I know, here she goes again… you’re thinking, and yes, I am and I won’t shut up about it. My mum did, my grandma did, my great grandma did and the majority of humanity does so… I won’t.
And is it because sex is the most important thing in the world? Absolutely not! Not even in my top priorities if I’m honest.
It has been exactly one year (and 20 days) I haven’t had any and look at me, I am “fine” but that’s not the point, I am not married!
But not being a top priority does not mean it is not important and, for many of us, sexual intimacy is one of the things that makes a couple feel like a couple rather than just family. I know women who have more intimacy with their GP than with their husband, I mean…
I have gone viral here on Substack 🤣.
My notes get anything wild between 1 and 0 likes normally and this one has nearly 100 🥳 and… what is it about?
You got it: sexless marriages.
I have experienced the same response on Instagram when talking about it so I am onto something and I feel it.
I have been analyzing (thanks ChatGPT) hundreds of comments and messages about this topic for a long time now and the same patterns repeat.
People talk about feeling rejected, unwanted, invisible and building resentment while life carries on almost as if nothing is really happening behind closed doors in the bedroom.
Most of the comments are somehow pointing at: Who’s wrong?
Is the one not wanting sex selfish?
Is the person wanting sex entitled?
Is cheating justified?
Do you leave? Do you endure?
etc.
Two sides in conflict around blame. Until someone dares to ask: “So if my partner no longer wants sex with me, am I expected to simply never have sex again?”.
Well… there’s the problem.
Because one person has every right to say no to sex. Obviously. But the other person also has every right to say: I do not want a sexless relationship.
And all of those conversations about libido go down the toilet because the real conflict is not about who is right or wrong or who’s high libido and who’s low 🙄.
The conflict is that two people now want different things, and neither of them has to be the bad guy.
Why is it so hard for people to admit: “We’ve grown apart. We don’t want the same thing anymore.”
No, that’s apparently not sensible and, instead, they go and get the usual solutions:
Date nights
Therapy
Scheduled sex
Communicate better
Open the marriage
Have an affair
Masturbate more
Or the more radical one I stood by for a long time: Just get divorced!
But hey! I am more mature now (can you believe it?) and I understand that dismantling 25 years, a home, children, finances, routines, friendships, family history and sometimes genuine love is roughly equivalent to cancelling a Netflix subscription.
It took me less than 2 months to blow my life up but mine was a tsunami and I’m wired a bit differently 😅
But it just fascinates me that in most of these stories, sex is often not even the main issue anymore, that’s just the warning sign that the relationship has simply changed.
Some people describe becoming roommates, others still love each other deeply but there is no kissing, no touching, no affection, no eroticism, nothing that makes the relationship feel like a romantic partnership anymore.
And nobody actually sat down when this was happening and said:
What happened to us?
And not: whose fault is this? how do we make you want sex again? how do I convince you that sex matters?
Just:
What are we now?
What does each of us actually want?
And if those two things are no longer compatible, what do we do with that truth?
And that question is exactly why I have spent the last few months creating something I wish had existed when I was in that situation.
Actually, scratch that.
I have probably been creating it for years without knowing I was creating it because I was the person who stopped wanting sex, the one avoiding it, the one saying no and for a while I genuinely believed I had simply lost my libido (I kinda hate that word🙄).
I hadn’t.
What had happened was: I no longer wanted sex with my husband.
We were still a family. We still cared about each other. We still functioned but the “couple” had almost disappeared. And because things were not “bad enough”, we carried on.
That is another pattern I see over and over again. Very often, we do absolutely nothing until (but not always)… life happens and you receive a cosmic slap that puts the story upside down and, let me tell you, it is not nice.
So I would have loved to have a way to sit with that situation at the time and get some clarity, have a proper conversation with myself about it, then talk it through with him as much as required and perhaps reach a solution through conscious action, rather than from the fog I was living in while looking the other way.
We cannot see something we refuse to look at but once you are willing to look, you can consciously decide what to do with that information, even if it hurts. Aren’t you already hurting every time you go to bed and feel like a stranger in your own bedroom?
That is what What Happened to Us? is about.
I have been working on it for months now, pulling together years of thinking, my own experience, everything I have learned since my marriage changed, the conversations I have had with people in similar situations, and all these comments and messages that keep repeating the same pain in slightly different words.
I then applied the maieutic (or Socratic) method I’ve been training in over the past year and turned all of this into a structured process.
I’m opening 3 places for the first “What Happened to Us?“
It is a 7-week, private 1:1 process for people in long-term relationships that have become sexless or deeply disconnected and who need clarity about what is actually happening and what they want to do next.
This is not couples therapy.
You come on your own. Over seven coaching sessions, we look at the relationship through T.R.U.T.H.™ - what has changed, what you want now, what you may be avoiding and what your real options are.
Needless to say, it’s 100% confidential and a safe space with zero judgement.
It’s not free, and there are two reasons for that. One is obviously my time and the work involved. The other is commitment. I want to work with people who are genuinely ready to show up for the full seven weeks, because we all know how difficult it is to stay consistent with something that matters - even when we’ve paid for it.
If you recognize yourself in what I’ve been writing about, you can read everything and apply here:
I don’t know what the right answer is for every couple. I don’t think there is one.
Sometimes the answer will be to rebuild. Sometimes to renegotiate. Sometimes to accept a different kind of relationship. Sometimes to separate.
But I do think pretending nothing has changed is usually the worst option because time keeps moving whether we make a decision or not. And maybe that is really what all of this is about for me.
It goes beyond sex, marriage or divorce. It’s about the courage to look at your life as it actually is, rather than as you once hoped it would be, and dare to ask:
Is this still the life I consciously choose?
That’s the conversation I want us to start having.
And yes… I’ll probably keep talking about it. 😏
With love,
Eva :)
