I am often asked whether couples can maintain a strong sexual connection for decades. Research confirms Maintaining Sexual Desire in Long‑Term Relationships: A Systematic Review and Conceptual Model that they can. All couples who succeed at this share two things. I can tell you right away that it’s not the frequency of sex or wild variety in bed.
Inability to detach from each other does not guarantee that the couple will maintain a strong bond and satisfaction in their sexual life. It's just a manifestation of spontaneous desire. The illustrator of my book "Come as You Are" depicted it as a lightning strike to the genitals. That is, nothing foreshadowed it — and suddenly you wanted it!
But there is another, even more common type — responsive desire. If spontaneous desire arises in anticipation of pleasure, then responsive desire is a response to it.
Sexologist Christine Hyde told me that she explains this to her clients using a metaphor. Imagine a friend invited you to a party. Of course, you agree, because it’s your friend and a party! But as the day approaches, you start to hesitate. You’ll have to deal with traffic, find someone to watch the kids, get dressed… However, you still get dressed and go to the party. And what happens? You have a great time!
It’s the same with sex: the main thing is to come to the party. You lie in bed, feel your skin touching your partner’s skin, give your body time to "wake up" and remember: "Oh, right! I like this. I like this person." That is responsive desire, and it is the key to understanding desire in long-term relationships.
But let’s finally return to the two features of couples with a strong sexual bond.
First, their relationship is based on strong friendship and trust.
Psychologist Sue Johnson, author of Emotionally Focused Therapy, reduces trust to the question: is your partner willing to be there and be emotionally available for you? Emotional availability is the ability to not avoid difficult or unpleasant emotions. If you express your own feelings (be it love or disappointment) instead of hiding them and dismissing your partner's feelings, you are emotionally available.
Second, couples with strong relationships make time for sex because it is important to them.
There will always be children and work, relatives and friends who need attention, not to mention the desire to just watch a series or sleep. But people make a choice — to set all of that aside and dedicate time to rediscover the very feelings: "Oh, right! I like this. I like this person."
However, when I give the example of the party and say that you need to lie in bed and feel your skin touching your partner's skin, many clients flinch in fear. This happens very often — people who love each other start to fear sex.
Sexologists often suggest couples do an exercise: stand at a distance from each other that feels comfortable. The less interested partner usually steps back almost 5 meters. The main difficulty is that this distance between partners is not empty; it is crammed with all sorts of "You don’t listen to me!", "I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but your criticism doesn’t help!", "If you loved me, you would...", "You don’t support me!".
It can contain months or even years of hurt feelings and unexpressed emotions. In one book, they are metaphorically called sleeping hedgehogs that you nurse until you find a way to set them free.
The difference between couples who maintain a strong sexual connection and those who do not is not the absence of “hedgehogs.” They accumulate in any long-term relationship. It’s just that the former approach these hurt feelings, unspoken grievances, and dissatisfaction with kindness and compassion, in order to release them and find their way back to each other.
So, we need to think not "How do we sustain desire?" but "How do we find our way back to it?".
“Hedgehogs” are absolutely present for everyone, even for those who work in sexual education. For example, while working on the book "Come as You Are," I pondered sex around the clock. But I was so stressed that I had no desire to engage in it at all.
Then I spent several months traveling, talking about the book and female sexuality. And when I finally returned home and tried to "go to the party," I was so exhausted and overwhelmed that every attempt ended with me falling asleep in tears.
These months of isolation from each other created fear, loneliness, frustration — a whole truckload of "hedgehogs." It seemed as though my best friend, the person I love and admire, had drifted miles away from me.
The traits of couples with strong bonds really helped us: trust and prioritizing sex. We looked at what our relationship brings into our lives and at the "family of hedgehogs" I brought into the house, and decided it was worth it. We are ready to do whatever it takes to find our way back to each other.
Yes, we are not used to thinking about desire this way. And "making time for sex" may seem cold and forced. But I think there’s nothing more romantic than choosing your partner as a priority because your connection means so much to you. So, if you need a brief answer to the question of how to maintain desire in long-term relationships, here it is: look into the eyes of your beloved and make the decision together to seek the way back to each other.
