The Vulnerability of Building A Sex Life from Scratch

Most dialogue I see around longterm couples and their sex lives involves language like “rebuilding”, “reigniting the spark”, or “going back to the honeymoon phase” - all language that implies that there once was something great that has since dissolved. What this verbiage leaves out are the couples who never found their stride in the first place.

So, if that’s you and your partner- I see you. And there’s space for you in couples therapy. Building a sex life from the ground up might be where you’re at because you were focused on your careers in the early days of the relationship, or maybe you were long distance and never got the chance. Maybe sex came with difficult emotions that were too hard to navigate, but now feels like the right time to try. Maybe having children, getting cancer, or experiencing grief and loss got in the way of sex even feeling like a possibility. Whatever your reasoning, I want you to know that it’s really brave to try to build a sex life.

Building a sex life from scratch involves both partners recognizing how much you don’t know. And how scary can that be to admit you don’t know? It involves admitting that sex isn’t always easy, despite all of the social messaging telling us it should be. Building a sex life from scratch is an incredibly vulnerable feat.

It’s also a journey that, with a safe and loving partner, can be full of untapped possibilities. You get to decide together what sex means in your relationship, and envision a future that’s aligned for you.