By Mark Ryan, BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist
Before we get into the topic, I want to call out one thing like I have done in a previous article. I'm a cisgender man writing about lesbian relationships in this article. Wherever this piece draws on research, I've specifically sought out work by women and lesbian researchers and clinicians, not my own read of how these relationships work. What follows is my experience from the therapy room, not my opinion of what a lesbian relationship is or should be. Feel free to disregard any of this content, or stop reading now, if that's not useful to you.
You've probably heard the term 'lesbian bed death'. It's shorthand for what supposedly happens to sex in long term lesbian relationships. It vanishes. The implication is inevitable, almost mechanical. Lesbian couples stop having sex, and this gets presented as simple fact.
It isn't the simple fact it's presented as. The research is more mixed than the phrase suggests, and what I see in my practice doesn't support the idea of an inevitable decline either. But the phrase has done real damage to how lesbian relationships get understood, by the couples themselves and by the wider culture. This piece looks at where the phrase came from, why it stuck around long after the evidence became more nuanced, and what it obscures about the patterns couples bring into therapy.
Where the phrase came from
The idea entered the cultural conversation in 1983 with a study by Blumstein and Schwartz. Between 1978 and 1979 the two researchers mailed relationship surveys to couples across major US cities, and thousands of couples responded, including several hundred lesbian couples. Published as American Couples: Money, Work, Sex, the headline finding was striking. Lesbian couples reported having sex less frequently than any other couple type studied. The phrase caught on fast. It was catchy, alarming, and memorable in a way that nuanced research findings rarely are.
There was a significant problem with the research, though, and it went beyond simply being old. The finding rested largely on a single question, roughly how often a couple had had sex in the last year, with no attempt to define what counted as sex for the purposes of answering it. Several scholars have since pointed out that this framing assumes a narrow, penetration centred idea of what sex is, one that fits heterosexual sex more naturally than it fits sex between women. Two women who consider themselves sexually active and satisfied might simply answer that single frequency question differently to how a mixed sex couple would, not because less is happening between them, but because what counts as an event gets defined differently in the first place. A study built on one poorly specified question was always going to struggle to say anything reliable about a group it wasn't designed with in mind.
It's also worth being careful about the phrase itself. The exact origin of the words 'lesbian bed death' is debated. It is widely attributed to the study, but accounts differ on whether the researchers used the phrase themselves. Either way, a cautious, narrow research result about self reported frequency in one sample turned, once it left the hands of the people who produced it, into a sweeping claim about lesbian desire itself. Nobody peer reviewed that leap. It just happened, repeatedly, every time someone used the phrase without reading the study behind it.
Sexual frequency is not the same as sexual satisfaction, either, which the original research never claimed to measure. A couple having sex twice a month might be completely satisfied with that frequency. Another couple having sex twice a week might feel their sex life is unfulfilling. Collapsing that distinction has real consequences for the people the myth claims to describe.
What happened to the claim since
Research since then has been more mixed than the phrase suggests, and more interesting. Some studies have found that lesbian couples report less frequent sex on average, but frequency is only one measure. In a large US national sample, for example, lesbian women reported reaching orgasm more consistently than heterosexual women (Frederick et al., 2018). Sexual frequency varies hugely based on individual preferences, life stage, relationship length, health status, and countless other factors, and the broader literature is far murkier than the original phrase suggested.
Research on desire differences in same sex relationships points the same way. In a survey of 1,072 women in same sex relationships, what predicted lower sexual satisfaction was a difference in desire that the couple experienced as a problem, and not the difference itself. The authors cautioned practitioners against assuming that a gap in desire necessarily means a couple is unhappy (Bridges & Horne, 2007).
Yet the phrase remained in circulation, repeated far more often than the studies adding nuance to it. People quoted 'lesbian bed death' without having read Blumstein and Schwartz. Therapists mentioned it. Relationship writers repeated it. It became a cultural truism, something everyone knew about lesbian relationships, precisely because it had been said so many times. Once a phrase hardens into common knowledge, it stops being questioned. It starts shaping how people interpret their own experience.
A lesbian couple comes into therapy with concerns about sexual frequency. They're worried, because they've heard about lesbian bed death, and they assume what they're experiencing is inevitable, almost predetermined, something that happens to lesbian couples the way it supposedly doesn't happen to anyone else. That belief becomes part of the problem. They've named their experience with a phrase that suggests permanence, and now they must work against not just the pattern itself but the narrative that says the pattern is inescapable.
What I see in the therapy room
When couples come to me describing changes in sexual frequency or desire, the pattern I observe isn't specific to lesbian relationships. It looks similar across couples, regardless of the gender or sexuality of the people involved. Often one partner wants more sex than the other. Desire discrepancy is probably the most common pattern I see, and I've written more about how it shapes relationships and what couples can do about it. Sometimes external life has compressed the space where sexuality happens, work stress, health issues, parenting demands, competing obligations crowding out the time and energy for sex. Sometimes there's a relational dynamic at play. One partner has drifted into a parental role, managing the household, tracking the other person's needs, and desire has leaked away as a result. It's hard to feel desire for someone you're parenting. Sometimes a couple has simply stopped prioritising their sex life, and it's atrophied through neglect rather than any active choice. They didn't decide not to have sex. They just never made space for it, and over time it felt too difficult to restart.
These are the actual barriers I see, and they're all addressable, though different barriers need different solutions. External stress calls for a different intervention than a relational dynamic does. But the first step is always the same, identifying what's going on. What lesbian bed death does, as a cultural narrative, is pull focus away from that investigation. It offers an alternative explanation, external and inevitable, tied to sexual orientation rather than to anything a couple can change. A couple walks in already believing the problem is about being lesbian. It's not. The myth just makes it harder to see what's happening underneath and predisposes a couple to accept the pattern instead of challenging it.
The term lesbian bed death is not really grounded in current research, and it’s reductive
The same pattern as another myth
This isn't unprecedented. The same mechanism has shaped how another aspect of lesbian relationships gets discussed, the idea of closeness and fusion as an inherent problem. A study produces a finding. The finding gets simplified. The simplification hardens into a cultural truism, and by the time anyone challenges it, it's already done its work on how couples understand themselves. I've written more specifically about lesbian couples therapy and what shows up in the room, including where that myth took hold and what shifts when it's set aside.
What's worth noticing is that lesbian relationships seem to attract this treatment repeatedly. Two different myths, both traced back to research from roughly the same era, both eventually challenged by more careful work, both still circulating decades after they stopped holding up under scrutiny. That's not a coincidence about the relationships themselves. It's a pattern in how lesbian relationships get studied, written about, and discussed, perhaps because the culture has fewer visible narratives about what lesbian relationships look like day to day, leaving space for false ones to take root instead.
What declining frequency does and doesn't tell you
Sexual frequency does change across the lifespan of a relationship. Most couples experience periods where sex becomes less frequent than it was earlier, for all kinds of reasons, and it doesn't mean the relationship is failing. The question is never whether frequency has changed. The question is what that change means to the people in the relationship, whether it bothers them, and whether there's something underneath it that needs attention. Those are different investigations.
For some couples, less frequent sex is fine. It matches what both partners want, and they might feel relieved by the pressure lifting, or satisfied with intimacy that isn't specifically sexual. For others, declining frequency is a sign that something has shifted, something emotional, something practical, or something about how desire itself is working. You can't tell which situation you're in by looking at frequency alone. You must talk about it, and ask what each person wants and whether the current pattern works for them.
The lesbian bed death narrative short circuits that conversation. Instead of asking what's going on, a couple assumes they already know, that they're experiencing something universal and inescapable. That assumption stops the harder, more useful questions from getting asked. Why has this changed? Does it matter to us? What's the real barrier, is it practical, is it emotional, is it about desire itself or about how we're relating to each other? I've written more about why couples stop having sex and the difference between change as symptom and change as an ordinary life transition. Those are uncomfortable questions. They require honesty and vulnerability. But they lead somewhere, and the myth doesn't.
If you haven't even experienced this yet
Some couples come to therapy because they're worried this will happen, not because it has. The myth has shaped their expectations so strongly that they're anxious about something that feels automatic and unavoidable. That anxiety can become self fulfilling. If you're braced for sex to disappear from your relationship, you stop prioritising it and might unconsciously lean into the narrative instead of resisting it, without noticing the small choices that are steering you toward the very outcome you're afraid of.
The work here is different. It isn't about recovering something that's been lost. It's about not accepting a loss that hasn't happened and might never happen. It's about making deliberate choices about sexuality as a couple, rather than treating it as a predetermined arc you have no say in.
What happens when we discuss this in a therapy session
You won't need to explain the basics, and you won't be asked to represent lesbian relationships generally, as though there's one script to describe. What I'm listening for is the same thing I listen for with any couple, the specific pattern the two of you fall into, what triggers it, and what each of you does next that keeps it going. Where sexuality is relevant to that pattern, we'll talk about it directly. Where it isn't, we won't force it in just because it's available as an explanation.
A first session usually involves understanding what's brought you in now rather than at some other point, what you've each already tried, and what you're hoping is different by the time we stop meeting. That structure doesn't change based on who's in the room. What changes, where it needs to, is which specific pressures and history get factored into understanding what's happening between you.
A guide written with LGBTQ+ readers in mind
The idea that desire inevitably fades in lesbian relationships is a myth, but many couples still wonder how to talk about it. My guide, 13 Golden Rules for Talking About Intimacy and Desire, is written for everyone, whatever your gender, sexuality or relationship structure. It covers widening what counts as sex, choosing pleasure over performance and making time for intimacy, with reflection pages to use alone or together.
How therapy can help
My starting position is that you're the expert on your own relationship, and my job is to bring structure and research to that, not a theory about lesbian couples applied regardless of what you tell me. Where sexual frequency has become a source of strain, the work is usually about understanding what's driving the pattern beneath the surface, not about hitting a target number or proving a myth wrong.
The research on couple therapy is encouraging in general. A review of a decade of studies concluded that couple therapy helps around 70 per cent of couples who receive it (Lebow et al., 2012). Most of that research has not focused on lesbian couples specifically, so I'd treat it as a general reason for optimism and not a promise about any one relationship. It isn't about willpower. It's about understanding what's happening and changing the pattern with support.
The first move is usually to interrupt the false frame. The lesbian bed death narrative gets set aside, and the pattern gets acknowledged as something real couples come to therapy for, not a sign that something is fundamentally broken. We create safety around talking about sex and desire, then start asking what's going on underneath.
That investigation reveals what the myth missed. It might be external, stress, health changes, competing demands that have shifted what's possible. It might be relational, one partner drifting into a caretaking role, emotional distance widening, unaddressed conflict. It might be something about desire itself, a shift in what arousal feels like or what each person wants from sexuality now. Or it might be simple de prioritisation, sex filed away as less urgent once the relationship stabilised, and now restarting it feels awkward. Each of these shows up differently in the room, and each has a different path forward.
Once the myth is set down and the actual situation comes into focus, the real conversation begins. What does each person want? What needs to change, practically, emotionally, relationally, for that to happen? These are hard questions, but they're answerable, and working through them with someone trained to help couples navigate desire and intimacy changes what feels possible between the two of you.
Couples often come in believing they're dealing with something inevitable and unchangeable. They leave understanding that what they're dealing with is specific to their relationship, with identifiable causes they can affect. That shift in understanding is powerful on its own. Working through desire honestly with another person in the room is completely different from managing a decline you've simply accepted as fixed. One feels like failure. The other feels like a choice you're making together.
None of this requires either of you to arrive with a theory about your own relationship, or a diagnosis borrowed from something you've read online. Most couples show up simply knowing something isn't working the way it used to, without needing to explain it using the language of desire discrepancy, attachment, or anything else in advance. That language, where it's useful, is something we build together once I understand what's happening between the two of you specifically, rather than something you're expected to bring pre packaged into the first session. What matters far more than arriving with the right vocabulary is arriving willing to describe what's going on in your own words, even if those words feel clumsy or incomplete the first time you say them out loud in the room.
If you feel like now might be the right time to talk through this with a therapist, I offer a free 30 minute consultation in person (in London) or online.
About the Author
Mark Ryan is a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist working in person across central London, from rooms in Pimlico, Kensington, and Angel. He works with couples, individuals, and polycules on relationship issues including jealousy, affairs and betrayals, sex problems, and considered separation. His practice is integrative, sex-positive, and affirming of all relationship structures and identities.
References
Blumstein, P., & Schwartz, P. (1983). American couples: Money, work, sex. William Morrow.
Bridges, S. K., & Horne, S. G. (2007). Sexual satisfaction and desire discrepancy in same sex women's relationships. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 33(1), 41 to 53.
Frederick, D. A., John, H. K. S., Garcia, J. R., & Lloyd, E. A. (2018). Differences in orgasm frequency among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual men and women in a U.S. national sample. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 47(1), 273 to 288.
Lebow, J. L., Chambers, A. L., Christensen, A., & Johnson, S. M. (2012). Research on the treatment of couple distress. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 38(1), 145 to 168.
