Are you sexually attracted to your partner?
Around 70% of couples who come and see me are not having sex.
In this brief article, I describe a common reason couples in long term relationships might find themselves having infrequent to no sex.
The primary reasons couples in long term relationships don’t have sex -
They’ve lost the spark and now it’s just kinda awkward
They don’t have time or space
There’s too much conflict (or there’s no conflict - which is even worse)
One person in the relationship does not find their partner sexually attractive
In this article, I am solely going to talk about reason #4.
What makes someone want to have sex with you?
Nobody wants to have sex with another person long term solely because they’re a good person.
Ladies and gentlemen: Your partner wants to take your clothes off because you’re kind, smart, *and*, because you’ve got sex appeal.
Sex appeal in this context refers to a combination of attention to one’s presentation, physical fitness, health/wellbeing, vitality, self-esteem, interest in life, and participation in active friendships.
If you are constantly grumpy or down in the dumps, if you don’t go and hang out with your own friends, if you don’t eat well, if you lack confidence or drive, and if you don’t dress up to go out - that’s not sexy.
Sexiness is a two-way street. If your partner's desire has fizzled, it's worth asking how desirable you feel yourself.
Do you treat yourself in a way that turns you on?
Do you engage in behaviours that maintain attraction?
It is your responsibility to turn yourself on and it is your responsibility to ensure you are as attractive as possible to your partner.
I have yet to meet anyone who had a problem with their partner being fit, healthy, happy, and excited about something… and wearing a nice shirt.
It is acknowledged that there are times for most of us in our lives when we are not able to keep as fit and as healthy as we would like such as during or after pregnancy, menopause, illness, or injury. No one should be expected to be in a position to maintain their sex appeal all the time.
Further, no one is sexually attracted to their partner if their partner is being an asshole. Being on the receiving end of harshness does not lead to attraction or intimacy. So if your partner keeps making excuses not to be sexually intimate, it pays to ask them the question: “Do you feel like I am being an asshole to live with right now?”
The thing everyone is too scared to talk about …
I meet people every week who are embarrassed and ashamed to reveal [it takes a lot of cajoling on my part], that they no longer find their partner attractive because their partner has stopped taking care of themselves in one form or another.
People [and I generally mean New Zealanders here] both underestimate and play down the importance of sex appeal.
Let me reiterate, sex appeal means:
Exuding healthy levels of confidence
Exuding peace or joy
Being as fit as possible
Being as healthy as possible
Having good self-esteem
Focusing on your presentation [what you wear, your haircut, etc]
Spending time with your own friends
Having your own interests, hobbies, and fascinations [passions]
Confidence, taking care of your health, fitness, and presentation, is sexy.
A phenomenon I observe in both men and women is as follows. Over the course of time some individuals can lose self-confidence and self-respect.
At other times, a partner can gain pseudo-confidence which is really just entitlement or false empowerment (grandiosity). An unhealthy level of confidence in either direction can derail a couple’s sex life for this simple reason - no one with healthy self-esteem wants to have sex with someone who lacks confidence, and no one with healthy self-esteem wants to have sex with someone who is being an entitled ass.
A few years ago, a naturally beautiful woman who had sex appeal by the truckload, told me in her usual husky, devil-may-care voice (as she nonchalantly stirred her tea), that she didn’t need to put any effort into keeping her man now that they were married. She was dead serious.
It is precisely because you’re married that you need to put in far more effort into how you look now than you did back then. The initial chemicals that heighten attraction at the beginning of a relationship are gone. The human brain is still on the evolutionary savannah - it adores novelty.
Sexual vitality comes from embodiment - Make time and space to be in your body and make time and space to take care of your body. Move your body and your spirit in a way that makes you feel more masculine or more feminine. Sexual vitality comes from physical fitness which means good cardiovascular endurance and muscular strength, optimal body fat, refreshing sleep, sunlight, and good nutrition.
Be interesting
Deal with your stress levels. Don’t come home from work in a shitty mood.
Believe in yourself - the sexiest thing you can possibly be in possession of, in addition to health and fitness, is self-esteem and self-confidence.
If you don’t want to have sex with yourself - do you think your partner does? Probably not. It is not your partner’s responsibility to turn you on, it’s your partner’s responsibility to throw a match on a tinderbox… and then send you up in flames.
What is my partner’s role?
Your partner’s role is to ensure they’re good in bed … but the desire part - the wanting part - in a long term relationship - as long as your partner is doing their part of taking care of themselves and the relationship, then the “getting turned on” part - that’s on you as an individual.
If you’re a person who tends toward responsive desire (you tend to become aroused once things have started progressing during sex), as opposed to tending toward spontaneous desire (you tend to get aroused without needing your partner to do anything), there are many actions you can take to ensure there’s a low pitch background humming in your mind, body, and spirit. This makes the transition from not being interested in sex, to being open to the possibility of something sexual taking place, a lot smoother.
What do you do across any given day or week to ensure you are feeling connected to your sexuality? What do you do to turn yourself on and feel sexy? A healthy sex drive (whether spontaneous or responsive) is a natural and normal consequence of a healthy mind and body.
A common reason relationships end is because a person lacks confidence or doesn’t look after their health and fitness - and this results in their partner slowly over time becoming less and less sexually attracted to them.
Of course, folks rarely tell the truth because it would be very cruel to do so. “I love you just as you are.” They lie. Because we do. We do love them. But love has nothing to do with sex/desire/erotic attraction. When it comes to sex, we may as well be different people.
Sex and love. Different beasts.
When you first start dating someone, if you don’t want to rip their clothes off within the first few dates [I didn’t say that you should or would … I am just talking about the wanting to part], don’t pursue a romance with them.
But they’re such a good person and they make me feel safe….
Even if you’re not the “want to rip someone’s clothes off” type - you should still find them aesthetically and energetically pleasing - you should be primally attracted to the way their body moves and to their confidence.
Don’t move in with someone solely because they’re a good person.
Sometimes, especially if we have trauma, we can be attracted to someone who makes us feel “safe”. I hear this word all the time, particularly from women. However, feeling “safe” should only be applied to someone’s temperament - not their looks.
Myth #1: “It’s what’s on the inside that counts”
In a long term sexual relationship, you need three things - sexual attraction, kindness, and security. No amount of great personality on the inside can compensate for an absence of physical health and fitness.
Myth #2: “Attraction grows over time”
Love, affection, and attachment grow over time. Attraction is instant and primal. There is a massive difference between whether the person is objectively attractive and whether you find them attractive. I have worked with scores of people who are in a relationship with very attractive partners and who still leave the relationship. It is irrelevant whether someone is objectively attractive, all that matters is: Do you personally find them really attractive?
Myth #3: “Beauty comes from within”
Beauty comes from two places: Inside and outside.
What happens if one enters into a long term relationship with someone because they’re a really great person and ignore the lack of sexual attraction?
What invariably happens, is that months or years down the track, you will find yourself looking over the garden fence because they’re a lovely person and it’s comfortable … heck, it may even be wonderful … but there’s no chemistry, there’s no desire…
I’m here to tell you the cold hard truth: You’ve entered into a long term relationship with… a good friend.
The take home message: Only enter into a long term relationship with someone who you cannot wait to make love to - someone who sets you on fire.
Chemistry doesn’t come later. It never comes later. If it was there and then it waned - that can be fixed, but attraction is primal. It’s either there. Or it’s not. And it has nothing to do with love or character or values.
What if it was there… and now it’s not?
The primary reason heterosexual couples come to therapy is because she’s not feminine enough and he’s not masculine enough. It gets camouflaged by clinical nomenclature: an “absence of intimacy”, and the “presence of conflict”.
I use the terms “masculinity” [men] and “femininity” [women] as descriptors of energy systems. They are not assigned based on our sex. Archetypally speaking, these terms actually have nothing to do with our genitalia, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Both males and females embody masculine and feminine energy, in varying degrees. In trying to be all things to all people, people of any gender or orientation can find themselves out of touch with the parts of themselves that are intrinsically and energetically sexual.
The truth is, there is not enough spaciousness in most of our lives for spontaneity and rhythm to be embodied and embedded within both the individuals and the relationship. If there is no rhythm, no life force, our spirit becomes depressed, and our erotic life evaporates. If we do not take time to savour pleasure, joy, and gratitude in our daily lives, we cannot expect to experience these things in our relationships or in our bedrooms.
The best thing you can do for your relationship is book a couple of sex and relationship coaching sessions to have some fun discussions about how to get the “spark” back.
Sex is a human right. You deserve to have a loving and fulfilling sex life with your partner!
For most people, a healthy sex life is essential for a functional long term relationship and supports the maintenance of the health of the individuals, the relationship, as well as fortifying against infidelity.
On the whole, when we enter into a long term relationship, we expect that our partner will continue to engage in sex with us - couples that start out having sex don't anticipate signing up for enforced celibacy.
What constitutes a healthy sex life will vary across individuals, couples, and age and stage of life, and this is where some couples may benefit from the support of a therapist to navigate these conversations and if needed, reorient each partners' energy towards a satisfying sexual connection.