Is it possible to spice up a sexless marriage?

In Woody Allen’s 1977 movie, Annie Hall, there is a famous split-screen therapy scene where Annie, played by Diane Keaton, and Alvy Singer, Allen’s character, are seeing therapists at the same time. Almost five decades later, the romantic comedy is often cited for its candid portrayal of love and relationships, and the often jarringly different perspectives of partners when it comes to intimacy.

Singer’s male therapist asks: “How often do you sleep together?”.

Hall’s female therapist is then heard asking: “Do you have sex often?”.

Singer responds: “Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week”.

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Hall: “Constantly. I’d say three times a week”.

Sex in relationships – or the lack of it – has always been a hotbed of discussion for couples. Why has their sex life dried up? How can they rekindle past passions? Is it possible to spice up a sexless marriage?

Social media is rife with sexually frustrated wives and husbands sharing personal stories of marriages devoid of intimacy and intercourse.

One of the most active forums is on the social media platform, Reddit, where there is a category that brands itself “a support group for ‘Redditors’ who are coping with a relationship that is seriously lacking in sexual intimacy”. That group, r/DeadBedroom, which has 465,000 members, offers a daily outpouring of laments about sexless relationships. Sex droughts span from months to decades for some couples, with posts divulging often raw and honest details, in the hope of receiving some good advice.

“This year our sex life has disappeared and I’m too tired to beg any more,” writes one woman who has been married for 19 years. “This weekend things came to a head. We were at a social event on Friday night and both had a few drinks. When we got home I foolishly initiated [sex] and was (politely) rejected (again). It wasn’t the right time but everything came out – hurt, rejection, infidelities, jealousy – we had a full on screaming match. The outcome is he moved into the spare room.”

Many women lose their confidence in their bodies. They may avoid sex as a result or experience low desire, which can cause further distress and shame

A husband of four years writes: “She is an amazing wife to me. Extremely supportive, loving, and an incredible mother to our child. But the last time we had sex was when our child was conceived 15 months ago. What do I do?”

Sex after marriage is not black and white, according to experts in the field, who provide therapy to lust-lost couples, especially married ones, where family, finances and work demands all serve to kill the mood.

Dr Natasha Langan, a senior clinical psychologist in Sligo, who specialises in online psychotherapy and psychosexual therapy for women and their partners, finds that intimacy issues are borne out of complex conditions, including stress, body changes after pregnancy, and the responsibilities of everyday life.

“From couples and individuals I work with, I hear about the busyness and stress of people’s lives and responsibilities and how [these aspects] impact on energy levels, desire, motivation to have sex, difficulties with planning and organisation around intimacy,” she says.

“In longer-term relationships, over the lifespan there will be different stressful periods such as post-partum, parenting in the early years and adolescence, in addition to caring responsibilities of parents as they get older. If couples live further away from their families there is an absence of extra childcare support, so taking some time for themselves, such as going out for a meal, is not possible, practically or financially.

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“When I meet individuals or couples for assessment they may present with what they think is the ‘problem’ but this may only be a symptom of other problems in the relationship, such as arguments, tension, or undiagnosed mental health difficulties. Working with women, I hear many stories of birth trauma, difficulties post-partum or difficulties adjusting to body-related changes around pregnancy and how this may lead to difficulties such as pain during sex. Many women lose their confidence in their bodies. They may avoid sex as a result or experience low desire, which can cause further distress and shame.”

David Kavanagh, a marriage therapist at Marriagetherapy.ie based in Templeogue, Dublin, says men suffer shame and body image issues too.

“Sometimes men have gained weight in the course of a pregnancy and they’ve stopped working out and they can be self-conscious because there’s this belief that men should look a particular way now, that didn’t exist 30 years ago,” he says.

“Back then, a bloke with a ‘Dad BOD’ or a bit rotund didn’t have an expectation that he should be sporting a six-pack or in the gym and super fit, as well as being a dad and working. That expectation simply wasn’t there. There’s pressure on both sexes now, which is very unpleasant because it just makes each partner narky and frustrated with the other when they realise that physically people’s bodies have changed and we don’t look the way we used to.”

Talk around marriages where intimacy has fizzled out is rarely a problem where both partners, acutely aware of their “dead bedroom”, find its absence poses no threat to a happy future together.

Issues arise, however, where one person in the marriage is preoccupied by its loss, wants to have sex and ends up feeling frustrated, rejected and abandoned.

“When people get married the enthusiasm for sex drops significantly, especially if they have children,” says Kavanagh. “That’s the biggest critical factor. If you have a child, sex for many couples is on the back burner and sometimes is not often regained as a priority in terms of the relationship, so things change significantly.

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“How sex is sold to us and its usefulness and value in a relationship is a pressure. If a man thinks he should be having sex with his partner even though she is looking after the children, or is more involved in the domestic world than he is, and she’s probably working full-time as well, and if his expectations are, ‘we should be having sex’ and she’s not willing or not able to have sex with him, then he is discontent. He is frustrated and annoyed and that will leak out potentially in different ways that make her feel bad about herself, and feel shamed and inadequate.”

However, it’s not as if Irish couples are bucking trends when it comes to an active sex life. Statistics here are slow to keep up with the pace of sexual activity among Irish couples over the years. One of the most comprehensive surveys is almost two decades old, a 2006 Irish Study of Sexual Health and Relationships, which is the largest representative study nationally, on sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviour undertaken in Ireland.

It found that half of married people have sex less than once a week and, overall, 58 per cent of people have sex less than once a week.

Americans aren’t much better. An Archives of Sexual Behaviour study in 2018, which surveyed 18,000 people, found that more than 15 per cent of married people hadn’t had sex in the previous year. What’s more, 13.5 per cent hadn’t been intimate with their spouse for five years. Another study, in 2019, published in the Journals of Gerontology, surveyed 1,900 married adults aged 57-85, and found that 40 per cent had not had sex the previous year.

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Eithne Bacuzzi, who has 20 years’ experience in relationship counselling, and works as a specialist in psychosexual therapy in Sandyford, Dublin, says there’s a perception that younger generations are more sexually active, which is not the case.

“There’s this myth that 30-somethings put everything out there but there’s an awful awkwardness around the actual intimacy of it,” she says.

“I think it’s all about mutuality and needs being met, but that requires huge communication and that’s the key. We’re all responsible for our own sexuality. A woman can’t say to a man that no sex is because of him. She must figure out what works for her and request it. But sometimes women don’t know what they want because they don’t understand their sexual cycle or how it works. I’m illustrating to them that nobody’s right or wrong and it’s hardly ever to do with libido, it’s to do with information about their own bodies and how it all works.”

Technology doesn’t help either, often dominating the one window of opportunity for sex in the evening, when the children are asleep, and couples are beside one another staring at a TV screen. Whether it’s an unrealistic portrayal of getting hot and sweaty between the sheets, or the new season of Bridgerton’s sensual sex scenes, viewing partners are often left wanting but slow to act.

“Sex naturally waxes and wanes in relationships but that is not spoken [about] or portrayed in media,” says Langan. “Good sex has many proven health benefits and can be a protective factor in relationships, but that does not relate to quantity of sex. The quality of the relationship also has an impact on sex and intimacy in the relationship so if a couple are having wider relationship difficulties then sexual difficulties may be a symptom of relationship difficulties rather than sexual problems.”

Kavanagh adds: “We’ve known for years that couples who have TVs in a bedroom have one-third less sex than couples that don’t. Those stats came out 20 years ago before we even had streaming services or a laptop in bed, or checking Facebook or Instagram before you go to sleep. Technology has an impact and an effect on the brain. If you’re lying in bed beside somebody and you are aroused and want to be intimate, but they are on social media, their brain waves are not in a conducive state to want to have sex with you. They will be like ‘What are you touching me for?’. That is destroying sex.

“And the reality is that most people have probably been on their phones anyway even as they watch television, so they are both disconnected from each other with nothing to talk about because you are so engrossed with what you are scrolling or reading. Then, trying to be sexual later is really challenging because you haven’t connected at all in the hours leading up to that point. That’s destroying sex within a relationship.”

It’s much more likely that men watch porn in secret unbeknown to their partner, or she has a passive awareness that he watches pornography but they don’t talk about it

It is easy to imagine the grass is greener for other couples, especially if the pairing are celebrities.

Yet, last year, there was almost a collective sigh of relief from couples when pop star Robbie Williams and his wife Ayda, married for 14 years this August, said sex after marriage is non-existent. “Everyone knows there is no sex after marriage,” he told the Sun newspaper, adding how he had stopped taking testosterone, and hence his low libido. “Sometimes now, Ayda will turn to me on the sofa and say, ‘We should do sex’, and I’m sitting there eating a tangerine and just sort of shrug.”

Bacuzzi said couples who seek her help have drifted apart because of the demands of life.

“A lot of the generation at the moment are what we call the ‘sandwich generation’ because parents are living longer and responsibilities are greater so they are caught in the middle. They have kids, relationships, parents and a very stressful job. So it’s a recipe for disaster actually.”

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But growing apart can have serious consequences, especially when one partner is craving intimacy, has a higher libido, and turns to porn to satisfy a desire. In 2021 Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, found that half of British adults watched porn during the pandemic lockdowns in 2020. Some 15 million people visited Pornhub during this time, audience numbers more usually associated with tuning into the BBC news.

“It’s much more likely that men watch porn in secret unbeknown to their partner, or she has a passive awareness that he watches pornography but they don’t talk about it and she just ignores the fact that she goes to bed at 10 and he comes up to bed at 11,” said Kavanagh. “She has a suspicion of what he is doing, but she doesn’t want to think about it.”

Langan says the important thing to remember is that sex stops after marriage for many different reasons, and it is in addressing those problems, whether life stresses or health issues, that partners can rekindle what they have lost in the bedroom.

“Over the lifespan of a relationship couples may face challenges around financial instability, fertility, parenting, caring for parents, work stress in addition to their own difficulties around mental health and physical health issues,” she says. “There can be external factors but also relational factors such as feeling disconnected from a partner, feeling taken for granted, loneliness and communication difficulties which can lead to avoidance of sexual intimacy. Addressing wider relationship difficulties can improve sexual intimacy. Adjustments of expectations, recognise peaks and troughs, open communication with your partner, being intimate in other ways, communicating. Foreplay doesn’t just happen in the bedroom.”

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Bacuzzi finds that setting boundaries for couples who have come to a sexual standstill often helps lift the lid on intimacy problems.

“I’ll give you a laugh. If I tell couples not to have sex for two or three weeks, and these might be couples who haven’t had sex in three years, they will come in the next week with a look on their faces and say ‘You’re going to kill us’ because they’ve actually gone and had sex,” she says. “It’s like a sweet shop for a kid. They say, ‘Oh we just got it out of the way, and don’t kill us because we’ve jumped across the programme’.” And then they go back and complete the rest of the programme and they feel like they’ve broken a spell, that they have cracked the problem. I say, “Is it like the elephant in the room?” and they say exactly, avoidance is the curse of bad relationships.”