Keeping eroticism alive in long-term relationships is one of the most common challenges we humans choosing to partner with other humans face. Whether you choose the path of monogamy and face the challenges of keeping interest alive over the years with the same person night after night, year after year — or you choose the path of open relating and navigate the complexities of multiple relationships, bonds and dynamics at play — you’re going to meet inevitable challenges.
But it is important, more than many will realise, for quality relationship, general wellbeing and bonding. And the quality of intimacy matters greatly to our desire to continue this bonding.
For those of us determined not to dip into the resentful waters of sexless marriage or erotic mediocrity, or the dangerous waters of cheating and leaking sexual energy, we have to bring conscious effort, intentionality and artistry to this part of our life. While some people are content to ‘close up shop’ and let this part of their lives dwindle, for most people who have learned to love the erotic realms and who they are as an erotic being, this is not an option.
Sexual intimacy strengthens bonds in a variety of ways: on a neurohormonal level — through oxytocin release and an interplay of hormones including dopamine, vasopressin, and testosterone — and on a subtle-body level for those who are open to or working with the energetic realms. It provides co-regulation and nervous system attunement so we can soothe and deeply feel one another. It acts not just as a playground for pleasure and feeling good but as a way to re-calibrate and connect beyond the mind. It brings our bodies, emotions and nervous systems into resonance. It also opens us into non-ordinary states — where typical prefrontal self-monitoring quiets, ego defenses soften, and deeper subconscious shifts become possible so we can feel safe, seen and beyond the self. When we’re both good lovers, we are each offering our presence, energy and time to our partner’s wellbeing, which creates a healthy sense of reciprocity and naturally promotes gratitude and good feelings towards each other. It also invites in play, which breaks patterns and opens new pathways of possibility, novelty and creative expression which can keep us engaged over the years.
Sexual intimacy is important on many levels for high quality connection between people — and this doesn’t need to be penis-in-vagina to happen, but body-to-body contact is quite essential, as so much of this medicine is transmitted through touch itself. I imagine many people do not quite understand the importance of this part of ourselves for quality relationships, and see sex as more of a ‘nice to have’ than something foundational to a healthy relationship, but when this area of a relationship is shaky it often can be the thing that breaks the entire relationship, whether we realise it or not.
(And this is why there is a danger in open relationships to only outsourcing that eroticism to others, if you rely on other sexual connections for the spark and let it die with your nesting/long term partner, it’s inevitable you’ll bond more with the others and feel more and more insecurity and tension in the sexless relationship).
I notice with my husband, when we have gone more than a week without some form of erotic intimacy, we start getting out of sync. We ‘miss’ each other more in conversations (miscommunication, misunderstanding). Tension slowly starts to build, we can get a little more snappy with each other, and a little more insecure in our connection. It’s subtle at first but the longer we go without connecting, the more obvious it becomes. We start acting more like family members than lovers, the dynamic feels flat and we may start feeling more anxious or even depressed as the days go by. If this goes on longer, the quality of our connection starts to diminish and the more psychic/energetic connection weakens.
When we are more regularly sharing eroticism (like during our 30 days of making love challenge!) then there is significantly less tension. Quality of life increases, we both feel more content within ourselves and more harmonious together.
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All of this correlates with studies on the love and bonding hormones.
Oxytocin: Often referred to as the “love hormone” or “cuddle hormone.” It plays a crucial role in social bonding, trust, empathy, and sexual reproduction. For women, it plays an important role in our hormonal cycle as it helps promote the release of estrogen during ovulation and plays a crucial role in counteracting the effects of cortisol by reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, and improving mood by reducing anxiety and depression.
During orgasm, there’s a significant release of oxytocin in both men and women. It promotes feelings of closeness, attachment, and intimacy.
It can reduce anxiety and increase feelings of security in relationships. This hormone tends to last between a few hours and a few days, giving that sense of gooey sweetness and connection, the post-orgasmic afterglow. It does also appear to accumulate when there are ongoing positive interactions.Vasopressin: Similar to oxytocin, vasopressin is a neuropeptide that influences social behavior, pair bonding, and aggression. It’s particularly linked to long-term commitment, attachment and protective behaviors. Like oxytocin, we get a big burst during orgasm and then its effects can contribute to feelings of commitment and connection that extend beyond the immediate encounter, potentially influencing behavior for days.
Dopamine: This neurotransmitter is central to the brain’s reward system. It’s released during pleasurable activities, including sex, and is associated with motivation, pleasure, and addiction. This is a short lived booster but can help us remember that sex is good and fun, and to want to do it again.
Endorphins: These are the body’s natural painkillers and mood elevators. They are released during exercise, pain, and sexual activity. This helps us have that stress-relief feeling and short term high.
Testosterone: Both men and women respond to flirting and ‘the chase’ with a boost of testosterone, but it also increases in cuddling too. The testosterone boost from flirting appears to be primarily triggered by the mating effort signal — novelty, pursuit, competition, being chosen.
This usually declines in long term relationships which can have negative effects both on the passion in relationship as well as consequences for mens health over the long term.
One of the easiest known ‘fixes’ here is to allow flirting outside the relationship (for men; just 5 minutes around an attractive new woman can create a significant boost, so strippers and sexy waitresses might not be just ‘entertainment’ but doing a public health service for men ;) ) but ideally we are focusing on bringing flirtatious, playful, pursuit-oriented energy within the relationship, which is likely to replicate enough of that signal to produce a hormonal response and keep that spark alive.
In a study Archives of Sexual Behavior (Yang et al., 2015) they found that having sex once a week was associated with significantly higher levels of well-being and relationship satisfaction compared to having sex less than once a week. However, increasing frequency above once a week didn’t show a significant additional benefits. Based on this, most researchers and clinicians working in this space suggest that somewhere around 1–2 weeks is where many couples begin to notice a subtle drift — even if they don’t consciously realise the tension is because of a lack of sex. They may blame work or whatever they’re bickering about without realising the lack of erotic intimacy is playing a part in the tension. Beyond about 2–3 weeks, couples in otherwise healthy relationships often report increased emotional distance, irritability, and a paradoxical difficulty initiating reconnection.
So based on this, you could say that having sex or physical intimacy of some sort at least once every 2 weeks could be defined as a need (if we define need as something that affects our wellbeing and life and without it creates problems, but of course people survive perfectly fine without sex over long periods of time and don’t actually die even if they might not be thriving) and more than once a week is a matter of desire or preference. I would say based anecdotally on the relationships I observe and have been part of, neurodiversity can play into the frequency of desire, with ADHD humans usually having more sexual desire based on dopamine drive and stress-relief benefits.
Of course, every relationship and human is different so there can not be a perfect golden rule for how often is ‘right’. For people who have serious tension around sex (whether because of trauma, lack of trust or having too much sex they don’t want for too long) then once a week might feel overwhelming. At the same time, in relationships where intimacy is rare, relationship satisfaction is also lower as a result. This is why working through sexual traumas and working on creating high quality sexual connection is really important and not just a luxury.
One of the biggest drivers of sexless relationships is having way too much unsatisfying sex for way too long. We don’t need every erotic encounter to be mind-blowing, but consistently having sex that is painful, one-sided, unsatisfying or passionless is going to create a negative association with sex that will naturally cause the person to opt-out of it.
Sex uses a lot of energy, so without the ‘reward’ of the pleasurable neurotransmitters released in good sex, it’s understandable someone won’t want to keep doing it. Physical closeness can be delicious or disinteresting to a person depending on their arousal levels. The feeling of sweat, the smells of the body, the sounds and fluids — the enjoyment of (or disgust at) this is strongly related to the brain state you enter in erotic encounters and how ‘in the moment’ you are. If we’re deeply surrendered, our prefrontal cortex is going offline and our primal instincts are coming online, then our usual aversions and hesitations should ideally soften. If we’re not cutting through the habitual mind, then we may still be stuck in the more controlling and analyzing part of the mind where we’re less connected to pleasure and present moment flow.
Good quality eroticism will bring us into an altered state of consciousness where our habitual mind and patterns soften and we are accessing more pleasure, more connection and more flow with our partner. It’s a trance state, where the edges of you and me blur and something bigger than us takes over. Most of us never learned how to go to this place, it’s definitely not shown in porn where the external performance is prioritised over the felt sense experience.
There are however practices that can reliably and consistently allow us to go there. This is what Sacred Sexuality offers us.
There is a collective story that women loose interest in sex, they ‘have a headache’ and don’t want to do it… the reality is these women usually have had unsatisfying sex that hasn’t ‘scratched their itch’ and there is little motivation to continue. Women who are sexually satisfied and have activated their erotic potential usually want more sex than men. If you notice you’re complaining that your partner doesn’t want to have sex with you, the first question to ask is how are you planning to make sex so good for them that they’ll be begging you for it? That might involve upskilling in sexual technique, helping them heal from sexual trauma and create enough safety to feel more pleasure or collaborating deeply with them to support their erotic fulfillment — and not be a conversation bargaining ‘I do this so you do that’ or guilting and shaming your partner for not wanting to sleep with you.
When you approach the lack of sexual intimacy in relationship from a genuine desire for your partner to be erotically fully expressed and satisfied, without shaming them or subtly making them feel broken or not enough for how they currently experience their sexuality, then real deeper work can begin. This can be a long process, it can take years in some cases — but if we can see this as an adventure, as a journey of self and romantic actualization and playful exploration together, then it can keep desire alive and connection strong for many more years to come.
Because hey, if we’re already perfectly compatible and deeply satisfied from the get-go, where is the growth in that relationship? I know through dozens of private conversations that usually the most immediate sexual chemistry makes for an intense initiation relationship, but rarely ends up being the life-long partnership that people crave. Usually, the person you’re most compatible with long-term will be a sexual dynamic that will need to be nurtured, grown into and supported over the years (Sounds a bit unfair huh? But I can tell you even the most hot sexual dynamics that feel like a drug can burn out and have their issues after some years, I’ve been there!)
To work with this we need both partners to choose to step into this, to work on their ‘stuff’, to learn new skills, to prioritise connection and intimacy, to be open to their partner and open to their own pleasure. The partner with less sexual desire holds most of the power here — the ability to shut off the connection and control the amount of intimacy that occurs, which can be effecting the mental health of the other partner. If they remain closed and unwilling to connect, it is inevitable that resentment will build. This isn’t to say they should be forced to have sex or manipulated into it, but that we can get really curious why they wouldn’t want to be connecting, what those blocks to intimacy are and how they can learn to enjoy and desire connection more, because there is always something under the surface when desire subsides, and it’s a worthwhile exploration to go on.
The simplest way to ensure our needs are getting met in this regard is to plan a date night per week which is reserved for intimacy, and to not force what has to happen on that date but to come to it with the intention of connecting in whatever way is available. This might be 15 minutes of deep cuddling at a minimum (not just watching TV and cuddling but fully focused on each other, breathing together, feeling your bodies, eyegazing and kissing ideally for deeper release of oxytocin) or perhaps exploring new pleasure practices, learning new skills, offering each other pleasure and learning what you like and what gets you both going.
For this to work, the person who has least desire must be willing to step in and see what they are available for. It’s a simple question that can go a long way… instead of a full stop NO, the question is ‘Where is the yes today?’. Maybe their yes is receiving a massage, maybe they want to play-fight or dance. Maybe it progresses to more, maybe not. But as the lower-desire partner holds the power here, and the other partner is more open and available to connect in this way, the person with lower desire can start to explore what it will take for them to ‘get in the mood’ and find their yes, no matter how small. Over time this will accumulate to more pleasure and joy for both people when we learn what really works for us and show up for ourselves and each other in connection together.
Relationships are complex. Sexuality is sensitive grounds. We can’t always figure it all out alone.
I’m a trained and certified integrative sex, love and relationship coach with over 7 years professional experience supporting couples. I bring together somatic, therapeutic coaching methodologies with sacred sexuality and tantric practice, to support couples to work through these challenging dynamics and to explore their erotic potential together.
I can see the dynamics playing out that you may not even notice, and offer tools that work time and time again to cultivate desire, to heal relational woundings and to experience erotic connection beyond what you may have experienced before.
And the container creates the accountability to show up and practice together, no matter how busy you get. Even just 90 minutes bi-weekly dedicated to your intimate connection will make a difference.
Read more about my Liberated Relationship Coaching here and schedule a call if you’re interested to work together.
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