When One Partner Takes Sex Off the Table: The Truth Behind the Silence
- Lottie Passell-Syms
- Dec 14
- 4 min read
In every relationship, sex is more than a physical act. It is connection, affirmation, safety, validation, adventure, belonging, and a language all of its own.
So when sex quietly or suddenly disappears, the relationship starts speaking through tension, distance, and arguments instead.
November's Wednesday night live on the POC Podcast : Why She Stopped Wanting You (and how to fix it) opened this raw conversation.
This is the deeper layer beneath it what is actually happening when one partner removes sex from the relationship, and what it takes to repair the rupture.
Shutting Down Without Dialogue Is Not Neutral
Let’s say it plainly. When you stop engaging sexually and refuse to talk about it, you are placing your partner in forced celibacy.
That is not protecting yourself. That is not keeping the peace. That is not harmless.
It changes the entire emotional contract of the relationship. It removes choice. It creates loneliness and shame in the partner who is left out. And it leaves both people suffering in silence.
This is why the conversation matters.
When Sex Stops, It is Rarely About Sex
The partner who withdraws, our job as therapist is to find out why, for example:
* I do not feel safe
* I cannot find desire
* I am overwhelmed
* I am carrying too much
* I have lost myself inside this relationship
* I don’t want to engage
Sex becomes the canary in the coal mine. It is the first thing to collapse under unspoken resentment, emotional distance, or internal shutdown.
And here is the part couples forget Desire does not die. It relocates. Sometimes inside fantasy, sometimes into numbness, and sometimes into somewhere outside the relationship.
Desire is alive. It is simply not available within this dynamic.
Why One Partner Shuts Down
Here are the most common reasons sex is quietly removed from the relationship:
1. Emotional overload and mental load: They are not rejecting sex. They are trying to survive their own nervous system.
2. Unresolved hurt: Bodies close long before the mouth finds the courage to speak.
3. Feeling invisible: If someone feels unseen, unappreciated, or taken for granted, their erotic self retreats.
4. Anxiety and shame: Avoidance becomes safer than vulnerability.
5. Loss of self: When someone becomes a role rather than a person, eroticism evaporates.
The Other Partner: The Experience of Being Shut Out
The partner still wanting sex is not needy or demanding. They are grieving. They often feel:
* unwanted
* unattractive
* confused
* resentful
* ashamed for wanting sex
* terrified for the future
This partner becomes louder or more distant, not because they want sex at any cost, but because the relationship they once recognised has disappeared.
The Crucial Misunderstanding
Most couples fall into a painful loop:
* One shuts down to protect themselves
* The other seeks closeness
* The shutdown intensifies
* The tension rises
* Both feel misunderstood
Friendship intimacy and sex are the relationship contract.
When sex is silently removed, that contract is broken.
Reframing: Sex Was Not Taken, It Was Lost
Instead of seeing this as withholding, see it as:
* a sign of emotional depletion
* a nervous system that has slammed the brakes
* resentment that has been silently accumulating
* a relationship that needs a new emotional contract
This removes blame and opens the door to repair.
So How Do Couples Repair This
1. Start with curiosity, not accusation Ask: What does sex represent for you right now? What do you need to feel safe again?
2. Separate emotional closeness from sexual pressure: Rebuild tiny moments of connection without expecting sex to follow.
3. Re establish safety: Safety is not the absence of arguments. It is the presence of emotional respect and stability.
4. Reduce the mental load: Desire cannot breathe when one person is drowning.
5. Rebuild eroticism slowly: This might look like sensual touch, massage, warmth, conversations about fantasy, time away from parenting, or rediscovering individuality. Eroticism needs space, freedom, and oxygen.
If You Are the Partner Who Shut Down
Ask yourself:
* What am I protecting
* What feels unsafe
* Where did I lose my erotic self
* What do I need to feel desire again
* What am I avoiding saying out loud
Your body is talking. Listen to it. It is not betrayal. It is the beginning of coming home to yourself.
If You Are the Partner Still Wanting Sex
Your desire is not wrong.
Your longing is not embarrassing.
You are not too much.
But pressure will not create desire. Presence will.
Move from pursuit to understanding.
The Real Question
Is sex off the table because desire has died OR because the relationship is not creating the conditions for desire to thrive.
Most couples discover it is the second.
Final Thought: Desire Needs Two People Who Are Alive Inside Themselves
Desire can come back. Passion can come back. Sex can return. But not under silence, pressure, or shutdown. It returns when:
* individuals reclaim themselves
* resentment is named
* emotional safety is rebuilt
* curiosity comes back
* the space between is tended to
The erotic isn’t gone. It hasn’t vanished both of you have needs The only way to understand why it’s fallen out of reach is through a real conversation.
You’ve discussed everything together over the years: What to eat. Where to live. Which jobs to pursue. How to co-parent. You function as a partnership in every way except here.
Removing sex from the relationship without dialogue, context, or awareness of the potential heartbreak it creates has opened a rupture. Within that rupture sits resentment, anger and, eventually, contempt.
It’s not the absence of sex alone that wounds a couple, it’s the silence around it.
Lottie
The Relationship Specialist
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