How to Maintain Intimacy in a Long-Term Marriage: A Psychologist's Guide
By Dr. Prerna Kohli | Marriage Counsellor & Clinical Psychologist, Gurugram | Updated June 2026
The most common misconception about intimacy in long-term marriages is that its decline is natural and inevitable— that the passion and closeness of early love must necessarily give way to comfortable but uninspired companionship. This is not what the research shows. What the research shows is that intimacy declines when it is not actively maintained, and that couples who invest deliberately in their connection— across all its dimensions— sustain levels of closeness, satisfaction, and even passion that defy the popular narrative about long marriages.
The investment required is not dramatic. It is consistent. And it begins with understanding what intimacy in a long-term marriage actually means— which is considerably more than its popular reduction to physical or sexual connection.
Intimacy does not simply fade in long-term marriages— it gets neglected. The early period of a relationship generates intimacy automatically through novelty, pursuit, and the neurological activation of new attachment. As the relationship matures, those automatic drivers diminish and intentional investment must take their place. Couples who do not consciously invest in their connection find that the distance accumulates gradually and silently, until one day they look across the table and feel like strangers— not because they stopped loving each other, but because they stopped truly seeing each other.Dr. Prerna Kohli, PhD— Marriage Counsellor & Clinical Psychologist, in practice since 1993
The Four Dimensions of Intimacy— All of Which Need Attention
The popular understanding of intimacy reduces it primarily or exclusively to physical and sexual connection. This is a significant underestimation of what intimacy in a long-term marriage actually encompasses— and one of the reasons couples who are sexually active can still feel profoundly lonely with each other.
Clinically, I understand intimacy as having four distinct dimensions, each of which requires its own form of investment:
The experience of being genuinely known, seen, and understood by your partner— including in your fears, your vulnerabilities, and your inner world. Emotional intimacy requires honesty, active listening, and the safety to be imperfect. It is the foundation on which all other forms of intimacy rest.
Encompassing far more than sexual connection— touch, affection, physical proximity, and the small gestures of bodily care that signal ongoing desire and belonging. Non-sexual physical affection is often the first casualty of relational distance, and the first investment that produces noticeable returns.
The pleasure of engaging with each other's minds— sharing ideas, debating perspectives, being curious about what the other thinks and why. Couples who stop being genuinely curious about each other's inner intellectual life stop growing together and begin to feel that they have nothing new to say to each other.
The deepest layer— a shared sense of what life is for, what matters most, and how you want to navigate the world together. This dimension often surfaces most powerfully in crisis— illness, bereavement, major life transitions— but is sustained through the ongoing practice of sharing values, meaning, and the larger story of your shared life.
When couples describe feeling like they have "grown apart," they are almost always describing the erosion of at least two of these four dimensions. When couples describe deeply satisfying long-term marriages, they are almost always describing active investment in all four.
Why Intimacy Erodes in Long Marriages: The Specific Mechanisms
Understanding how intimacy erodes— not just that it does— helps couples identify where the leakage is happening before it becomes a flood.
The Transition from Romantic Partners to Functional Partners
The most common intimacy-eroding transition in long marriages is the gradual shift from relating as romantic partners to relating primarily as functional co-managers of a shared life— a household, a family, a set of financial obligations. Conversations that once ranged freely across each other's inner worlds narrow to logistics: who collects the children, what to do about the plumber, what to cook for the in-laws' visit. Over time, both partners lose the practice of genuine curiosity about each other, and begin to relate to a fixed, outdated version of who the other person was rather than who they are currently becoming.
Unresolved Conflict and Accumulated Resentment
Intimacy requires safety— the feeling that it is safe to be vulnerable, to be imperfect, to be known. When unresolved conflict or accumulated resentment is present in a marriage, that safety erodes. Partners protect themselves from further hurt by creating emotional distance. The withdrawal that results from this self-protection is often mistaken for a loss of love, when it is actually a response to a lack of safety. Addressing the underlying resentments— not suppressing them— is the prerequisite for intimacy's return.
The Parenting Displacement
The arrival of children produces a dramatic reordering of priorities, energy, and identity in most couples. The couple relationship— which was previously the central relational structure of adult life— is displaced from the centre by the demands of parenting. This is natural and, in the short term, appropriate. What is not appropriate is allowing this displacement to become permanent— allowing the couple relationship to remain on the periphery of family life indefinitely, reduced to a functional partnership in child-rearing rather than a living marriage.
Physical Distance That Becomes Habit
Physical intimacy is a skill that atrophies without practice. When physical affection and sexual connection decrease— for whatever reason— both partners adjust to the lower level as the new normal. The reduced frequency becomes the baseline; the baseline gradually reduces further. Many couples report that they stopped being physically affectionate not because of any specific decision but because it became easier not to be, and neither partner took the initiative to reverse the drift.
"They had been married for seventeen years when they came to see me. Both were highly accomplished— she a senior doctor, he a business owner— and both described the marriage as stable, respectful, and completely without intimacy. 'We are very good friends,' she said. 'We just don't feel like husband and wife anymore.' He agreed. There was no conflict, no bitterness, no history of betrayal. Just a gradual retreat from each other that had been happening for so long that neither could pinpoint when it had started."
"When I asked them the last time they had talked about something that genuinely mattered to them personally— not about the children, not about work— there was a long pause. He finally said: 'I don't think we've had a conversation like that in years. Maybe not since before the second child.' She nodded. 'I think I stopped sharing things because I didn't want to burden him. He was always so busy.' He looked at her: 'I didn't know you felt that way. I thought you preferred it that way.'"
"That exchange— the discovery that each had been protecting the other from precisely the connection both were starving for— was the beginning of everything. Within six weeks of intentional, structured reconnection, both reported feeling closer than they had in a decade. The intimacy had not been lost. It had been waiting, behind a wall of mutual consideration that neither had thought to dismantle."
Intimacy in Indian Marriages: The Cultural Barriers That Are Rarely Named
Why Intimacy Is Harder to Maintain— and to Discuss— in Indian Marriages
The joint family and the loss of private space. For couples in joint family households, or those with in-laws living nearby, the physical and psychological privacy that intimacy requires is genuinely scarce. Conversations cannot be had freely, physical affection cannot be expressed openly, and the couple's own emotional world is constantly subordinated to the management of a larger family system. Protecting couple space within this structure requires deliberate effort and, often, explicit negotiation with the family.
The taboo around naming needs. Indian cultural norms— particularly for women— strongly discourage the direct expression of emotional or physical needs within marriage. Telling a partner what you need emotionally or sexually is experienced by many as embarrassing, inappropriate, or selfish. The result is that unmet needs accumulate silently, producing the kind of unexpressed resentment that is one of intimacy's most reliable destroyers.
The child-centredness of Indian family life. Indian parenting culture is intensely child-focused— to a degree that frequently leaves the couple relationship starved of attention. The cultural expectation that good parents sacrifice everything for their children, combined with extended family support structures that reinforce this expectation, produces couples who have poured everything into their children and find themselves, when the children leave, with a partner they no longer know.
Physical intimacy and the absence of vocabulary. Discussing physical intimacy— including sexual satisfaction, frequency, and evolving needs— remains deeply taboo in most Indian couples. Many long-married couples have never had a direct, honest conversation about their sexual relationship. This absence of language produces a situation where significant dissatisfaction exists on one or both sides and cannot be addressed, because neither partner has the vocabulary or the cultural permission to name it.
In Indian marriages, the loss of intimacy is frequently mistaken for the natural order of things— the idea that romance is for young couples and companionship is for long ones, and that expecting more than comfortable co-existence after twenty years is somehow unrealistic or even unseemly. I want to challenge that directly. The research does not support it. The clinical evidence does not support it. Long-term intimacy is not a Western fantasy. It is a human possibility— one that requires investment, and one that is available to every couple willing to make that investment deliberately.Dr. Prerna Kohli, PhD— Marriage Counsellor & Clinical Psychologist, in practice since 1993
How to Maintain— and Rebuild— Intimacy: Eight Evidence-Based Strategies
The following strategies are drawn from over three decades of clinical practice and from the research on long-term relationship satisfaction. They address all four dimensions of intimacy and are specifically contextualised for the realities of Indian married life.
The single most effective and most consistently supported intervention in the research. Undivided, undistracted time together— phones away, no logistics— is the primary vehicle through which all other forms of intimacy are maintained. Without it, everything else is harder. With it, many things begin to repair themselves naturally.
Gottman's concept: actively and regularly updating your knowledge of your partner's current inner world— their current worries, hopes, pleasures, and fears. Ask questions you do not already know the answers to. Be genuinely curious about who your partner is becoming, not just who they were when you met. This is the primary engine of emotional intimacy.
Touch— holding hands, a hand on the shoulder, sitting close, a meaningful hug— releases oxytocin and signals ongoing desire and belonging. For many couples who have drifted into physical distance, restoring non-sexual affection is both more accessible and more immediately connecting than restoring sexual intimacy. It is the right starting point.
Intimacy erodes most reliably in the space of things left unsaid— unvoiced needs, unexpressed disappointments, deferred difficult conversations. Identifying and having one of these conversations— even imperfectly— typically produces more connection than weeks of surface-level pleasantness.
Novelty activates the brain's dopamine reward system and produces the neurological conditions of increased attention and pleasure that characterise early romantic connection. Deliberately seeking new experiences together— new places, new activities, new challenges— reactivates this system in the established relationship context.
Gottman's research shows that a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions is the threshold for relationship stability. Many long-married couples stop expressing appreciation because they assume the other person knows. The assumption is often wrong— and the absence of explicit appreciation is experienced as indifference. Say what you value, out loud, regularly.
Intimacy requires two full people. Partners who maintain their own interests, friendships, and sense of self bring more to the relationship than those who have subsumed themselves entirely into the couple. Individual flourishing feeds the relationship rather than threatening it— the person who continues to grow brings new material to the shared conversation.
Accumulated resentment is the most effective intimacy killer in long-term marriages. It produces a negative interpretive filter through which every interaction is read as confirming the existing grievance. Addressing resentments— through direct conversation or with the support of a therapist— before they reach this level is one of the most important forms of relationship maintenance available.
The couples who sustain intimacy across decades are not those who never lose it. They are those who notice when it begins to recede— and who respond to that noticing with action rather than resignation. The action does not need to be dramatic. It needs to be consistent. A weekly conversation that goes somewhere real. A daily gesture of physical affection. An occasional evening that belongs only to the two of them. These are small things. Their accumulated effect, over months and years, is not small at all.Dr. Prerna Kohli, PhD— Marriage Counsellor & Clinical Psychologist, in practice since 1993
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does intimacy fade in long-term marriages?
As Dr. Prerna Kohli explains: "Intimacy does not simply fade in long-term marriages— it gets neglected. The early period of a relationship generates intimacy automatically through novelty, pursuit, and the neurological activation of new attachment. As the relationship matures, those automatic drivers diminish and intentional investment must take their place. Couples who do not consciously invest in their connection find that the distance accumulates gradually and silently, until one day they look across the table and feel like strangers— not because they stopped loving each other, but because they stopped truly seeing each other."
What are the different types of intimacy in a marriage?
Dr. Prerna Kohli identifies four dimensions of intimacy that all long-term marriages need to actively maintain: emotional intimacy (the experience of being genuinely known and understood); physical intimacy (encompassing non-sexual affection as much as sexual connection); intellectual intimacy (sharing ideas, interests and curiosity with each other); and existential or values-based intimacy (a shared understanding of what life is for and what matters most). When any of these four dimensions is consistently neglected, the relationship as a whole begins to feel thin.
How can a couple rebuild intimacy after years of distance?
Dr. Prerna Kohli recommends beginning with the simplest and most consistent intervention: dedicated, undistracted time together— weekly, without logistics discussions, with genuine curiosity about each other's current inner world. Rebuilding intimacy after sustained distance also requires honest naming of what has been lost and what each partner needs— most effectively done in the presence of a skilled therapist who can ensure both voices are heard without the conversation escalating. The most important thing is to start— however small the first step— rather than waiting for a more natural moment that rarely arrives on its own.
Is it normal for physical intimacy to decline in a long-term marriage?
Some natural evolution in the frequency and nature of physical intimacy over the course of a long marriage is normal and expected— driven by changes in hormones, health, stress, and life stage. What is not inevitable is the complete erosion of physical affection and sexual connection. Research consistently shows that couples who maintain physical intimacy— including non-sexual touch and deliberate sexual connection— report significantly higher relationship satisfaction. When physical intimacy has significantly declined, addressing the emotional dimensions of the relationship first— the safety, the communication, the accumulated resentments— is usually the most effective starting point.
How does the Indian cultural context affect intimacy in marriage?
Several India-specific factors work against the maintenance of intimacy: the joint family dynamic that eliminates private space and time; cultural norms that equate the expression of emotional and physical needs with selfishness or impropriety; the intense child-centredness of Indian family life, which deprioritises the couple relationship; and the near-total absence of cultural vocabulary for discussing sexual satisfaction within marriage. Dr. Prerna Kohli notes these are structural challenges, not personal failures— and that understanding them as such is the first step to addressing them deliberately.
Intimacy Is Not a State You Arrive At— It Is a Practice You Sustain
The most important shift in thinking about intimacy in a long-term marriage is this: from treating it as something that either exists or doesn't, to treating it as something that is actively maintained or gradually lost, depending on the daily and weekly choices both partners make.
A marriage of twenty or thirty years does not have less capacity for intimacy than a marriage of two. It has more— because the depth of shared history, the accumulated knowledge of each other, and the trust built through years of navigating life together provide a foundation for intimacy that new relationships simply cannot match. What is required is the willingness to invest in that foundation rather than take it for granted.
That willingness, expressed consistently in small deliberate acts— a genuine conversation, a gesture of physical affection, an evening that belongs to no one but the two of you— is what sustains intimacy across a lifetime.
Has Intimacy Faded in Your Marriage?
If you and your partner have drifted into distance— emotional, physical, or both— and the gap feels too wide to bridge alone, couples counselling provides the structured support to understand how it happened and how to find your way back. I offer confidential marriage counselling from my practice in Gurugram, with online sessions available across India and internationally.
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About the author — Dr. Prerna Kohli
Dr. Prerna Kohli is a clinical psychologist with over 30 years of practice, based in Gurugram. She holds a PhD from Aligarh Muslim University, where she was a four-time gold medalist, and received the “100 Women Achievers of India” award from the President of India in 2016. A TEDx speaker and published author, she works with individuals, couples, and families through her private practice — in-clinic in Gurugram and online worldwide — with a particular speciality in NRI mental health.