Ideally, when we’re in or trying to build any relationship with someone else, we’re engaging in a lot of communication about how each of us feels and is feeling and about what each of us wants. That applies to sexual relationships, too. That should include talking about sex we’re engaging in or want to, and what we want our sexual lives to generally look like. Talking about sex openly, honestly, and often is not only how we put and keep consent into the picture, it’s how we find out what each of us wants and needs, how we’re all feeling, and what, if any, issues or problems may be cropping up for us. It’s also a big part of how we learn how to be sexual together in ways that are increasingly — rather than only being hot at the start and in a gradual cool-down ever after — satisfying, enriching and beneficial to everyone involved.
When that kind of communication never happened, isn’t a given, or breaks down — or when it isn’t actually open or honest, when it happens more and more infrequently, or when what we’re communicating just isn’t substantial — that all by itself often contributes to or can cause the dissolution of a sexual relationship, or a sexual relationship never actually becoming one. When people are trying to figure out why something that was so hot sexually at the start stopped being so, a lack of communication is often the answer.
Re-upping that communication — or having it for the first time — is usually the first and best thing you can do.
Communication may or may not fix what’s going on in the way one or both people may want, but that’s not what that communication is centrally for. Rather, communicating about how we’re feeling is something we do so we can know how each of us is feeling. If we don’t know what’s actually going on — what’s underneath the lack of sex — and how everyone feels, we can’t make our best choices about what to do.
It’s essential that everyone talking is truly honest, and everyone listening is actually and actively listening, not just listening for what they want to hear or for what identifies solutions, or reacting when something said is activating for them.
Some questions you might ask yourselves and each other in this kind of communication are:
- Is being sexual in general something I/you still want? If so, is being sexual with me/your partner something you still want?
- How is my/your relationship with my/your own sexuality overall? How about the sexual relationship I’m/you’re in?
- What, if any, parts or dynamics of the relationship outside sex might be playing a part in what’s going on sexually, like conflict about commitment or time spent together, feeling disconnected overall, or frequent arguments or fights?
- Are there other intimacy issues in my/our relationship, like less or no physical affection or emotional vulnerability?
- What, if any, external factors to the relationship are playing a part in what’s going on here (like, for example, stress from work or trying to get by, a recent loss, gender dysphoria, chronic pain or illness, having to sneak around because sex is forbidden, etc.?)?
- Have I/we learned more about what I want and don’t want more over time since we first decided this was a sexual relationship? If so, what did I/we learn?
- What do I/you really want when it comes to sex and a sexual relationship in my/your life right now? In what ways do I/you think those wants can and can’t be met in this relationship, or in this relationship at the moment?
What now?
That obviously depends a lot on what the issue at hand is, and if everyone in the relationship does or doesn’t want it to be a sexual one.
I think the least complicated, and often easiest to resolve, of these two situations is when a relationship that was supposed to be, or expected to be, sexual never became sexual.
In the event that that relationship you were trying to build just turned out to be a dud for one or both of you full-stop — where not only did it not become sexual, but you also didn’t wind up getting closer or connecting in other ways, like by becoming friends through emotional intimacy, just ending the relationship and parting ways, or reverting to only being acquaintances, is often the best solution.
In the course of a lifetime, a lot of people will come and go, and sometimes, we meet people and not that long thereafter, discover we just don’t really connect in any real way. When that happens, it’s usually best to just wish each other the best and send each other off to discover relationships where you do connect. It doesn’t have to be a big drama or a big deal, you can just acknowledge that you didn’t really connect, but you wish each other well and hope you have a great life and move on. It’s not anyone’s fault when this happens!
If one person feels there’s been a connection and another doesn’t, that’s obviously more complicated and harder to navigate. The person who doesn’t may even feel obligated to stick around because they don’t want to hurt the other person’s feelings. But real connections are mutual, not one-sided, and helping someone stay stuck on a thing that isn’t a real thing can keep you and them from finding a real thing. So again, honesty is often the best policy here, delivered with kindness and care. Depending on how the person who isn’t feeling a thing feels about it, it may be kindest to more gradually separate than to do it all at once.
If a sexual relationship didn’t develop, but some other kind of relationship did, or was already present, this can potentially be one of the easiest transitions of all.
You have the option of communicating with each other that a sexual relationship didn’t develop and doesn’t seem like it’s going to, but that, for instance, your friendship has developed or was already great, and you can both go back to having the kind of relationship that did work and has been able to grow if that’s something you all want. In fact, that conversation and that honesty alone will probably help grow whatever kind of connected relationship you are having. It also may be that putting an end to trying to make a relationship into something that it isn’t protects or saves the good relationship that can exist without sex in the picture!
If you do choose to stay in a relationship, like a platonic friendship, with someone where you tried to make it into something sexual and it didn’t happen, you may find you each need some kinds of transition time. That might be time and space apart for a little to shift to thinking of each other as something besides sexual partners, time to get used to one or more of you having new sexual partners, or even just time alone to feel your feelings about this change before you start living with it together.
Those feelings may involve grief. Like I said at the start, losing a sexual connection or the possibility of one is a real loss because sex and sexuality really matter to a lot of people and are places of real depth for many of us.
Losing the sexual part of a relationship, or even just the possibility of there being a sexual part of the relationship, is often still a loss, even if and when it turns out to be the best thing for our relationship together on the whole. It’s always important to give ourselves time to grieve a loss, and we may want to go through that grief alone, together or both.
Many people will think that being in a relationship that was once actively sexual but where the sex slows to a crawl or stops is the simplest and most limited situation to solve. It may not be.
If you’re anything like a lot of the people we work with in our direct services, you might think that there’s only one solution to that, and that’s to break up and stop being any part of each other’s lives altogether.
That is one option, and sometimes it’s a good one. In the event the sexual part of your relationship was the only real part of the relationship, or the only part anyone wanted, or if you just don’t feel like you can connect no matter how you try, that might be a sign that this isn’t going to work out. Splitting and going your separate ways might also be right if you’re just not good together anymore or in any respect — or it’s outright bad, like if the relationship is abusive, dysfunctional or otherwise unhealthy — even despite efforts to change it. Of course, if one or both of you just wants to part ways entirely for any reason, that’s also a complete valid reason for a hard and total split. Speaking of — while it’s great when people can come to an agreement about splitting, that won’t always happen. If one person wants to split and the other doesn’t, the person who doesn’t is simply going to need to defer to the person who does. It’s never okay to try and keep someone in a relationship they don’t want to be in anymore.
But that isn’t your only option.
Another option is to keep, create, or go back to a kind of relationship that does feel like a good fit to everyone, where you feel like you’re on the same page, and where you do actually connect or have stayed connected. Maybe you were great friends before your sexual relationship and want to try and get back to that platonic friendship. Maybe you share a friend group or larger community and only interacting in the group is the way to go. Maybe it just so happens that the best relationship for you has physical intimacy that’s not sexual, like cuddling as friends, without any expectation of sex. Again, relationships always change over time, and some of the work of sustaining them is often figuring out how to best flex to those changes together.
In the event that your sexual relationship was agreed upon or understood as exclusive, another option is to change that part of it by opening up the relationship so that one or both of you can seek out sexual partners where you do feel connected and everyone involved does want the same or similar things. It’s important to say that polyamory of any kind is rarely going to fix a sexual relationship, and often this kind of switch will work best for people who have a good relationship in other respects, including being strong — not lacking — in other forms of intimacy and communication.
That said, there are some situations in which opening up a relationship may be able to do some lifting when it comes to sex has stalled out or wasn’t ever present, like:
- it typically asks for much more, and much more honest communication than people in standard-issue monogamy tend to engage in: if and when people do engage in that communication, it can help illuminate or even help resolve the issues at hand
- some people feel sexually shut down or repressed when they are in monogamous relationships, especially those without a vibrant sex life: for those folks opening things up can be a help
- people with sexual desires that aren’t compatible with their current partner or partners, such as people who want to engage in BDSM who have been with people who aren’t into it, or people who want to explore a different gender dynamic with a partner than the one they have been in
- people who didn’t really agree or mean to agree to exclusivity in the first place, but didn’t realize that they had other options with a given partner
- and sometimes, whether or not it’s meant to do this, people can open a relationship up while transitioning out of their existing sexual relationship, whether that happens with or without intent.
One More Thing
There’s an unfortunately common idea out there that changing the nature of your relationship — like to a platonic friendship — or breaking up because of sex is shallow, or less valid than a change or breakup for any other reason. If you have that idea, I’d like to help disavow you of it.
The idea that breaking up because of sex is shallow comes from the idea that sex, period, is shallow. Unless the sex you have been having or the way you think about sex is shallow, sex and sexuality are often rich, vulnerable, and deep parts of us, our relationships — when they’re good, and we’re actually sexually connecting in a real way — and our lives, where we explore, express and share some of the most personal and private parts of ourselves.
Sex isn’t a need like food, water or shelter, but touch is, and sex and sexuality are frequently very important parts of people’s lives and selves. So, if and when we go without sex for a long time — or without the kinds of sex we actually want — in an ostensibly sexual relationship, or without engaging in sex in the ways that feel most wanted and most right for us, those can be big and deeply felt missing parts. Especially if we don’t have access to other forms of physical intimacy, whether with our partners or anyone else. If the sexual relationship we’re in also happens to be exclusive — so even if it stops actually being sexual, we can’t engage in sex with anyone else — it can effectively lock us out of a unique and important kind of intimacy we want to be part of with other people.
I think it’s fair to say that unless we’re saying that sex in a relationship isn’t important (a thing we’d never say here!), it’s not sound to suggest that ending a sexual relationship that isn’t beneficial to us — including because it isn’t or is barely sexual at all — is unimportant or invalid.
It also sometimes happens that the message that a breakup or relationship change because of sex isn’t okay is coming from people to whom sex is not, or isn’t yet, an important part of relationships for them. That’s okay, we are all different in what place, if any, sex and sexuality has in our lives, but if it’s important to you, to a partner, or both, then it’s important, even if others feel differently.
Breakups or other relationship changes because of sex or sexuality are as legitimate as breakups or changes because of things like people wanting to be married or have kids or not, too much distance, a lack of emotional connection, or feeling dissatisfied with any other part of the relationship.
