Let me be straight with you, because you deserve that.
The fact that you typed those three words together tells me you’re sitting somewhere really painful right now. You’re probably asking yourself whether what you have is enough. Whether you’re allowed to want more. Whether staying or leaving makes you a good person or a bad one.
You keep asking if wanting more makes you a bad person.
Do you know you can get personalized answers to all your questions from the same wisdom that wrote this article, right now?
Ask anything about your own situation and get an answer immediately. Keep asking, think it through, work out what to do next.
No credit card required. Your first 10 messages are free.
Ask Figlet about marriage without physical intimacy.
I want to slow that down with you for a second.
Physical intimacy in a marriage is not a luxury. It’s not something you’re supposed to just outlast or negotiate away. Touch, desire, feeling wanted by your partner, that’s attachment language. That’s how many of us experience “I am safe with you. I matter to you. I am chosen by you.” When that goes away, the body keeps score. The heart keeps score. And after a while, two people who share a home, a bed, maybe children and finances, can start to feel like strangers. Or roommates. Or worse, like they’re performing a relationship rather than actually living one.
Here’s what I need you to sit with before you go anywhere near a decision about divorce.
Do you know WHY the physical intimacy stopped?
Because that question matters enormously. There’s a huge difference between a partner who has never prioritized your physical connection and a partner who is dealing with a medical issue, a trauma history, depression, or a fear of rejection so deep they’ve shut down. There’s a difference between a couple who has never talked about this honestly and a couple who has talked about it until they’re both exhausted and nothing has changed.
Have you two ever been able to talk about this without it becoming a fight or a shutdown?
In my experience, the absence of physical intimacy is almost never really about sex. It’s usually a symptom. Underneath it is usually one partner who stopped feeling safe being vulnerable, or one partner who never felt truly seen, or two people who got stuck in a cycle where one pursues and the other withdraws until they both just gave up.
What I want you to consider is whether you and your partner have ever actually gotten underneath the surface of this. Not “why won’t you have sex with me” but “I miss feeling close to you and I’m scared we’re losing each other.”
You keep asking if wanting more makes you a bad person.
Do you know you can get personalized answers to all your questions from the same wisdom that wrote this article, right now?
Ask anything about your own situation and get an answer immediately. Keep asking, think it through, work out what to do next.
No credit card required. Your first 10 messages are free.
Ask Figlet about marriage without physical intimacy.
I’m not going to tell you to stay or go.
That’s not my job and I wouldn’t disrespect you that way. What I will tell you is that I’ve sat with couples who looked completely dead in the water, where physical intimacy had been gone for years, and when they finally found a way to hear each other’s real pain underneath the distance, something cracked open. Not always. But sometimes.
And I’ve sat with people who needed permission to acknowledge that they had tried everything, that they had been honest and vulnerable and patient, and that the relationship had simply run its course.
The question worth answering before you decide anything is this: Has the real conversation actually happened yet? The scary one. The one where you stop talking about the problem and start talking about what the problem means to you emotionally.
If it hasn’t, that’s where I’d want to start. If it has, repeatedly, and nothing moves, that’s a different conversation. And you’re allowed to have that one too.
If any of this is landing close to home, you can talk it through right now with Figlet, Figs’ AI mini me, and get an answer about your own situation in seconds. Ask Figlet about marriage without physical intimacy..
You’re not wrong for wanting to feel close to your partner. That’s not asking too much. That’s asking for a real marriage.
Where Does Your Relationship Stand?
Which pattern is running your relationship?
Take the free three minute quiz and meet the creature behind the cycle you keep getting stuck in.
Take the free Empathi Wisdom Score assessment. In 5 minutes, get a personalized snapshot of your relationship patterns and what to do about them.
Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Feeling Disconnected from Spouse? What It Means and What to Do
Explore More Topics
Keep Reading
Every couple has a pattern they cannot see. Find yours.
In love, each of you is a Relentless or a Reluctant, which makes you one of three kinds of couple: Relentless and Reluctant, two Relentless, or two Reluctant. The free quiz reveals your creatures and the cycle they fall into together. About three minutes.
No signup needed to start.
The Relentless
The Reluctant
