By Mark Ryan, BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist
Many couples reach a point where they look at each other and realise how long it has been since they talked at length, laughed or touched without a reason. Nothing dramatic happened. There was no affair and no single row. The years filled up with children, work, tiredness and logistics, or something that was never said at the start of the relationship slowly became too heavy to carry. If you miss each other, or you miss who you were together, this article is for you. Distance that has built over years can feel permanent, and it is usually more changeable than it feels.
Article Summary
In my experience, distance often builds from years of life getting in the way, or from something unspoken since the beginning that is no longer bearable.
Many couples wait for their partner to change first, and find it hard to accept that, in the ordinary slow kind of distance described here, the pattern was built by both of them.
Research on newly married couples links relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction in both directions, and a meta analysis links sexual communication with better sexual function.
Rating your satisfaction in three areas, companionship, romantic emotional connection, and sex, intimacy and desire, can help show where to begin.
A simple structure for dialogue lets you hear each other before the deeper conversations start.
A large meta analysis found that couple therapy improved relationship satisfaction and emotional intimacy.
Rebuilding is a legitimate goal, and so is deciding it is not what you want. If you feel afraid of your partner, a different kind of support is needed.
What a Long Stretch of Distance Feels Like
Distance does not feel the same to everyone. For some people it is a dull flatness, a sense of living alongside a pleasant stranger. For others it is a sharp loneliness that arrives in the middle of an ordinary evening. One partner may feel it keenly while the other believes things are fine, and sometimes you both know and neither of you knows how to say it. You may also feel guilty for wanting more when your life looks perfectly good from the outside. If you are the partner who has been reaching out for years, there can be exhaustion and a quiet grief. If you are the one who has been holding back, there can be shame, and a fear that it is too late or that you are the reason it got this way. Both experiences are real, and both belong in the conversation. Day to day, distance often looks like being polite and efficient but rarely playful, touch that has become functional or has stopped, and a private story each of you tells about why that neither of you has checked with the other.
These feelings are not a sign that you have failed, and they are not proof that love has gone. They are often the sound of something that matters being neglected for a long time. Why do I feel lonely in my relationship looks at that loneliness, and nothing left to say to each other describes what happens when conversation shrinks to the practical.
How Couples Drift Apart
In my experience there are two common routes into a long stretch of distance, and they often overlap.
The first is that life gets in the way. Parenting is the clearest example. When a baby arrives, or children fill every evening, the relationship moves to the back of the queue. Nobody decides to stop paying attention to each other. Attention just goes where the urgent things are, month after month, until the habit of connection fades. Because each stage feels temporary, couples often tell themselves that things will settle once the children are older, the job is less demanding or the house is finished. Then a decade passes. Couples therapy after a baby explores this stage.
The second is that something unspoken since the beginning of the relationship becomes unbearable. A common example is never discussing sexual needs. For years it may have been manageable, or avoided, or accepted as just how things are. Then something changes, such as age, a health event, a milestone or simply running out of energy to keep quiet, and the silence is no longer something one or both of you can live with. Why is it so difficult to talk about sex and desire in relationships looks at why this topic stays off the table for so long.
In the ordinary, slow kind of distance described here, the dynamic between you was usually built by both of you. This is often the hardest part to accept, because it asks each of you to see your own contribution and not only your partner's. When couples arrive, it is common for each person to feel that the other needs to change first. One partner sees themselves as the one who tried and the other as the one who withdrew. Both versions can feel true. Yet a pattern like this runs on two sets of habits, such as one partner pursuing and the other pulling back, or both of you keeping the peace until nothing real is said. One person's change can open things up, but the pattern shifts fully only when both take part, and it stays put while each of you waits for the other to go first.
How Distance Affects the Relationship
Closeness tends to work like a web, and when one part of it thins, the other parts feel it. Research on married couples gives a useful picture of how connected the emotional and sexual parts of a relationship are.
In two studies that followed 207 marriages across their first four to five years, relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction were positively associated, and each predicted more positive change in the other at the next assessment. Satisfaction and frequency of sex also declined over those early years. The authors suggested that help for relationship distress might benefit from attention to the sexual relationship, and that help for sexual distress might benefit from attention to the relationship as a whole (McNulty et al., 2016). So it is plausible that when satisfaction with the relationship falls, satisfaction with sex may fall too, and the reverse may also be true, although these were newly married couples.
A meta analysis of 48 studies found that couples' sexual communication was associated with better sexual function. The link with overall sexual function was moderate, and links with desire and arousal were smaller. As with most research of this kind, it shows an association and cannot prove that talking causes the change (Mallory et al., 2019). It does fit what many couples describe, that the sexual difficulty can be partly a conversation that has never happened.
Desire is often the first thing to feel it. Why desire fades in long term relationships describes how, and when your sex drives don't match looks at wanting very different things.
Closeness tends to work like a web, and when one part of it thins, the other parts feel it.
What Helps
Rebuilding is usually less about a grand gesture and more about slow, honest steps that you can repeat. It can often be done, and it begins with understanding where you are now. The suggestions below move from what each of you can do on your own to what you can do together. They assume you feel safe with your partner. If you feel afraid, controlled or hurt, that is not a communication problem to fix with exercises, and the helplines further down are the place to start.
On your own, these steps matter most.
Rate your satisfaction in three separate areas, from one to ten. I often ask each partner to do this. The areas are companionship, meaning how much you enjoy each other's company and feel like teammates, romantic emotional connection, meaning feeling known and cherished, and sex, intimacy and desire.
Notice the wish for your partner to change first. It is a very natural wish, and it tends to keep a pattern in place, because while each of you waits, little moves.
Check how much you believe in change. Many people say they want it and do not quite believe it. It is common to feel that you would adapt easily while your partner would struggle. Ask what you would find hard, and what your partner might fear.
Name the barriers before you try to move past them. A useful sentence is "the part of me that is hesitant is worried that...", completed with care. They might be fear of being disappointed again, tiredness, old hurt that was never repaired, shame about your body or your desire, or a fear that speaking up will make things worse. Understanding a barrier is what makes it possible to move past it.
Look at your own habits in the pattern, whether that is withdrawing, pursuing, criticising, avoiding the subject or assuming the worst. If you are the partner who has reached out for years, this is not about blaming you. It is about spotting where you could step out of a loop.
Start small. A walk, a meal without screens or ten minutes of attention each day can matter more than a big weekend away.
Together, a clear structure for conversation makes deeper work possible. Start by comparing your three scores kindly and without defending them. Many couples find that distance is not total, and that one area is much stronger than another. A couple who score companionship high and sex low are in a different place from a couple who score all three low, and the next steps differ too.
Distant couples often find that unstructured talking either does not happen or turns into an old argument. A simple dialogue format, drawn from Imago relationship therapy, slows things down and helps each of you feel heard.
One partner speaks about their own experience in short pieces, using feelings and needs and not blame.
The other partner mirrors back what they heard in their own words, for example "if I have got this right, you are saying that you miss us being close". They check with "is there more?" until the speaker feels understood.
The listener then offers validation, such as "that makes sense to me, because...", and empathy, such as "I imagine you might feel lonely".
Then you swap roles. Either of you can stop at any point, and if conversations keep escalating, this works best with a therapist.
It can feel slow and strange at first, and many people find it is the first time in years they have felt heard. It also builds the trust needed for conversations about sex, which many couples need to start gently. How to talk to your partner about sex offers a way in, and is our sex life normal helps you sort worry from fact. It helps to take one area at a time, and to talk about companionship and emotional connection before asking too much of the physical side.
If a conversation goes badly, as some will, you can come back to it when you are both ready. Repairing after a fight has a step by step guide.
Sometimes, after real effort or an honest look, one or both of you finds that the wish to rebuild is not there. That is allowed, and nobody is obliged to stay in a relationship that no longer works for them. How to know when a relationship is over offers a way to think it through. If you are afraid of your partner, please read about coercive control versus conflict. Support is available.
The National Domestic Abuse Helpline is free and open 24 hours on 0808 2000 247, for women who are afraid of a partner.
The National LGBT+ Domestic Abuse Helpline from Galop is on 0800 999 5428, and its opening hours are listed at galop.org.uk.
The Men's Advice Line is on 0808 8010327, from 10am to 5pm on weekdays, for men experiencing abuse from a partner.
If you are in immediate danger, call 999.
Rebuilding Intimacy in LGBTQ+ and Non Monogamous Relationships
Distance is a human pattern and not a heterosexual one. Same sex couples, and partners who are not married or do not live together, can also find that years of work, family and stress have crowded out their connection. Rebuilding does not depend on any particular script about what a relationship should look like, and the three areas can be defined in the way that suits the two of you. If this is your situation, gay couples therapy in London and lesbian couples therapy describe the affirming way I work.
In consensually non monogamous relationships, a relationship can slowly turn into a scheduling arrangement between busy people. Rebuilding intimacy may involve looking again at what each partner needs from the relationship, and at whether the agreements you made still fit. Opening a relationship covers what to think through. The steps above apply to every kind of relationship.
How Therapy Can Help
Couples sometimes imagine that therapy is for relationships that are close to breaking, but it suits the slow kind of distance described here. A large meta analysis of 58 studies covering 2,092 couples found a large improvement in relationship satisfaction from before to after couple therapy, while couples on waitlists did not significantly improve. It also had significant effects on communication, emotional intimacy and partner behaviours, and the gains were generally maintained at follow up. Couples who began with greater distress made larger gains. The studies included only opposite sex couples, so the picture for other couples is less certain (Roddy et al., 2020).
In practice, I help couples map where they are, learn a dialogue structure that makes conversations safer, and work through the barriers that make change feel risky. The aim is to create the conditions in which deeper conversations, about needs, history and desire, can happen without turning into a fight. The structure can feel artificial at first, and it gives each of you a way to say difficult things and a way to receive them. A couples therapist will also keep an eye on safety, and if you do not feel safe, you are welcome to contact me on your own first. When to go to couples therapy can help you decide if it is time. You do not need to be in crisis.
I work with couples and individuals of all kinds, including same sex couples and those in consensually non monogamous relationships. If you would like help finding your way back to each other, or deciding what you want, 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, and the founder of Rise and Grow Therapy, a private practice offering couples and relationship therapy across Kensington, Pimlico, and Angel, Islington in London, as well as online consultations. His approach draws first on Imago Relationship Therapy, alongside integrative relational, attachment based, Gottman, and systemic approaches. Mark works with couples of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ couples and those in non traditional relationship structures such as consensual non monogamy, as well as with individuals working through relational issues.
References
Mallory, A. B., Stanton, A. M., & Handy, A. B. (2019). Couples' sexual communication and dimensions of sexual function: A meta-analysis. The Journal of Sex Research, 56(7), 882 to 898. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2019.1568375
McNulty, J. K., Wenner, C. A., & Fisher, T. D. (2016). Longitudinal associations among relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and frequency of sex in early marriage. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45(1), 85 to 97. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-014-0444-6
Roddy, M. K., Walsh, L. M., Rothman, K., Hatch, S. G., & Doss, B. D. (2020). Meta-analysis of couple therapy: Effects across outcomes, designs, timeframes, and other moderators. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 88(7), 583 to 596. https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000514
