Four weeks in, a couple came back to me a little sheepish.
“You know that homework?”
They hadn’t been intimate with each other for 23 years. They were on the brink of divorce. “This is the first time we tenderly made love.”
Three months after they started, they went on a second honeymoon.
Six weeks earlier I had told them sex was off the table. They laughed at me. “That’s what we came to you for!” Here is why it worked.
Why does a marriage become sexless?
Most couples focus on the wrong thing. They focus on the sex.
What I see, over and over, is two people who love each other and have stopped having fun. Somewhere along the way they started living like roommates. They run the house, they run the diary, they are kind to each other. They just don’t touch. They don’t talk about it either.
The sex went quiet because the play went first.
What do couples get wrong when they try to fix it?
They have the one big talk
When they do talk about it, it becomes ONE big conversation. It always drags up a lot of old stuff. Blaming. Shaming. Who stopped reaching first, and when, and why.
It pulls them further apart. Then nobody wants to raise it again for another year.
They book a weekend away
Or they book a tantra session, or a weekend away, thinking that if only they had more time and a place away from it all, they would connect again.
They won’t.
A weekend away can be gorgeous. Then you come home on Sunday night and the way you live together is exactly where you left it.
How do you get physical intimacy back in a marriage?
With small, regular, structured touch and talk, at home, inside a container. This is the order I work in.
Take sex off the table
When you take sex off the table, you can reconnect again. Every touch stops being a question. Nobody is bracing for where it might lead, nobody is scanning for the tiger in the background… so the body can actually feel the hand that is on it.
Focus on what is going well
The 23-year couple had been so focused on what wasn’t working that it was all they were getting. So their first exercises were about what WAS going well between them, and everything they used to love about each other.
Touch dates, on a timer, with no sex
Structured physical and emotional touch dates, without any sex. They start short and grow as the body says yes. The timer is the container: you know when it starts and you know when it ends, so you can relax into the middle.
Communication prompts, in place of the big talk
One prompt at a time, using my Intimacy and Communication Cards and the Dyad. One of you speaks. The other only answers with one of three things: thank you, clarify that, or summarise that. Then you swap.
Try one today. Here’s a free card from the couples deck: “Tell me something I need to know about you and your body.” Take turns. Say thank you. Leave it there… no fixing, no debate.
Who do you work with?
Couples who still love each other and want each other back. Straight couples, same-sex couples and LGBTQ+ couples. I work with all of them.
Many of my couples are over 40. If there are erection changes, or menopause is changing things, we work it out together. Those things can get in the way of pleasure, so I ask about them from the start. A physician, or I, may suggest you test your hormones, for example with the DUTCH test, especially from 40 and above.
Who I won’t take on
- Couples where I notice abuse. I name it straight away.
- Couples where one person believes the other is the only one to blame.
Where can couples get help for a sexless marriage in the UK?
I work in person in East Sussex, in London at your home or a private room I book, and online with couples all over the world.
- A couples VIP day, £5,000. One full day of touch sessions for the two of you. Couples stay clothed, especially the first time.
- The Beginning, £8,997. Three months together, the same length of time the 23-year couple worked with me, with the Touch Map inside it.
Not sure which? Book a free Touch Audit call with me and we’ll work out where you are. You might also want to read what to do when couples therapy didn’t work, or what happens when every touch leads to sex.
Picture another year as two people who love each other and pass in the hallway. Or picture week four, and that sheepish little “you know that homework?”