex zone that feels like a quiet drift, with around half of all married couples reporting a decline in sexual activity over time.

As a registered psychologist who’s worked with hundreds of couples, I want to walk you through what’s actually going on, because the reasons are real, the patterns are common, and the path back is possible.

The Real Reasons Couples Stop Having Sex

1. Exhaustion

This is the silent killer of married sex lives. By the time you’ve worked, parented, cleaned, cooked, scrolled, and finally collapsed into bed, there is nothing left. Desire requires energy. When you’re running on fumes, your body prioritises sleep over everything, including connection. Sleep researchers have found that for women, every additional hour of sleep is associated with a measurable increase in next-day sexual desire, and that chronic sleep debt is one of the strongest non-relational predictors of low libido. In other words, the issue often isn’t how you feel about your partner. It’s how depleted your nervous system is.

2. Mismatched libidos

Most couples have a higher-desire partner and a lower-desire partner. This isn’t a problem in itself, it’s the norm. Research suggests that around 80 percent of long-term couples experience some degree of desire discrepancy at any given time. It becomes a problem when neither person knows how to navigate the gap. Over time, the higher-desire partner feels rejected and stops initiating. The lower-desire partner feels pressured and starts avoiding. The dance stops.

3. Resentment

This is one of the biggest causes I see clinically, and one of the least talked about. Sex requires emotional safety. When unresolved hurt, criticism, or imbalance lives in a relationship, the body says no even when the mind says yes. Gottman’s decades of research on couples consistently identifies unresolved contempt and stonewalling as among the strongest predictors of both relational and sexual breakdown. You cannot want someone you’re quietly furious with.

“You cannot want someone you’re quietly furious with.”

4. After kids

The postpartum and early parenting season is brutal on a sex life. Hormones, breastfeeding, sleep deprivation, body changes, identity shifts, the mental load, every single one of these affects desire. The numbers are striking. Studies report that between 41 and 83 percent of women experience sexual dysfunction at 2 to 3 months postpartum, and around 64 percent at six months. One large cohort study found nearly 70 percent of women experience a loss of desire within six months of delivery, and roughly 1 in 4 still report pain with sex at 18 months postpartum. For breastfeeding mothers, elevated prolactin and lowered estrogen can suppress libido for the entire duration of nursing. This is biological, not relational. Couples who don’t know this often misinterpret it as falling out of love.

5. Stress

Cortisol, the stress hormone, is a libido killer. When your nervous system is in fight-or-flight mode constantly, your body deprioritises reproduction. A frequently cited 2008 study by Hamilton and colleagues showed that elevated cortisol significantly suppressed sexual desire in women, and broader research consistently links chronic stress to reduced arousal and frequency for both sexes. This isn’t a moral failure. It’s biology. Chronic stress and a robust sex life rarely coexist.

6. Medication and health

Many common medications, SSRIs, blood pressure medications, hormonal contraceptives, affect libido. SSRIs in particular have a well-documented effect, with reviews estimating that 40 to 65 percent of people taking them experience some form of sexual dysfunction, ranging from reduced desire to delayed or absent orgasm. Hormonal changes (perimenopause, low testosterone, postnatal hormones) also play a major role. So do chronic illness, pain, and fatigue. Sometimes the problem is not psychological at all, it’s physiological, and a GP visit is the first step.

7. Body image

If you don’t feel comfortable in your body, it’s hard to feel comfortable being vulnerable in it. Studies consistently show body image to be one of the strongest predictors of sexual satisfaction in women, often outweighing factors like age or BMI. Many partners, men and women, retreat from sex when they don’t feel desirable, regardless of what their spouse actually thinks.

8. Pornography

Regular use of pornography often reshapes desire away from real partners.

It can create unrealistic expectations, condition arousal to specific stimuli, and reduce interest in real intimacy. A growing body of research links frequent pornography use to lower relational and sexual satisfaction, and some studies suggest it is a contributing factor in roughly a quarter of male-initiated sexless marriages. This is one of the most common causes I see in younger couples particularly.

9. Unaddressed conflict

When the same fights keep happening with no repair, intimacy becomes collateral damage. Couples who can’t argue well struggle to make love well. Research consistently shows communication problems to be one of the most commonly cited drivers of sexual dissatisfaction, ahead of frequency itself. The bedroom is the last room to be affected by conflict, but it is affected, eventually.

10. Disconnection in daily life

If you barely see each other, rarely connect emotionally, and live more like roommates than lovers, sex won’t be there to save you. Sex is the fruit, not the root. The root is connection. Marital satisfaction and sexual frequency are consistently shown to be mutually reinforcing, with declines in one almost always pulling the other down with it.

“Sex is the fruit, not the root. The root is connection.”

What Most Couples Try First (And Why It Often Backfires)

Most couples try one of two things: pressure (“we need to have more sex”) or avoidance (“let’s just not talk about it”). Both make it worse.

Pressure activates the lower-desire partner’s defences. They feel like a task, not a person. Their body shuts down further. Avoidance lets the gap grow into a chasm, until the silence itself becomes unbearable.

The way back isn’t through scheduling more sex. It’s through rebuilding the conditions where desire can return.

What Actually Works

1. Have the conversation, outside the bedroom

Most couples never properly talk about their sex life. They hint, hope, withdraw, or resent. Sit down at a neutral time. Not after a failed attempt. Not in bed. Use “I” statements. “I miss being close to you. I want us to find our way back.” Make it about both of you, not blame.

2. Address the relationship first

Sex is downstream from connection. Before you fix the sex, fix the conflict, the resentment, the mental load, the disconnection. As the broader relationship heals, desire often returns on its own. For women particularly, research has shown relationship dissatisfaction to be a stronger predictor of low desire than age or hormonal status.

3. Schedule connection, not sex

Couples who schedule sex often feel pressure. Couples who schedule connection, a walk, a coffee, an undistracted hour, often find sex returns as a byproduct. The order matters.

4. Understand responsive desire

Many women (and some men) have what’s called responsive desire, they don’t feel turned on first, they feel turned on after physical intimacy begins. Spontaneous desire (where you feel turned on before anything happens) is more common in early relationships and in higher-testosterone bodies. Sex researchers estimate that responsive desire is the dominant pattern for the majority of women in long-term relationships. Knowing this can stop the lower-desire partner from waiting to “feel like it,” and instead, gently starting and letting desire build.

5. Take pressure off intercourse

Couples often equate sex with intercourse. Broaden the definition. Touch. Massage. Making out. Lying naked together. The more pressure-free the physical closeness, the more naturally desire returns.

6. Address the mental load

For many women, the biggest libido killer isn’t a lack of attraction, it’s exhaustion. A 2022 study published in the Journal of Sex Research surveying 299 Australian women found that those in equitable relationships (where housework and mental load were shared) reported significantly higher relationship satisfaction and notably higher sexual desire for their partners than those in inequitable ones. Critically, the inequity affected partnered desire specifically, not solo desire, meaning the issue wasn’t libido itself, it was how desire was being eroded by relational dynamics. The partner who’s spent all day mentally running the household cannot suddenly switch into desire mode at 9pm. Sharing the mental load isn’t just fair, it’s foreplay.

“Sharing the mental load isn’t just fair, it’s foreplay.”

7. See a sex therapist or couples therapist

If the gap has been long, or the patterns are stuck, professional support is one of the most loving things you can do for your marriage. Sex therapists in particular are trained for exactly this. There is no shame in needing help. There is shame in letting your marriage erode in silence.

8. See your GP

If desire feels absent for biological reasons, talk to your doctor. Hormones, medications, chronic pain, perimenopause, these are all real, and many are treatable. Worth noting: only about 25 percent of women with sexual dysfunction symptoms seek professional help, meaning the vast majority suffer in silence with conditions that often have effective treatments.

When to Worry

It’s worth seeking professional support if:

• You haven’t had sex in six months or more and don’t know how to start again

• One partner has completely disconnected emotionally

• There’s been infidelity that hasn’t been processed

• One partner is using porn instead of engaging with the other

• Sex has stopped because of unaddressed trauma

• The lower-desire partner feels relieved by the absence of sex, this often signals deeper relational pain

A sexless season doesn’t mean the end of your marriage. It is, often, an invitation, to slow down, to address what’s been ignored, to rebuild what’s been quietly neglected. Most couples who come through this don’t just recover their sex life. They recover their friendship, their tenderness, the version of each other they thought they’d lost.

“Sex is not the foundation of a marriage. Connection is. Build the connection, and sex finds its way home.”

About the Author

As a psychologist and couples therapist, Sabrina is passionate about helping couples build happy, healthy, and fulfilling relationships. Her clinical expertise and genuine warmth shape both her work in the therapy room and the online resources she creates for couples seeking support and ongoing growth.

More about Sabrina