When to Leave a Sexless Marriage
An empty bed with light and shadows.
Walk away when you have made a real attempt at repair, out loud, on a timeline you both agree to, and your partner would not meet you there. That is the line. Most people searching this at 1am have never had that conversation.
If you typed this into Google or ChatGPT tonight, five tips to spice things up are not going to help. You are doing math about your one life, deciding how long you could wait until it changes, trying to make your needs smaller while also denying how much it’s impacted you. You have probably been doing that for a couple of years, in the car, in the shower, at 3pm on a Tuesday when someone at work stood a little too close and something in you woke up and then got very sad.
What counts as a sexless marriage?
A sexless marriage is a marriage in which sex has stopped or nearly stopped, most often defined in survey research as fewer than ten times a year. That number is a research convention. It appears in no clinical manual, and I have never made a decision in my office based on the frequency. I’m sharing this because sometimes having a number can be validating.
If you are both content in a low-sex or no-sex marriage, there’s no issue. This post is not for you. Enjoy your low-sex/no-sex marriage, and be proud of finding a partner who values it in the way you do.
There is also decent evidence that the number matters less than people assume. Muise, Schimmack and Impett (2016) looked at more than 25,000 people and found that the link between sexual frequency and well-being flattened out at about once a week. More sex than that predicted nothing extra. The same effect did not show up for single people at all, which tells you the well-being was riding on the relationship the sex happened inside of.
When I’m helping couples determine if they are in a low sex/no sex marriage, the question I ask is:
Are either of you grieving?
If either of you are, that means your sexual life together mattered to you. Losing access to it, even temporarily can be challenging. If you or your partner feels this as a loss of connection or loss of self and the frequency is less than what you both want, then this label might fit. It is different than mismatched libido; mismatched libido sometimes leads to a low sex/sexless marriage, but not always. Libido changes throughout a relationship are normal and respond to stress, identity changes, conflict , hormone changes, and plenty of other things. It usually means something shifted in the relationship, and that’s usually where we start.
Why "should I leave?" is the wrong first question
Most people asking that are avoiding the bigger question: what happened between you two? This leads to identifying what changed and the ability to repair from the impact that had. That’s different from trying to “fix it.” Sometimes there isn’t something to “fix” and instead we create a new foundation- the one you weren’t sure how to build in the first place.
A Sexless marriage isn’t a diagnosis, it’s a symptom of a deeper issue.
Nearly every couple tells me they tried initiating more, then less, then got too anxious to start so they just stopped all together. Sometimes, one partner drop hints, books a trip hoping a change of context will do the trick. Buys a new sex toy they never use. And nobody names it as something that is wrong.
have the two of you ever named what is happening and tried to change it on purpose?
Unless you’re already checked out and ready to leave, the answer is no. You do not have enough information to leave yet. What you do have is information about how scared you both are to have the conversation.
What a real repair attempt looks like
In simple terms, this is what I help people do to get to the other side of it.
1) One of you names it out loud. Not "I wish we were closer." Closer to: "We have had sex four times in two years. I am not okay, and I have never told you how not okay I am." The specificity is the whole point. Vagueness makes it easy to sweep under the rug.
2) You both build a shared story of how it got here. Sexlessness is almost always a systemic issue, something between two partners. Somebody got sick or had a baby or got depressed. Somebody's rejection landed hard once . Or one of you has been carrying all the mental load/invisible labor, and resentment built up. I have written more about that one here.
3) You get help. Couples can do this alone, and some do. But if the two of you have a history of avoiding this exact conversation, a third person in the room to hold you accountable can help. And it can lead to other supports too if something has gone untreated.
4) You set a time period. It’s important that you both are all in and agree to a time period to focus on it. Six months, a year. Open-ended attempts are how people spend another four years in limbo.
A sexless marriage can recover if
The sexlessness has a story you can both tell. When you each describe how it happened, you describe roughly the same thing, and neither version is a character assassination. You don’t blame each other. And, both people take accountability for their part and are making active steps towards changing it.
There is warmth under the avoidance. You still like each other. Some version of your partner walking through the door still makes something in your chest lift, even if that hasn’t translated to the bedroom.
The lower-desire partner is sad about it too. This is the big one. If they grieve the loss instead of defending it, you two are not opponents, you are both facing the same thing, together.
Something never got treated. Pain with sex, a medication nobody re-examined, a birth, a diagnosis, a trauma history that got skipped over. Untreated things look like refusal from the outside. Desire that vanished on a specific date usually has a cause worth knowing about, and pain in particular is far more treatable than most people are told.
Or the sex was never that good. Low desire for the sex you have been having is one of the most changeable things I see. Someone can be uninterested in twelve years of the same six minutes and still be extremely interested in sex. Worth reading alongside this: desire that shows up after things get started is not wrong or absent. Responsive desire is healthy and normal.
Signs it probably can't
Things to look for in yourself or your partner.
1) Contempt. Contempt is disgust aimed at the person you married. You have stopped treating your partner as an equal and started treating them as someone beneath you, and it comes out sideways: the eye roll, the tone you would never use toward a colleague. Nobody has to say the words 'you are not worth my respect.' Contempt says it for you. If you or your partner has this towards one another around sex, it might not survive without serious work.
2) Refusing to discuss it. Not "we tried and it was hard." A refusal to have the conversation at all, for years, across every approach you have taken. You can’t change a sexless marriage on your own, and if your partner is unwilling to, that’s your answer.
3) Nothing is being asked of you except patience. Every time you raise it there is a reason, and the reasons are real, and nothing changes, and they give you just enough hope that something will but have not made any meaningful steps to do so. It takes two, yes, but two willing partners. Some signs of partners taking steps towards change are things like, going to individual and/or couples sex therapy, taking workshops and classes, scheduling structured time to talk about how you both got here, etc.
Is leaving a sexless marriage shallow?
Nope.
People will tell you it is. Someone will say a marriage is more than sex, which is true and also beside the point. Erotic aliveness and sexual satisfaction are key components to a satisfying partnership. Going without it for a decade does something to a person who isn’t asexual, and pretending otherwise is how people end up in an affair they didn’t plan, wondering who the hell they turned into.
Wanting to be wanted by the person you married is not shallow. It is one of the most basic wants there is.
If you or your partner has experienced sexual trauma or a traumatic birth that is impacting your sex life, it is important to have autonomy over the healing process. You’re allowed to be upset, hurt, and feel that it’s unfair that you have to deal with it. You’re also allowed to be honest with yourself if you do not want to heal through it right now, or be there for your partner while they do. It’s better to be honest about that then resent someone while they undergo one of the most vulnerable times in their life.
Where to start
Start by talking to your partner directly about your sex life, how the lack is impacting you, and what you want to do about it.
If you want help having it, I am a sex and relationship psychotherapist and this is most of what I do. I see clients by telehealth in New York and Oregon. Book a consult call to learn more.
FAQs
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Yes, it can be. Sexual connection is a legitimate need, and losing it permanently is a real loss rather than a superficial one. The question I would ask first is whether you have made a direct, time-boxed attempt at repair, because most people considering divorce over sexlessness have never had that conversation out loud.
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Set a timeline you both agree to rather than waiting to feel certain. Six months to a year of real work, with the problem named and outside help if you can get it, gives you enough information to decide on. Open-ended waiting is how people lose another four years.
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Many do, and some are happy. The difference is whether both people want that arrangement or whether one of them is quietly grieving and calling it acceptance.
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Say it out loud to your partner, in specific numbers, and do not soften it. Most people in this position have said it to a search bar, a friend, or a therapist long before they ever say it to the person they married.
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Usually not. Desire and love run on different systems, and desire gets affected by stress, medication, pain, resentment, and hormonal change in ways that have nothing to do with how much someone loves you.
