Dead bedroom

What is a dead bedroom?

Dead bedroom (Dutch: een (bijna) seksloze relatie) is the popular name for a relationship that has ended up with almost no sex, while at least one of the two suffers under it. It is not a diagnosis but a colloquial term that grew up on the internet. The heart of it is not one conflict, but sex that slowly drained out of the relationship.

How a relationship goes sexless

A dead bedroom rarely starts with a bang. Usually the desire of two people drifts apart, one of them stops initiating after a string of times when it did not click, and the silence that follows becomes the problem itself. Every rejection, or what feels like rejection, makes the next approach harder, until nobody starts anymore.

Research on differences in desire shows the direction matters. Mark and Murray found in 133 couples that a bigger difference in desire was linked to less sexual satisfaction in women, even apart from how satisfied they were with the relationship. A dead bedroom is often a difference like that, one that sat unaddressed for a long time and set.

What a sexless phase means, and what it does not

Little or no sex weighs on you, but not in the way people fear. Amy Muise and colleagues studied more than 30,000 people and found that more frequent sex is linked to greater well-being, but that the gain levels off: above roughly once a week, more sex brings no extra happiness, and the link holds mainly for people in a relationship. That means two things at once. A relationship that drops far below that level is missing something that does matter. And at the same time the goal is not a record frequency, but getting back near ordinary contact.

What a dead bedroom does not automatically mean is that the love is gone. It is a phase that stalled, not a final verdict on the relationship.

What you can do about it

The way out almost never starts with more sex and almost always with the conversation around it.

• Name it without a culprit. Say that the sex has fallen away and that you miss it, without turning it into a reproach. The silence itself keeps a dead bedroom going.
• Do not chase a number. Muise shows that more than roughly weekly brings no extra happiness, so aim for contact again, not a quota.
• Address the difference in desire. Under a dead bedroom there is often a desire discrepancy that was never spoken out loud.
• Rebuild the closeness first. Touch that does not have to lead anywhere takes off the pressure that pushes desire away.
• Get help if it is stuck solid. A sex therapist or couples therapist is there for exactly the kind of pattern the two of you can no longer pry loose on your own.

Misconceptions about a dead bedroom

“A dead bedroom means the love is over.” Not necessarily. Plenty of couples love each other and are still in a sexless phase; the one does not automatically follow from the other.

“More sex fixes it.” Rarely on its own. Without addressing why the sex fell away, more frequent sex feels like an assignment, and that backfires.

“It is down to the partner with less desire.” A dead bedroom lives in the dynamic between two people, not in one of them. The rejection one feels and the pressure the other feels keep each other going.

What I see of it myself

I am Victor, a gigolo, and some of the women who reach out to me come out of exactly this kind of silence. At home there is affection, but the sex ebbed away years ago, and the subject has become too loaded to touch.

What strikes me most often: it is rarely only about sex. It is about being wanted again, about being touched without it having to go somewhere right away. Once that pressure is gone, more often comes back than someone had expected.

And I will say this plainly: I am not a fix for a relationship that is stuck. What an intimate evening can do is let someone feel there is nothing wrong with her desire. What it cannot do is have the conversation at home that has to come at some point anyway.

More reading on a dead bedroom

On this site, desire discrepancy covers the difference in desire that often sits under it, libido covers desire itself, and the dual control model explains why desire catches more easily in one person than the other.

Off this site, the research by Muise and colleagues is the best starting point on how often sex is actually “enough,” and why more is not automatically better.

Sources

• Sexual Frequency Predicts Greater Well-Being, But More is Not Always Better. Amy Muise, Ulrich Schimmack & Emily A. Impett, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2016. More than 30,000 participants; supplies the finding that sex is linked to well-being but levels off above roughly once a week, and that the link holds mainly for people in a relationship.
• Gender differences in desire discrepancy as a predictor of sexual and relationship satisfaction. Kristen P. Mark & Sarah H. Murray, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 38(2), 2012. Supplies the finding in 133 couples that a bigger difference in desire was linked to less sexual satisfaction in women.
• Strategies for Mitigating Sexual Desire Discrepancy in Relationships. Laura M. Vowels & Kristen P. Mark, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2020. Supplies the finding that a difference in desire is one of the most common reasons to seek therapy, and that joint strategies work out better than individual ones.

Related terms

• Desire discrepancy. The difference in desire that often precedes a dead bedroom.
• Libido. Desire itself, which in a dead bedroom has gone out of balance or out of step.
• Dual control model. Why one person gets aroused or braked more easily than the other, which partly explains a dead bedroom.
• Coolidge effect. How novelty fires up desire, and why routine flattens it.
• Skin hunger. The hunger for touch that in a sexless relationship often runs as strong as the missing sex.