If your mind has ever wandered around in those thoughts, you are not alone. Husbands and wives experiencing sexless marriages often feel an overwhelming sense of isolation, wondering if they are the only ones that find themselves in this type of situation. Both spouses carry their own unique realities of hurt and heaviness after chronic experiences of misunderstanding, rejection, and exasperation.
The Quest for Intimacy in a Sexless Marriage
Navigating the impact of sexual disconnection can be daunting, and your hope may be diminishing. Movement toward healing and connection is possible, and might not start where couples expect.
Invite God into every aspect.
First and foremost, let the Lord into the pain, frustration, fear, and hopelessness. The Creator of sexual intimacy is not embarrassed by the realities of your sex life, your sense of helplessness, the story of your present and of your past, the chasm between you and your spouse, your relationship with your body and sex organs, or anything else. There’s nothing too big or chaotic for Him.
In John 10:10, we are reminded, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” The truth of the Gospel matters for every piece of who you are, including for full healing and life in who you are as a sexual being.
Healing Together: Overcoming the Disconnect
Realize this is not just about sex.
When couples find themselves in a sexual wilderness of disconnection, often one spouse’s primary goal becomes figuring out how to resume sexual intimacy. However, what is or is not happening with sexual intimacy is usually a symptom of deeper issues within an individual or the relationship.
Deep wounds may be present from unhealed injuries of past traumas. Emotional safety with one another might have been shattered by criticism, judgment, or demand. Pelvic pain or erectile complications may have brought on shame and anxiety, impacting one’s self-worth. Outside the bedroom, perhaps there is a drought with a sense of alliance in working as a team in finances, parenting, household tasks, or any of the other logistics of life together.
All these things and more impact our capacity to be “naked and unashamed” with ourselves physically, emotionally, mentally, and even spiritually, let alone with one another. Pursuing professional help and support from a counselor or a sex therapist to dig into these deeper layers is a wise and worthwhile investment.
The Emotional Tapestry of Sexless Marriages
Approach the “why” with curiosity, not judgment.
Curiosity about the “why” proves to be the best posture toward examining and understanding the sexual disconnection and all the layers underneath it. It encourages an openness and an opportunity to gather valuable information without igniting shame or unhelpful reactivity. Curiosity allows you to internally ask questions like, “I wonder what that’s about for me?” and “I wonder what it’s like to be my spouse?”
Judgment about the situation locks the “why” into extreme categories of conclusion that work against opportunities to heal and connect. Judgmental thinking merely fuels fear, breeds entitlement, and risks cultivating contempt. Replacing any judgment with curiosity is a healthy gift to give to yourself, as well as to your spouse.
Honor where you are; where your spouse is.
Honor is about holding someone or something in high respect and esteem. Whether you are the spouse holding back from sexual connection or the spouse pursuing physical intimacy, honor your experience and your spouse’s experience. To operate with honor is to recognize that both spouses’ experiences of the sexless marriage can have space to matter. “Both/and,” not “either/or.”
Curiosity in the honor brings further understanding of both myself and my spouse. Honor is beautifully expressed through empathy (“it matters to me what it’s like to be you”), compassion, kindness, and curiosity. Honor is also remembering that my spouse is God’s son or daughter, inviting accurate and grounding perspective on his or her intricate value amid the depth of our sexual disconnection.
Rediscovering Connection: Beyond the Physical
Embrace maturity and integrity.
During any experience of unfairness, people might find themselves in a range of reactions from complaining, pouting, accusing, raging, self-deprecating, self-abandoning, shutting down, or stonewalling along with countless others. Reactivity is a strategy to manage pain that is screaming or hiding. This reactivity is what hijacks one’s maturity as an adult.
These reactions are fueled by someone’s fear of not experiencing what he or she is deeply longing for. We are inherently designed to seek connection, safety, love, and deep mutual understanding. Those longings are good and healthy, yet the reactions sabotage movement toward experiencing them.
Spouses can get competitive with their pain in unmet longings with one another, so desperately wanting to be seen and validated. From that pain, approaches to try to change the other spouse can be tremendously damaging. Questions like, “who’s to blame” or “who’s right and who’s wrong,” offer a skewed illusion of direction toward a solution. Weaponizing Scripture passages, such as verses from 1 Corinthians 7, Ephesians 5, or others, in an attempt to convince or convict a spouse to shift behaviors or engagement often has the opposite effect, corroding vulnerability and encouraging further withdrawal or detachment.
Maturity involves responding, rather than reacting, to sexual disappointment when desires and longings are not met. To be a mature adult is to take responsibility for oneself, and to work to show up for both self and spouse with integrity, wholeness, and intentionality. Maturity brings curiosity, honor, and empathy and adjusts expectations and waits well as healing happens. It serves to cultivate a safety in the relationship. Maturity allows for hope, as well as grief.
Give yourself space to grieve.
Many of us entered marriage with a hope or even expectations of what the experiences of sexual intimacy would hold. Understandably, disappointment and that deep sense of unfairness tend to accompany the realities of a sexless marriage. Acknowledging and grieving those losses, whether individually or together, allows for movement toward healing. When a spouse has been able to examine their internal sorrow around the sexual disconnection, there is space and possibility for an openness toward the past, the present, and the future.
Invest in all realms of intimacy.
Intimacy is much more than just sex. Intimacy is a deep knowing of and being known by each other. It is shared experience in and alliance through the many layers of life. Develop relational intimacy through investment in your friendship with one another. Expand mental intimacy through partnership in schedule rhythms and those logistics of life and family. Deepen emotional intimacy by risking vulnerability in sharing with your spouse what you feel, what you fear, what you long for, what you’re celebrating, and what you’re grieving. Elevate spiritual intimacy by praying for one another individually as well as by praying together. Engage in nonsexual physical intimacy that encourages closeness and touch.
This is not the end of your story.
If you find yourself in a sexless marriage, there is a path to healing and reconnection. Hope Restored marriage intensives are here to help: www.hoperestored.com. To find a sex therapist near you who is certified by the American Board of Christian Sex Therapists, visit www.sexualwholeness.com.
Sarah Young is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Certified Sex Therapist. She serves as the Clinical Director for Hope Restored, Michigan. She and her husband, Lance, have been married since 2003 and have three children.
