In my work as a psychosexual therapist, the answer depends far less on how often you're having sex than on how you both feel about it.
I often see clients who have stopped having sex and, because of the messages we absorb about what a relationship is supposed to look like, have concluded this means the relationship is finished. I work from a simple ethos: if it isn't a problem, it isn't a problem. If two people aren't having sex, both are happy and content, and neither of them wants sex, then there's no issue to solve.
Is a sexless relationship always a problem?
No. A sexless relationship is only a problem if one or both of you experience it as one. There is no correct frequency, and no threshold below which a relationship stops counting. What matters is whether the way things are is working for the two people in it.
When sex is happening elsewhere
I also work with people in open relationships, where the nesting couple (the partners who live together) aren't having sex with each other but do have fulfilling sex lives with other people. For some, this works well - the sexual need is being met, and nothing feels missing. For others, it leaves a void in the relationship itself: something that belonged to the two of them is no longer there.
When one or both of you want more
Then there are couples where sex has stopped and one or both partners wish it hadn't. Very often what I hear is: "I don't want sex, but I want to want it." That's a real and common position, and it's frequently where the work begins.
None of this means the relationship is over
In all of the above, the absence of sex doesn't signal the end of a relationship. You may choose for sex not to be part of your life, or not part of your relationship. Or, if you want it to be - or want to want it to be - that's something you can work on with a sex therapist.
Couples therapy can help if you genuinely don't know where you stand. Sometimes clients arrive believing they want to have sex, and as we get into the work it becomes clear that they don't. That's a valid outcome. More often the wanting is still there, and we work towards it - as long as everyone involved wants to, or wants to want to.
A psychosexual therapist should always work at the pace of the person who is not yet wanting sex. Between sessions, you'll usually be given things to try at home, and these are always consent-led.
When it might be over
There is one situation where the absence of sex may genuinely mean a relationship has run its course: when one partner doesn't want sex and doesn't want to want it, and the other partner does. Neither position is wrong. But if that gap can't be bridged, it is a legitimate reason for a couple to decide not to stay together - and part of my work is helping people arrive at that understanding honestly, rather than one person quietly overriding themselves for years.
Staying within your window of tolerance
What matters most in this work is that both people stay within their window of tolerance - a term coined by psychiatrist Dan Siegel to describe the zone in which your nervous system is regulated enough to cope. Inside that window, you can feel something, think about it, and stay connected to the person you're with, all at the same time. Outside it, your body stops being able to process what's happening and switches into protection instead.
There are two ways to leave the window, and they look very different:
- Going above it - into fight or flight. Anxiety, racing thoughts, tension, irritability, a sense of urgency, or wanting to escape the situation entirely.
- Dropping below it - into freeze or shutdown. Numbness, blankness, going somewhere else in your head, disconnection from your body, or a sense of just getting through it until it's finished.
Both are the nervous system doing its job, and neither is something you can decide your way out of in the moment.
This matters enormously in sexual work, because pushing on through while you're outside your window doesn't build tolerance - it does the opposite. Many of the people I work with have been doing exactly that for years, with the best of intentions, and are confused about why things keep getting harder rather than easier.
So if an exercise tips you into fight, flight or freeze, it means you're not ready for that step. That's information, not failure. It tells us where your edge currently sits, and we work just inside it rather than beyond it.
Over time - and this is the point of the work - the window widens. Touch that felt like too much becomes tolerable, then neutral, then pleasurable. That progression can't be rushed, but it can be built, which is why we go at the pace of the person whose window is narrowest, and why everything you're given to try between sessions is consent-led and stoppable at any point.