07/31/2026
“We love each other, but s*x just stopped happening.”
If you work with couples, you’ve probably heard some version of that line before.
A new paper in the Journal of S*xual Medicine looked at marital s*xual inactivity in the United States and Korea. In their study, about 15.6% of married couples in the U.S. report no s*xual activity.
You might assume this decrease in s*xual activity has to do with older age (and you wouldn't be wrong). But that's not all. Couples who spent more time communicating were less likely to report s*xual inactivity and higher family income was also linked to lower s*xual inactivity. Additionally, people with a more promotion-focused style — meaning a tendency toward growth, approach, and moving toward desired outcomes — were more likely to be s*xually engaged.
That feels clinically important to me. S*xual inactivity is rarely about one thing. Time, stress, communication, financial strain, and the broader emotional climate of the relationship all matter.
In other words: when s*x fades, the question is usually not “What’s wrong with this couple?” It’s “What’s been getting in the way?”
Citation: Hyoungbin Moon, Young-Hoon Kim, Prevalence and correlates of s*xual inactivity among married couples, The Journal of S*xual Medicine, Volume 23, Issue 7, July 2026, qdag180, https://f.mtr.cool/untqydkeop
