You used to want your partner. Early on, desire was easy. It showed up on its own, without effort. Now it rarely shows up at all, and you’ve started to wonder if something is wrong with you.

Maybe you’ve typed “why don’t I want sex anymore” into a search bar and come away more confused than when you started. I want to offer you a different way to look at low sexual desire in long-term relationships. After decades of working with women and couples on this, I almost always find a part of the person doing its job, keeping something at bay. In this article I’ll walk you through how those parts shut desire down, and what happened when one woman I’m working with found her sexual self again.

Why Low Sexual Desire in Long-Term Relationships Is Often a Parts Problem

Low sexual desire in a long-term relationship is often less about sex drive and more about a protective part of you that has shut wanting down to keep you away from something that feels unsafe.

That idea comes from Internal Family Systems, or IFS, one of the approaches I use with individuals and couples. I’ve found it to be very accurate and very healing. IFS looks at what’s happening inside your system. We all have protective parts and wounded parts, and we all have a Self, with a capital S, that already carries a lot of wonderful qualities. We have to learn how to access it.

There are two kinds of protectors. A manager keeps the wounded or exiled part at bay so we can live our lives and look like we have our act together. A firefighter protects us by distracting us or shutting us down, getting us away from a feeling that’s getting a little too close.

When I sit with women who’ve lost desire, I almost always find one of these protectors at work. Wanting isn’t gone. It’s been locked away by a protector that thought it was doing you a favor.

I wrote The Long Hot Marriage many years ago, and I’ve worked with lack of passion for decades. What the parts view adds is this. It takes the shame out of the conversation. There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s a part of you doing its best with the options it had.

When a Manager Part Turns You Into the Caretaker

Sometimes the protector is a manager that took over the domestic role so completely that your sexual self went into exile.

Being a mother and a caretaker can become the whole identity. That part of you that loved being sexual didn’t disappear. It got buried under a protector that said, “This is who we are now.” It said that because being the caretaker felt safer, or more acceptable, or because nobody ever made room for both.

I see this a lot with women who grew up taking care of everyone around them. A child who learns early that her needs come last becomes very good at reading and regulating other people. That skill gets her through a hard childhood. Years later, once she has children of her own, the same pattern kicks right back in. She regulates the kids, she regulates her partner, and she neglects herself.

Here’s what most people miss. Desire is one of your needs. If a part of you has decided your needs are dangerous or selfish, your sexuality goes into exile right along with everything else you want. I call the healthy version of wanting things for yourself being healthily selfish, and a strong manager part will sabotage it.

If this sounds like you, notice how much of your day belongs to other people. Notice whether there’s any room left that belongs to you. That gap is often where desire went.

When a Firefighter Part Shuts Desire Down

Sometimes the protector isn’t a manager at all. It’s a firefighter, a part that shuts desire down the moment it starts to surface.

It does that because desire means vulnerability, and vulnerability in this relationship hasn’t felt safe for some time. Maybe there’s unspoken resentment toward your partner. Maybe there’s an old wound from something your partner said years ago that was never fully repaired. Your body remembers, even when your mind has moved on.

This is why I tell couples that low desire is rarely about hormones alone. I’ll always look at the physical side, of course. In my experience, though, hormones are rarely the whole story, and sometimes they aren’t part of it at all. What matters more is which parts are running the show and what they’re protecting.

Underneath the firefighter there is often an exile. That’s a young part that learned early that her wants didn’t matter and that her pleasure wasn’t important. She learned that being desired was acceptable, and that actively wanting was too much and too dangerous. A firefighter will work very hard to keep you from feeling what that little girl felt.

Forcing desire doesn’t work with a firefighter. Shaming it doesn’t work either. Both make the protector work harder. What works is getting curious. Ask the part what it’s afraid of. Ask what it’s trying to do for you, what its agenda is, even if that agenda isn’t serving you anymore. There are no bad parts, only parts carrying a job they took on for a reason.

How One Woman Found Her Sexual Self Again

Here’s what this looks like in real life. I’m working with a couple right now, and we’ve seen real change in a fairly short time.

She grew up regulating everybody in her family. Neither parent was really present for her, so she learned early that her needs didn’t matter. When she met her husband, she experienced a sexual self for the first time. He brought that out of her, and it was great. Then they had children, and she promised herself she’d be a more present parent than her own parents were. The old pattern came right back. She took care of the kids and her husband, and she neglected herself.

Her husband wasn’t abusive and he wasn’t neglectful, and in some ways he was very self-centered. He rarely asked, “What does my wife need from me?” She adapted to that for years, the same way she’d adapted to everyone else. Her resentment leaked out, and she never connected it to her lack of desire. They came to me because of their sex life, and it was mainly her resisting sex.

We worked on two fronts. With him, I was direct. He needed to get out of his comfort zone and pay attention to her needs, and if he didn’t, he shouldn’t expect anything different from her. With her, we did depth work with EMDR and IFS. She got to know the protector that kept her regulating everyone, and the scared little girl underneath it who believed her world would fall apart if she stopped.

Once her Self could give that little girl what she needed, the protector didn’t have to work so hard. She started doing more for herself, inside the marriage and outside it. And she said it out loud: “I am a sexual person again.” She can be an attentive mom and a sexual woman at the same time.

What To Do Next

If low desire has crept into your relationship, here are four places to start.

1. Get curious about the part that shut desire down. The next time you notice yourself pulling away, pause and ask that part what it’s afraid would happen if you let yourself want. Listen without arguing with it. This is your first step.
2. Look at the resentment you haven’t said out loud. Write down any hurt from your partner that was never fully repaired, even an old one. Your body may still be holding it.
3. Notice where your needs went. Make an honest list of what you do for everyone else in a week and what you do for yourself. If the second list is short, start there.
4. Bring your partner into it. Desire is not only your job to fix. A partner who asks what you need, and follows through even when it’s uncomfortable for him, helps your protectors feel safe enough to soften.

If you’d like help, IFS and EMDR together can reach the younger parts that talk therapy alone often doesn’t. I offer a short phone consultation to talk through whether we’re a good fit.

Your desire didn’t die. It’s being protected by a part of you that believed it was keeping you safe. When you stop fighting that part and start listening to it, low sexual desire in a long-term relationship can change, sometimes faster than you’d expect. You can be a devoted mom and partner and still be a sexual woman. If this resonates with you, or you know someone in these shoes, pass it on to them. This is Todd Creager, making the world safe for love.