A Psychologist Explains A Common Factor She Sees Among Couples Not Having Sex

"I don't care if I never have sex again."

Here's the interesting thing: Many of my women clients say that when they visit their husband at work and see him in his power, they do feel turned on by him. But when he comes home, he becomes an anxious, complaining, needy little boy—and they are not turned on by that whatsoever.

What's going is that their husband is powerful in the work arena but self-abandoning—and thus needy—in the emotional arena. He wants sex to relax and feel good about himself rather than to connect with his wife. Rather than taking responsibility for his own feelings of stress and anxiety, he's coming to his wife expecting for her to make him feel better (or worse, to use her for his own comfort). This dynamic invariably leads to his wife feeling used by him rather than loved.

There is nothing erotic about a needy person.

Sex in a long-term relationship thrives when both partners are loving and taking care of themselves and then sharing their love with each other. This means that each partner needs to do whatever inner work is necessary to come to their partner full of love for their partner rather than coming from emptiness and neediness. We cannot be loving and emotionally connected when we are rejecting and abandoning our own feelings and then expecting our partner to make us feel OK about ourselves.

This might be a hard pill to swallow—yes, you'll need to do the inner work before you're going to see your sex life really come back to life. The good news is, sexuality in general thrives when both partners are open to learning about themselves and about each other, which is what creates growth and newness in long-term relationships. Sex doesn't become boring when the relationship isn't boring, and it isn't boring when learning and emotional growth are an integral part of a relationship.