Not Having Sex With Your Partner? Here's How to Get Back to Business

Recently, a 36-year-old man posted something stupid on Reddit. This is not breaking news-this happens likely thousands of times per day, but the post made it over to Twitter, and people went in. The issue at hand? The guy hated his wife's haircut. While he knew he couldn't tell her not to get her hair cut, he admitted, "I know it sounds stupid, but every trip back to the hairdresser feels like a little slap in the face." However, the husband mentioned one small detail that got everyone's attention: he and his wife do not have sex.

Redditors mostly provided uncharacteristically astute commentary: "I don't think this is about her hair. The haircut is just a tangible thing that you are focusing on. Your main issue is the lack of sex," one user wrote. Reddit has long been a sanctuary for people in sexless marriages. There's a whole subreddit with 182,000+ subscribers called r/DeadBedrooms, where people go to complain, commiserate, and seek help for their relationships. (There is no official demarcation of what makes a marriage "sexless," but studies usually count couples who haven't had sex in the last year, or marriages where sexual intimacy happens ten times or fewer a year.) The subreddit's top post of all time is actually the story of a person with a lower libido (dubbed "LLs" on the site) trying to initiate sex with their partner. The poster triumphantly explains their realization after initating sex the night before, "My husband's mood today is fantastic...I'm realizing how much of his joy is missing in a sexless marriage[.] I will keep reading here and working on my end of initiating." For most posters, that's the ultimate fantasy: their partner finally understanding just how important sex really is to them, and more importantly, why.

The traditional (read: heteronormative and sexist) narrative is that men are always ready to have sex, while women are constantly faking headaches to avoid it. That's simply not the case. According to Pam Costa, M.A. in clinical psychology and founder of Down to There, a site devoted to getting people to talk about sex more, men and women pretty much experience low sex drive equally. Costa asserts that while sex can feel "easier" at the beginning, after a few years with someone, the "in love" hormones fade. Sex can start to become less frequent as couples encounter road bumps like depression, physical health concerns, the loss of loved ones, pregnancy, childbirth, and miscarriages, or as a result of mismatched desire levels. But sometimes, the problem is simply that people don't know how to talk about the sex that they want to be having. And no matter the reason, Costa says that honest communication about sex can help. We asked Costa our biggest questions about sexless marriages and how to address them.

How common are sexless marriages?
The accepted rate is somewhere between 10-20 percent of marriages; I consider that pretty common. One of the first things I want people to know, if they're in a sexless marriage, is that they're not alone. They're in good company. It's very common.

Are men and women equally concerned about sexless marriages?
Absolutely. I think it's harder when a male partner has lower desire, because we do have this cultural narrative that men should always be ready. Because of this, in a hetero relationship, there can be additional shame when it is the male partner who has a lower sex drive. But, again, you're not alone.

What makes a sexless marriage so damaging?
Sex is often a very important component of intimacy, and we all seek out intimacy in different ways. For some of us, emotional intimacy is more important than physical intimacy, or cuddling is more important than penetration. When it comes to a relationship, having shared forms of intimacy is really important. Often, in couples that come to me, one person says, "But I'm fine. Everything's fine!" And the other person says, "How can you say that? This is anything but fine." That's where it starts to impact other parts of the relationship: If one person is missing the intimacy that's important to them, they can start to be resentful or frustrated. Or the person who doesn't want to have sex can start to feel guilty or broken.