Can you rebuild sexual attraction in a long-term relationships?
This is a question that I get a lot and I thought it is time that I share some of my thoughts on this question in a blog post. A while back I received the following question:
The Question:
“I’ve been in a long-term relationship with my partner for many years. Our relationship is generally stable and caring, but our sex life has become more difficult over time. One of the challenges I’m struggling with is that I don’t always feel strong sexual attraction towards my partner anymore, even though this wasn’t always the case. With time they have started feeling more like family and less like a lover. I sometimes wonder whether this is simply what happens in long relationships or whether there are ways to rebuild a stronger sexual connection.”
My answer:
You are not alone
“So first of all, thank you again for your open and honest question. Of course this is a really complex topic, so I will try to share some general thoughts that can maybe be a starting point for further reflection. What you are describing is something that many people struggle with in long-term relationships. That of course doesn’t necessarily make it better, but maybe it already brings some relief to know that you are far from alone in this experience.
The first basic, but often difficult, question is: what would you like your sex life to look like? And that question goes for both of you, of course. Often we feel dissatisfied, but we are also not sure what exactly it is that we would like to be different.
A related question is: what purpose does sex serve for each of you? Why do you have sex? For some people sex is mainly about pleasure and physical connection. For others it is about intimacy, reassurance, feeling desired, playfulness, or stress relief. Understanding what sex means to each of you can already open up an important conversation.
Attraction is not only physical
You describe that your preference in women has changed over the years, which I assume means that you used to find your wife more attractive in the past. In general, we can actually train our brain to eroticise some things over others. Often what we eroticise is heavily shaped by society and by what society tells us is attractive or sexy. For example, in our society young women are heavily eroticised, and many men therefore find it difficult to continue seeing ageing bodies as sexy.
At the same time, our erotic mind extends far beyond the purely physical. There can also be qualities, energies, or situations that we find particularly erotic. We can practice finding anchors for our erotic mind that we connect to and draw our erotic energy from, if that makes sense. We can practice associating certain qualities—physical, energetic, emotional—with sexual attraction, just like we can also learn to stop associating certain things with desire.
However, I think this might be the more surface-level aspect of the challenge, which you might be able to explore to some extent on your own.
The Love–Desire Paradox in long-term relationships
The deeper challenge probably lies in the dynamic between you and your wife, which is very common in long-term relationships. When people are together for a long time and share their lives in a very intimate way, they often start merging more and more. We usually say that sexual tension needs a certain level of mystery and differentiation.
There is a common idea that love and desire require different things. Love desires closeness, stability, and predictability, while desire often requires mystery, distance, novelty, and a bit of uncertainty. The more love grows and the closer we get, the more we sometimes slip into a form of fusion where we become almost like one unit. From that place of fusion it can be difficult to feel desire.
What we need to return to is connection—connection between two individuals. Often desire reappears in moments when we experience the other person as separate again. For example, when we see them doing something they are passionate about, when they are in their element, or even when we notice that they are desired by someone else.
When couples become too fused
So in that sense, I would not necessarily recommend getting even closer, but rather working on building a certain level of differentiation again, which can then allow for deeper and more exciting connection. Passion is a bit like fire: it needs space and air to grow, and often we don’t give it that space in long-term relationships.
Interestingly, it is quite common that after one person has an affair, sexual tension in the original relationship suddenly increases dramatically. The affair disrupts the fusion that had developed and restores a sense of differentiation, which can reignite desire. Of course, I am not at all recommending having an affair—this simply illustrates the dynamic I am describing (which in the context of an affair people often find very difficult: “I am so hurt but I want you more than every”).
Stress, modern life, and the pressure on relationships
Another factor is that the pressures of modern life are often major desire killers. Stress and the feeling of having to fulfil too many roles at the same time can leave very little space for erotic energy. In Western cultures we also place an enormous amount of pressure on romantic partnerships to be everything at once—things that in the past were often fulfilled by an entire village or community. This pressure can be even stronger in expat relationships, where people often have less support and rely more heavily on each other to meet all their needs.
Esther Perel writes about these dynamics in Mating in Captivity. She also has some very interesting TED Talks and a wonderful podcast called Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel, which I would highly recommend.
There is also an opposing perspective, represented for example by Emily Nagoski in her book Come Together. She talks about the possibility of a fulfilling sex life emerging from a place of deep connection and fusion. That is not the position I am taking here, but it might still be interesting for you to explore and make up your own mind.
Rethinking sexual scripts
Another thought that comes to mind is that we often get quite stuck in our sexual scripts. This perhaps connects back to my very first question about the kind of sex life you would like to have. Often sex used to work for us in a certain way in a certain context. But we change, and our life context changes too, which means that our sex life also needs to evolve.
For example, during student life many people find it easy to have sex late at night. But once people start working full time or especially once children enter they are simply too tired in the evenings. That might mean that sex needs to happen at a different time of day, or that couples even need to consciously plan it. Planning sex sometimes sounds very unromantic, but for many couples it actually creates the space and intention needed for intimacy to happen again. Here again desire needs space… Time, however, is only one element of course. It can be really helpful to take a close look at exactly how you are having sex from the whole context and build up to the sex itself and to consider whether this is still working for you now.
Maybe some of these thoughts resonate and can be starting point for you and perhaps for conversations with your partner. Either way I always encourage couples to get support for these conversations - that is what couples counseling is for in the end of the day. Not trying to force couples counseling onto you, but I do want to stress that I believe creating that kind of space for your relationship is one of the greatest gifts you can give your relationship.”
My invitation:
Desire in long-term relationships is rarely static. It evolves with the relationship, with our bodies, and with the context of our lives. Sometimes rebuilding a sexual connection is not about going back to how things used to be, but about discovering a new way of relating to each other as two evolving individuals.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, it can be helpful to start with curiosity rather than judgement — curiosity about yourself, your partner, and the kind of intimacy you would like to create together. If this topic resonates with you, these are exactly the kinds of questions I explore with clients in coaching sessions and workshops around relationships, communication, and intimacy.
