Sex & Intimacy in Marriage · Gurgaon & Online
When You Just Don't Want To Anymore: Losing Desire in a Marriage
One day you notice the wanting is gone. Not the love. Just the desire. If that's you, you are a long way from alone, and nowhere near as broken as you fear.
Quick answer: Losing sexual desire in a marriage is very common, especially for women, and it rarely means something is wrong with you. Low desire is usually the body's honest response to exhaustion, resentment, stress, health, or emotional distance, not a loss of love. In most cases it returns once the reasons behind it are understood and addressed, rather than forced.
A woman sits across from me and says, almost under her breath, that she loves her husband but can't remember the last time she actually wanted him. Then she waits for me to look surprised.
I never am. This is one of the most common things anyone tells me, and one of the most private. People carry it for years before they say it out loud, because somewhere along the line they decided it made them cold, or selfish, or a bad wife. It makes them none of those things.
Desire fading in a long marriage is ordinary. When it goes quiet, it usually isn't a sign that something is wrong with you. It's a sign that something in your body, your life, or your marriage is asking to be noticed.
A message, in other words. Not a malfunction.
Is it normal to lose interest in sex?
Yes. Far more normal than almost anyone believes, mostly because so few people ever say it aloud. The numbers are worth seeing, if only to feel less alone inside it.
Low desire, by the numbers
Sources: Shifren et al. (2008), Obstetrics & Gynecology (PRESIDE, 31,000+ US women); ISSWSH consensus; Worsley, Bell & Davis (2017), community sample of women aged 40–65. International data; low desire also affects men. Individual experiences vary.
Losing desire is a message, not a malfunction
Desire isn't a fixed setting you either have or have lost. It responds, honestly and often inconveniently, to everything else going on in you and around you. When it drops, it is usually reporting something true: that you are exhausted, that you feel more like staff than a partner, that there is an old hurt no one has dealt with, or that your body has changed in a way that needs looking at.
Which is why trying to force it rarely works, and often makes it worse. You can't discipline your way back to wanting. You listen to what the low desire is telling you, and you deal with that. The wanting tends to follow.
Maybe you were never going to want it first
Here is something that brings a great many women a quiet relief, because no one ever explained it to them.
There are two ways desire shows up. Some people feel it spontaneously, a wanting that arrives on its own, out of nowhere, before anything has happened. That's the version films and jokes are built on, so most of us assume it's the only real kind. It isn't. For a great many people, and for most women in long relationships, desire works the other way around. It's responsive. It arrives after closeness has already begun, once you feel warm and safe and genuinely wanted, not before.
So if you've been waiting to feel a spark before you'll go anywhere near intimacy, you may be waiting for something that was never going to arrive first. That isn't broken desire. It's desire that needs a door opened rather than a switch flicked. Understanding that one distinction changes how a lot of women see themselves, almost overnight.
Most of the women who tell me their desire is gone haven't lost the capacity for it. They've lost the conditions that let it show up.
What quietly takes desire away
When I sit with someone trying to understand where their wanting went, a few things come up again and again.
Your body
Desire is physical before it is anything else. Thyroid trouble, anaemia, hormonal shifts, diabetes, chronic pain, and depression all flatten it. So do a surprising number of everyday medications, including several antidepressants and some hormonal contraceptives. This is why a medical check matters, and I'll come back to it.
The sheer exhaustion of your life
You cannot want much of anything when you are running on empty, and a great many women are. Between earning, running a home, raising children, and managing everyone else's needs, there is often nothing left at the end of the day but the wish to sleep. That isn't a lack of attraction to your partner. It's a body with no reserves.
Resentment you may not have named
Desire and resentment can't easily share a bed. If you feel unseen, unhelped, taken for granted, or spoken to sharply, your body registers all of it, whatever your mind decides to overlook. Very often the fastest route back to wanting runs straight through a conversation about fairness that the two of you have been avoiding.
Who you've become to yourself
Somewhere in the years of being a wife, a mother, a daughter-in-law, many women stop feeling like a person who is desired, or who desires. Add the way we're taught to feel about our changing bodies, and desire has very little room left to breathe. Reconnecting with yourself as a whole person, rather than a stack of roles, is often quietly where it begins to return.
Worth a doctor's visit. Persistent low desire deserves a medical check, not because it's "all in your head," but because it often isn't. Thyroid problems, anaemia, hormonal changes, diabetes, depression, and several common medications can all lower desire quietly. Ruling out a physical cause is a sensible first step, and sometimes the whole answer.
Can you get it back?
In most cases, yes. Not by trying harder to want, which never works, but by changing the things that pushed the wanting out. Here is broadly how I work with someone on it.
- Stop treating it as a fault in you. As long as you believe you're broken, you'll fight yourself, and shame is the last thing desire grows in. The reframe comes first.
- Rule out the physical. A proper check for the medical causes above, before we assume the reasons are only emotional.
- Look honestly at the load and the hurt. What is draining you, and what has gone unspoken between you and your partner. This is usually where the real work sits.
- Open the door instead of waiting for the spark. If your desire is responsive, we build the closeness and safety it responds to, rather than waiting for a wanting that arrives on its own.
- Take obligation out of it. Nothing kills desire faster than duty. Some of the most useful early work is simply removing pressure, so that willingness has room to return on its own terms.
- Get help if it's stuck. When it won't shift, or when there's real hurt underneath, a few sessions with someone who does this work often move things that have been frozen for years.
"I assumed this was just what happened after children"
A woman in her early forties, two kids, a full-time job, and a husband she still loved and no longer wanted. She'd decided this was simply the deal now, the price of a busy life, and she'd stopped expecting anything else. She wasn't wrong that she was exhausted. She was wrong that it was permanent.
Most of our work had nothing to do with sex. It was about the load she was carrying almost alone, a resentment she'd never let herself say out loud, and a body she'd stopped inhabiting as her own. As those shifted, and as the pressure to perform came off, the wanting came back on its own quiet schedule. Not like it was at twenty-five. But real, and hers.
A composite drawn from common patterns in practice, not a real client; identifying details changed.
The particular weight Indian women carry
Low desire happens everywhere, to women and men both. But I'd be dishonest if I didn't name what I see so often in my own practice. A great many Indian women are exhausted in a way that is almost invisible, because the load they carry is treated as simply their job, as earner and homemaker and mother and daughter-in-law at once, with little help and less thanks. On top of that sits a culture where a woman's own desire was never something anyone asked about, and where sex can quietly become one more duty on a long list. Ask a depleted, unseen person to summon desire on demand, and of course it won't come. A good deal of the time, what a woman needs first is not a technique. It's rest, help, and the sense of being a person again, not a service.
If the wanting has gone quiet, it's worth understanding why
You can talk it through with me in confidence and without judgment, in Gurgaon or online. Sessions from ₹6,000. You're welcome to come on your own; your partner doesn't need to be there.
Request an appointmentRelated reading
Part of my guide to sex & intimacy in marriage.
Frequently asked questions
Is it normal to lose interest in sex in a marriage?
Yes, it's one of the most common experiences there is, and one of the least discussed. Desire naturally fades and returns across a long relationship, and low desire is the single most common sexual concern women report. If yours has gone quiet, you're in the majority, not the exception.
Why have I lost my sex drive?
Usually because something is draining it. Physical causes like thyroid issues, hormones, medication or depression; sheer exhaustion and an unequal load; unspoken resentment or feeling unseen; or a changed relationship with your own body. Low desire is nearly always a symptom of one of these rather than a fault in you, which is why understanding the cause matters more than forcing the feeling.
Does losing desire mean I don't love my husband?
No. Love and desire are related but separate. You can love someone deeply while desire has faded because you're depleted, resentful, unwell, or simply waiting for a spark that isn't how your desire works. Lost wanting is far more often a signal about your circumstances than a verdict on your marriage.
What is responsive desire?
It's desire that arrives after closeness begins, rather than before. Many people, and most women in long relationships, rarely feel spontaneous, out-of-nowhere desire; theirs switches on once they feel warm, safe and wanted. If you've been waiting to feel like it before allowing any closeness, responsive desire explains why the wanting never seems to come first, and why that's completely normal.
Can low libido be a medical problem?
Yes, often. Thyroid conditions, anaemia, hormonal changes, diabetes, depression and a range of common medications, including several antidepressants and some contraceptives, can all lower desire. A medical check is a sensible first step, because a physical cause is sometimes the whole story and is frequently treatable.
Will my desire ever come back?
In most cases, yes, though not usually by trying to force it. When the things that pushed it out are addressed, the exhaustion, the resentment, a medical cause, the pressure, desire tends to return in its own time. It may not look identical to the early years, but a real, willing desire is very recoverable.
Is it my duty to have sex even when I don't want to?
No. Nobody is ever obliged to have sex they don't want, and "duty sex" to keep the peace tends to make desire worse, because it ties intimacy to obligation. Willing closeness is the goal, and it usually returns faster once the pressure and the sense of duty are taken away, not added to.
Why has my desire faded since having children?
Very commonly because of exhaustion, hormonal shifts, a changed body and identity, and a load that grows heavier while help often doesn't. Many women assume this is simply permanent after children. It usually isn't. Once the depletion and the unequal weight are addressed, desire tends to find its way back.
Can counselling help me get my desire back?
Yes. A psychologist helps you understand what's actually behind the low desire, lift the self-blame, address the exhaustion and any unspoken hurt, and rebuild the closeness and safety that desire responds to. Many women are surprised how much shifts once they stop treating it as a flaw and start treating it as a signal.
Is low desire more common in women?
It's the most commonly reported sexual concern in women, yes, though men lose desire too and are even less likely to talk about it. For women it's often tied to load, hormones, and the way desire works responsively. Whoever it happens to, it's common and it's workable.
My husband feels rejected. What do I say to him?
It helps enormously for him to understand that your low desire isn't about him or a loss of love, but about exhaustion, health, or something that needs attention. Naming that out loud often eases his hurt and takes pressure off you both. If the conversation is hard to have alone, it's exactly the kind of thing counselling can help with.
Are sessions confidential, and can we meet online?
Yes to both. Sessions are strictly confidential, and I see women and couples in person in Gurugram and online across India and abroad. Many prefer the added privacy of meeting online for a conversation this personal.
How do I begin, and what does it cost?
Sessions start from ₹6,000. If you'd like to begin, request an appointment through the appointment page and my practice will take it from there.
This article is general information, not a substitute for individual professional or medical advice. Persistent low desire is worth raising with a doctor to rule out physical causes. If you or someone in your family is in immediate danger, please contact your local emergency services.