Are We a Couple or Roommates? How Closeness Can Kill Desire

Photo: Andrew Southam

Your partner is your best friend. You love doing everything together, except have sex. What happened? You're asking yourself: are we a couple or roommates?

At first it was great to both work from home. There was a possibility of having sex anytime, but that ended up feeling too distracting during the workday. Over time your shared interests seemed to take the place of sex. Cooking together became your intimacy. Going for runs together became your connection. Eventually sex was just gone, and it feels so awkward now to even talk about. It's been so long that you don't even remember what it felt like to be wanted. There's an unspoken agreement to just pretend sex isn't a thing.

You thought couples that didn't have sex were disconnected, too busy, hardly seeing each other. You're together all the time and get along great.

Well, guess what? That's the problem.

As Esther Perel writes in Mating in Captivity, safety and predictability kill erotic charge, which needs mystery, otherness, and a sense of the partner as a separate, somewhat unknown person. Without that otherness you become one. Neither of you is bringing back anything new or surprising to share. You can't get back far enough to gain perspective and see the attractive, witty person you fell in love with. Instead you are both seeing each other unvarnished, all the time. And that's not sexy.

The cost of going from couple to roommates

When couples become too close they lose sight of what their individual thoughts and feelings actually are. Everything becomes "we." We loved that movie. We think that's the best Italian in the neighborhood. But take a moment and ask yourself: do you actually think that, or is it the mutually agreed upon answer? Maybe you prefer a different Italian but the other one is closer, so that's where you go together. Small compressions like this happen constantly in long relationships, so gradually you don't notice them.

There is a theory that whatever your partner is marginally better at than you, you will eventually stop doing altogether. You were the cook until you met someone who cooked better. You used to paint, draw, run, tell the funniest stories in the room. Slowly, quietly, you let those parts of yourself go in order to stay in sync. You didn't decide to. It just happened. And somewhere in that process, the person your partner fell in love with started to disappear, not from the relationship, but from yourself.

The invitation back to yourself

What would it feel like to revive some of those parts?

Not for your partner's sake. For yours. Think back to who you were when you met. What were the qualities that made you attractive, not just physically but as a person? The curiosity, the independence, the thing you were passionate about that had nothing to do with anyone else. Those parts of you are not gone. They've just been waiting.

This isn't about manufactured mystery or performing a version of yourself. It's about genuinely returning to the things that make you feel most alive. When you do that, something shifts, not just in how your partner sees you, but in how you carry yourself. And that carries an energy that has nothing to do with effort.

What separateness does for desire

Going out into the world and coming back with something new, a fresh interest, a new friendship, an experience your partner wasn't part of, does something quiet but powerful. It makes you someone with a story to tell. It gives your partner a glimpse of you they haven't seen in a while. It creates just enough distance to see each other again.

In my office I watch this happen. One partner starts taking a class, rejoins an old creative pursuit, spends a weekend with friends. They come back different in a way that's hard to name but easy to feel. Their partner notices. Not because something dramatic changed, but because there's a little mystery back. A little otherness. Exactly what Perel is talking about.

You were attracted to each other once. The ingredients that created that attraction are not as far away as they feel right now.

The conversation

None of this works without eventually talking about it. And that's the part most couples dread most.

Bringing up sex after a long silence feels risky. You've built something that works in almost every other way and the fear of disrupting that is real. But not talking about it has a cost too, a quiet one that accumulates over time. The distance grows. The awkwardness calcifies. What started as an unspoken agreement becomes an unspoken wall.

Vanessa Marin, in her book Sex Talks, suggests that the first conversation isn't about fixing anything. It's simply about acknowledging that this part of your relationship exists, or that it has gone missing. That's it. Just naming it out loud to each other. It sounds small and it isn't.

What I see in my office is that couples who finally have this conversation are almost always surprised. Surprised that their partner has been missing it too. Surprised that the relief of just saying it out loud is enough to shift something. Surprised that they waited so long.

You don't have to have it all figured out before you start talking. You just have to be willing to start.

If you're somewhere in this and ready to have that conversation with some support, I'd love to help. Reach out for a free consultation.

Written by Tracy Sondern, LMFT specializing in Couples Counseling.

Schedule a Consultation