Let’s imagine you’re in the kitchen, trying to explain to your partner why you felt hurt by something they said earlier. They’re unloading the dishwasher, half listening, and eventually say, “I don’t know what you want me to say.” You stop talking.
Later that evening, they reach for you in bed. Maybe they want to cuddle or maybe they initiate sex but instead of feeling close, you pull away. Your partner may be confused and ask themselves, “Why don’t you want me anymore? Why are you never interested in sex?” You may not completely understand it either but the problem may not actually be sex. It may have started hours, days, months, or even years before you got into bed.
Sexual Intimacy Often Begins Outside the Bedroom
One of the patterns I frequently see in my work with couples is that when the friendship and emotional connection within the relationship begin to disappear, physical intimacy often follows.
Couples rarely wake up one morning completely disconnected. It happens gradually when they stop asking about each other’s day or spend more time on their phones. They stop laughing together and the conversations become about schedules, children, groceries, work, and household responsibilities. Eventually, they stop reaching for each other emotionally.
Drs. John and Julie Gottman’s work helps us understand why these seemingly insignificant interactions matter so much. Couples constantly make small attempts to connect in what the Gottmans call bids for connection. A bid might be telling your partner something funny that happened at work, reaching for their hand, asking their opinion, or simply saying, “Come look at this.” We can turn toward, turn away, or turn against those bids.
The Gottman’s research found that couples who remained married six years later had turned toward one another’s bids 86% of the time in laboratory observations, compared with 33% among couples who later divorced. They have written about these everyday interactions indicating, “these moments mattered a lot.” They do as the less you turn toward your partner, the further apart you can become. And that emotional distance can eventually follow you into the bedroom.
Friendship Is Part of Foreplay
When couples come to therapy concerned about their sex life, understandably, they often focus on sex.
How often are we having it? Who initiates? Why doesn’t my partner desire me anymore? How do we get the passion back?
Those are important questions but I often want to know something else first: What is happening between the two of you when you aren’t having sex?
Do you enjoy each other? Do you laugh together? Do you feel appreciated? Do you feel listened to? Do you still know what’s happening in each other’s inner worlds? Do you touch affectionately without every touch becoming an expectation for sex? Do you feel as though your partner genuinely likes you?
Gottman puts this connection between friendship and sexuality rather beautifully, “Everything positive you do in your relationship is foreplay.” That doesn’t mean doing the dishes should earn someone sex. It means that our erotic relationship doesn’t exist independently from the rest of our relationship. The Gottman’s work on couples with satisfying sex lives highlights friendship, affection, play, sexual communication, prioritizing intimacy, and consistently turning toward one another.
Emotional Safety Changes What Happens Physically
There’s another piece that I believe couples sometimes miss. Physical intimacy is about being vulnerable. Being sexual means allowing another person access to your body, your desires, your insecurities, and parts of yourself that you may not show anyone else. That vulnerability becomes much more difficult when the relationship doesn’t feel emotionally safe.
For example, If I regularly feel criticized by you, I may not want to expose myself to you. If I don’t feel heard by you, I may not want to tell you what I want sexually. If I have repeatedly reached for you emotionally and felt rejected, eventually I may stop reaching altogether. And if resentment has accumulated between us, simply scheduling sex may not repair what has been happening outside the bedroom.
The Gottman Institute describes sexual communication similarly in that sex requires vulnerability, and partners need sufficient safety to communicate their insecurities, wants, and needs. This creates a powerful relationship cycle:
The less emotionally connected we become → the less we turn toward each other → the less emotionally safe the relationship feels → the harder it becomes to be physically vulnerable → the less sexual connection we experience → the more disconnected we feel.
Suddenly, what looked like a sexual problem makes much more sense.
But We Love Each Other. Why Isn’t That Enough?” It’s not enough as love and desire aren’t exactly the same experience. Psychotherapist Esther Perel has written extensively about this tension. She describes love as seeking closeness, familiarity, security, and being known, while desire also needs individuality and space. Rebuilding intimacy doesn’t mean couples need to become emotionally fused or spend every moment together. Healthy sexuality can involve both security and separateness in knowing that your partner is emotionally available while continuing to experience them as an interesting, evolving person distinct from you. Perel describes desire as benefiting from some space for imagination, longing, novelty, and rediscovery.
We Need to Know: “Are You There for Me?”
Dr. Sue Johnson, the developer of Emotionally Focused Therapy, approached relationships through attachment. At the heart of secure attachment is emotional responsiveness which is the experience that when I reach for you vulnerably, you will notice me and respond.
Johnson described emotional responsiveness as “the basis of a secure bond.” Think about what that means sexually. Sex isn’t simply two bodies interacting. There are two emotional systems in that room, too.
Will you accept me?
Will you respond to me?
Can I tell you what I like?
Can I say no without being punished?
Can I initiate without being humiliated?
Can I show you my body without feeling judged?
Can I tell you what I need and trust that you’ll care?
When the answers increasingly become yes, emotional and physical intimacy have a much stronger foundation.
Five Ways to Begin Rebuilding a Healthy Sexual Relationship
1. Rebuild the friendship before focusing exclusively on frequency.
Become curious about each other again. Ask questions and have fun. Go somewhere together. Learn what’s happening in your partner’s world. Sexual partners also need opportunities to simply enjoy being friends and partners.
2. Start noticing the small bids for connection.
When your partner says, “Look at this,” look. When they tell you about their day, listen. When they touch your shoulder, notice. Turning toward doesn’t require a 30-minute emotional conversation every time (especially when you’re drowning in work, chores, and being the household taxi driver). Small moments accumulate into connection and trust.
3. Create emotional safety around sex.
Talk about sex when you’re not having sex. Discuss what you enjoy, what makes you uncomfortable, and how you like sex initiated. Share what helps you feel desired and how you want a partner to respond when you say no. Sexual communication should make room for consent, vulnerability, curiosity, and differences in desire. To get you started, the Gottmans have created a free app called, “Gottman Card Decks”. Click on the “Sex Questions” box and ask each other the question prompts.
4. Address resentment rather than trying to have sex over top of it.
Unresolved injuries don’t necessarily disappear when the bedroom door closes. If criticism, loneliness, betrayal, rejection, unequal responsibilities, or longstanding conflict sits between you, work on the relationship underneath the sexual difficulty. If this feels too unsafe or difficult to do by yourselves, seek out professional help.
5. Bring back affection, play, and erotic curiosity without pressure.
Hold hands. Kiss longer. Flirt. Cuddle. Send the playful message and try something different together. Create space for affectionate touch that doesn’t automatically have to lead to intercourse. Stay curious about who your partner is becoming rather than assuming you already know everything about them (even if you’ve been married for 25 years).
6. Get medical advice when there could be a medical problem Sometimes there are specifically sexual, hormonal, medication-related, trauma-related, or physiological reasons for changes in desire, and those deserve appropriate assessment. I appreciate that these can be difficult discussions to have, but please speak to your family doctor to determine if a referral is required.
Your Sex Life May Be Telling You Something
When physical intimacy disappears, couples sometimes assume something is fundamentally wrong with them. We start to believe that we’ve lost the spark, my partner isn’t attracted to me or maybe we’re just not sexual anymore. My advice – before asking only, “Why aren’t we having more sex?”, consider asking, “When did we stop turning toward each other?”
Rebuilding a sexual relationship doesn’t always begin by changing what happens in the bedroom. Sometimes it begins in the kitchen with one partner finally putting down the dish towel, turning around, and saying, “I’m listening. Tell me why that hurt.” And the other partner realizing, “You’re here. You see me. I matter to you.”
That is intimacy too and sometimes, that’s where physical intimacy begins again.
