Why We Stop Having Sex—and How to Start Again

Most of us, though, aren’t on hardcore meds or dealing with major life changes. Most of us have watched sex slowly take a backseat to other, more pressing and practical matters. But there are ways to start having a good sex life again.

Desire is based on novelty, and if you’re in a long-term relationship, being with the same person can get boring. A way to seem less familiar to each other is to do things together that might seem fun and exciting—i.e., not the usual routine or the usual restaurant, says researcher Bianca Acevedo, Ph.D., who has done several studies on long-term romantic love. Focus on what the two of you used to do that was fun, back when you were having crazy sex, whether that’s going to concerts or having formal dates.

“Try to woo each other,” Acevedo says. “The woman might focus on getting dressed up and looking beautiful, he might buy her flowers and take her out to eat to special places. That kind of thing can help to ignite some of those feelings that they had in the beginning of the relationship.”

If date night seems corny to you, you might try this: Become interesting to your partner by doing something new on your own (like joining a boxing gym or taking mixology classes) and then coming back and talking about it with her later. Same goes for her. That way, you won’t see each other the same way you used to, and that can be exciting, Acevedo says.

If your wife or girlfriend still just doesn’t want to have sex, keep in mind that even though intercourse is awesome for you, it might only be so-so for her. Instead of having only two sex “speeds”—affectionate, clothes-on touching and intercourse—incorporate way more foreplay and afterplay (like kissing, caressing, and whispering to each other) into a sexual routine, says McCarthy.

“For a woman who has been in a relationship for two years or longer, or works, she often will begin a sexual encounter at neutral, but the man begins already turned on,” he says. “When they engage in touching, and there’s an emotional openness between the two of them, she begins to feel receptive and responsive, and then she becomes turned on.”

You don’t have to set an egg timer, but one handy formula for turning her on is this: “Healthy couples will spend anywhere from 10 minutes to 20 minutes in playful, seductive, pleasuring kind of touching. Intercourse for those couples is between two and seven minutes, then they’ll spend two to five minutes in afterplay,” McCarthy says.

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Another big factor for women is weight and how they perceive themselves. A British study recently said that more than half of women avoid sex because they feel fat. If you suspect that that’s the case for your partner, use positive reinforcement, and she’ll be more likely to give a repeat performance.

“Women who have put on weight feel very desexualized, like they’re not allowed to have sexual desires,” Regan says. “A man who knows that is better prepared to go into sexual interactions with his partner. Tell her that you love her curves.”

Even if you’ve used all of the tips and tricks in the book, there’s one key aspect to rekindling desire, and it’s probably the toughest thing for any couple to do—especially a couple that hasn’t been having much sex lately: Talk about it. If you’re like most guys, back when you first got together, you probably had an endless supply of reliable erections, and the onus was on her to either respond or demur. Now that things have leveled out, try to approach intimacy from the same angle: two people who want to make sex work.

“Make the transition from being a romantic-love/passionate-sex couple to figuring out what your couple sexual style is. Be a sexual team,” McCarthy says. “So many couples never have that conversation. They think it should be easy and automatic, and that’s not true. Refigure out how you guys are as an ongoing sexual couple rather than who you were as a beginning sexual couple.”

—Photo by reegone/Flickr