You love your partner. You enjoy their company, share memories, maybe raise children together. But somewhere along the way, the physical intimacy that once connected you has faded or disappeared entirely. If you’re living in a sexless relationship in Austin, Lakeway, Westlake, or Bee Cave, you might feel lonely even when you’re together, frustrated by the silence around something that matters deeply, or desperate to reconnect but unsure how to start.
The loneliness of a sexless relationship is unique. You’re standing next to someone you care about, yet feeling profoundly alone in your experience. You might wonder if you’re the only couple facing this challenge, if something is fundamentally wrong with you or your relationship, or whether it’s even possible to rebuild physical intimacy after years without it.
You’re not alone, and there is support available. Therapy groups for people navigating sexless relationships offer a space where you can speak openly about experiences that often remain hidden, connect with others who understand your struggle, and develop practical tools for addressing intimacy challenges in your relationship.
Understanding Sexless Relationships
A sexless relationship is typically defined as one where partners have sex fewer than ten times per year. But numbers don’t capture the emotional weight of the experience. For some couples, the absence of physical intimacy represents a profound loss. For others, it may feel acceptable to one partner while leaving the other feeling rejected and disconnected.
The reasons behind sexless relationships are as varied as the couples experiencing them. Some common factors include:
Physical and Medical Factors: Chronic pain, hormonal changes, medications, sexual dysfunction, erectile dysfunction, or medical conditions that make sex uncomfortable or impossible can all contribute to decreased sexual activity. After childbirth, during perimenopause, or following medical treatments, bodies change in ways that affect sexual desire and function.
Emotional and Relational Dynamics: Years of unresolved conflict, poor communication patterns, unaddressed resentment, or emotional disconnection can erode sexual desire. When you’re angry with your partner or feel unseen by them, physical intimacy often becomes difficult or unappealing.
Life Transitions and Stress: Parenting young children, career demands, caring for aging parents, or navigating major life changes can leave little energy or time for sexual connection. What starts as a temporary shift can become a pattern that’s difficult to break.
Trauma and Past Experiences: Sexual trauma, painful previous sexual experiences, or negative messages about sexuality can create barriers to physical intimacy that persist for years.
Differences in Sexual Desire: Sometimes partners simply have different levels of interest in sex. One person may have low or no sexual desire and feel content with that reality, while their partner experiences this as a significant loss.
What makes sexless relationships particularly challenging is the silence that often surrounds them. While couples might talk openly with friends about parenting struggles or career challenges, conversations about the absence of sex remain taboo. This silence can intensify feelings of shame, isolation, and hopelessness.
The Weight of Silence: What It Feels Like Inside
If you’re in a sexless relationship, you might recognize some of these internal experiences:
You feel sad about the intimacy you’ve lost. You remember when attraction and desire felt effortless, when your partner’s touch was a source of comfort and connection. Now those memories feel distant, and you wonder if you can ever return to that place.
You feel frustrated by attempts that go nowhere. Maybe you’ve tried to initiate intimacy only to be rejected, or perhaps you’ve had conversations that start with good intentions but end in defensiveness and hurt feelings. The pattern repeats, and nothing seems to change.
You feel angry at your partner for not meeting your needs, at yourself for staying, at the situation for being so complicated. The anger might emerge in arguments about unrelated topics, or it might simmer quietly beneath polite conversations.
You feel lonely, even when you’re sitting next to each other on the couch. You’re living parallel lives rather than building something together. The emotional and physical disconnection creates a distance that makes you wonder if you’re becoming roommates rather than romantic partners.
You feel desperate for things to change. You want to feel connected again, to be touched with desire, to share physical intimacy that feels natural and enjoyable. But you don’t know how to bridge the gap that’s grown between you.
Underneath these feelings often lies a deeper question: Are we meant for each other, or is it time to part ways? The absence of physical intimacy can make you question the entire foundation of your relationship, even when love and care remain.
Why Therapy Groups Can Help
Therapy groups for people in sexless relationships offer something that individual therapy and couples therapy cannot fully provide: connection with others who share your experience. While individual and couples work remain essential for addressing the specific dynamics in your relationship, group therapy adds another dimension of healing.
Breaking the Isolation: When you sit in a room (or virtual space) with others navigating sexless relationships, the profound isolation begins to lift. You hear your own thoughts and feelings reflected in someone else’s story. You realize you’re not uniquely broken or abnormal. This normalization doesn’t minimize your pain, but it does reduce the shame that often accompanies it.
Diverse Perspectives and Strategies: In a therapy group, you’re exposed to different approaches to common challenges. One person might share how they navigated conversations about erectile dysfunction with their partner. Another might describe ways they’ve worked to rebuild emotional connection as a foundation for physical intimacy. You gain access to a wider range of ideas and strategies than you might discover on your own.
Safe Space for Honest Conversation: Therapy groups provide a structured, confidential environment where you can speak openly about topics that feel too vulnerable or uncomfortable to discuss with friends or family. With professional guidance and clear group agreements, you can explore difficult emotions, ask questions, and share fears without judgment.
Accountability and Momentum: When you’re working on relationship changes alone, it’s easy to get discouraged or lose motivation. A therapy group creates natural accountability. You return each session and check in on progress, setbacks, and insights. Other group members become witnesses to your journey, offering support and encouragement when change feels difficult.
Modeling and Learning: You learn not just from sharing your own experience but from observing others. You might notice how someone else handles conflict in their relationship and recognize patterns in your own. You might see someone make progress and feel inspired to try new approaches yourself.
Gender-Specific Understanding: Therapy groups for sexless relationships can be structured to address the distinct experiences of men and women. Men’s groups might focus on challenges around erectile dysfunction, performance anxiety, or communicating vulnerability around sexual desire. Women’s groups might address topics like pain during sex, changes in desire after childbirth, or navigating mismatched libidos. This gender-specific focus allows for deeper exploration of experiences that might feel uncomfortable to discuss in mixed settings.
What to Expect from Therapy Groups in Austin
If you’re considering joining a therapy group for sexless relationships, you might wonder what actually happens in these sessions and how they’re structured.
Group Format and Structure: Groups typically meet regularly, often weekly or bi-weekly, for a set duration (such as 60-90 minutes). Each session follows a general framework that includes check-ins, focused discussion on specific topics related to sexless relationships and intimacy, skill-building exercises, and time for questions and support.
Topics Covered: Throughout the group experience, you’ll explore various aspects of sexless relationships, including:
- Understanding desire discrepancy and how couples navigate different levels of sexual interest
- Communication skills for discussing sex, intimacy, and needs without defensiveness or shutdown
- Addressing physical factors that affect sexual activity, from pain during sex to erectile dysfunction
- Rebuilding emotional connection as a foundation for physical intimacy
- Managing the emotional impact of rejection, both giving and receiving
- Exploring what intimacy means beyond intercourse and how to maintain connection in various ways
- Understanding how stress, parenting, and life transitions affect sexual relationships
- Identifying personal barriers to intimacy, whether they stem from past trauma, shame, or negative messages about sexuality
- Developing realistic expectations and goals for your sexual relationship
- Navigating conversations about sexual dysfunction, medical factors, or sex addiction when these issues affect intimacy
Confidentiality and Safety: Group therapy operates under strict confidentiality agreements. What’s shared in the group stays in the group. This creates safety for vulnerable conversations about intimate topics. As the facilitator, I establish clear group agreements at the beginning, and the group holds each other accountable to these standards throughout our time together.
The Therapist’s Role: As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist serving the Austin area, I facilitate these groups with a focus on creating a supportive, non-judgmental environment. My role includes guiding discussions, offering psychoeducation about intimacy and relationships, teaching communication and conflict skills, and ensuring that all group members feel heard and respected. I draw on my training in couples therapy, sex therapy, and various therapeutic modalities to provide informed, compassionate guidance.
Virtual and In-Person Options: Depending on the group structure, sessions may be offered in-person at my practice location serving Austin, Lakeway, Westlake, and Bee Cave, or virtually to accommodate different schedules and comfort levels. Virtual groups offer privacy and convenience, while in-person groups provide face-to-face connection.
Group Size: Therapy groups are typically kept small, often 6-10 participants, to ensure that everyone has adequate time to share and that the group maintains an intimate, supportive atmosphere.
Who Benefits from These Therapy Groups
Therapy groups for sexless relationships are designed for individuals who are:
Committed to Their Relationship: You still love your partner and want to find ways to rebuild or reimagine intimacy in your relationship. You’re willing to do the work, even when it’s uncomfortable, because the relationship matters to you.
Open to Exploring Vulnerability: Group therapy requires willingness to share your experiences with others and to receive feedback and support. You don’t need to share everything immediately, but a general openness to the process is important.
Seeking Connection with Others: You recognize that isolation makes the situation harder and that connecting with others who understand your experience could be helpful.
Ready to Learn New Approaches: You’re receptive to trying new communication strategies, exploring different ways of thinking about intimacy, and being gently challenged to examine your own patterns and contributions to the relationship dynamic.
Self-Aware and Curious: You’re willing to look at your own role in the relationship, not just your partner’s behavior. You’re curious about understanding yourself better and exploring how your personal history, beliefs, and patterns affect your intimate relationship.
These groups serve couples and individuals at various stages of navigating sexless relationships:
- Couples who have been together for 20+ years and enjoy each other’s company but have no sexual relationship
- Partners who still love each other but feel like they’re moving toward becoming roommates rather than romantic partners
- Individuals struggling with low or no desire for sex while their partner wants more physical intimacy
- People navigating sexual dysfunction, erectile dysfunction, or pain during sex
- Those recovering from infidelity and trying to rebuild trust and intimacy
- Couples exploring polyamory or alternate relationship structures who need to address intimacy challenges within their primary relationship
- Individuals whose partners are dealing with sex addiction and who need support navigating the impact on their sexual relationship
The group environment is designed for adults ages 25 and older who are socially aware, intelligent, curious, and comfortable being challenged gently. Most participants are professionals, often in IT or allied healthcare fields, who bring a thoughtful, engaged approach to the therapeutic process.
How Therapy Groups Complement Individual and Couples Work
While therapy groups offer unique benefits, they work best as part of a comprehensive approach to addressing intimacy challenges in your relationship.
Individual Therapy: Individual work allows you to explore your personal history, beliefs about sex and intimacy, and patterns that you bring to the relationship. You might address past trauma, work through shame, or develop better understanding of your own needs and desires.
Couples Therapy: Couples sessions provide space for you and your partner to work on communication, address relationship dynamics, and navigate conflict together. In couples therapy, you can explore the specific patterns in your relationship that contribute to the lack of physical intimacy.
Therapy Groups: Groups offer community, shared learning, and the normalization that comes from connecting with others facing similar challenges. They provide perspectives and strategies you might not encounter in individual or couples work.
The most effective approach often involves combining these modalities. You might participate in couples therapy to work on your relationship dynamics while also attending a therapy group to gain broader perspective and connect with others. Or you might engage in individual work to address personal barriers while drawing on group support for accountability and encouragement.
**Taking the First Step: Is a Therapy Group Right for You?
If you’re considering joining a therapy group for sexless relationships, you might wonder whether now is the right time or if this approach would truly help your situation.
Signs a Therapy Group Might Be Right for You:
- You feel isolated in your experience and want to connect with others who understand
- You’re motivated to work on your relationship but feel stuck in the same patterns
- You want practical tools and strategies for addressing intimacy challenges
- You’re open to learning from others’ experiences and sharing your own
- You want accountability and support for making changes in your relationship
- You feel curious about different approaches to rebuilding intimacy
Questions to Consider:
- Am I comfortable sharing personal information in a group setting, even if I start slowly?
- Do I have the time and energy to commit to regular group sessions?
- Am I willing to be receptive to feedback and to challenge myself?
- Do I believe that understanding others’ experiences could help me understand my own situation better?
Starting the Conversation:
If you’re interested in learning more about therapy groups for sexless relationships in the Austin area, the first step is simply reaching out. You can contact me to discuss whether a therapy group might be a good fit for your situation, ask questions about the group format and logistics, and explore how group therapy might complement any other therapeutic work you’re doing.
During an initial conversation, I can help you understand what to expect, address any concerns or questions you have, and determine together whether this is the right time and the right approach for you.
Finding Your Way Forward in Austin
Living in a sexless relationship doesn’t mean your relationship is beyond repair, and it doesn’t mean you’re broken or abnormal. It means you’re facing a challenge that many couples navigate, often in silence, and that there are pathways forward.
In Austin, Lakeway, Westlake, and Bee Cave, support is available. Whether you’re a couple who still enjoys each other’s company but has lost physical intimacy over years together, an individual struggling with desire discrepancy in your relationship, or partners navigating sexual dysfunction or other barriers to intimacy, therapy groups offer a space to break the silence, connect with others, and develop new tools for addressing this challenge.
The work isn’t easy. Rebuilding intimacy, especially after years without it, requires vulnerability, patience, and commitment from both partners. It requires honesty about difficult topics, willingness to examine your own patterns and contributions, and openness to trying approaches that might feel uncomfortable at first.
But you don’t have to do this work alone. Therapy groups provide community, perspective, practical strategies, and the encouragement that comes from knowing others are walking a similar path. Combined with individual work or couples therapy, group support can help you move from isolation and frustration toward connection and hope.
Moving from Desperation to Direction
When you first acknowledge that your relationship has become sexless, the emotions can feel overwhelming. The sadness, frustration, anger, loneliness, and desperation create a weight that’s difficult to carry alone. You might lie awake at night wondering if this is how the rest of your life will feel, or whether there’s any possibility of reconnecting with your partner in meaningful ways.
Therapy groups for sexless relationships offer a beginning. Not a guarantee or a quick fix, but a genuine starting point for change. You’ll meet others who understand what it’s like to stand at the edge of something both familiar and broken, who know the specific pain of loving someone while feeling profoundly disconnected from them.
In the group, you’ll learn communication skills that help you talk about sex and intimacy without defensiveness or shutdown. You’ll explore what intimacy means for you and your partner, beyond the narrow focus on intercourse. You’ll develop tools for navigating conflict, expressing needs, and rebuilding emotional connection as a foundation for physical intimacy.
You’ll also gain perspective. Sometimes hearing how another person navigated erectile dysfunction in their relationship helps you approach the same issue with less shame and more compassion. Sometimes learning that someone else’s 20-year relationship included a long period without sex before they rebuilt intimacy gives you hope that change is possible. Sometimes simply knowing you’re not the only person experiencing this challenge makes it feel more manageable.
Practical Information: Getting Started
If you’re ready to explore whether a therapy group for sexless relationships might help your situation, here’s how to take the next step:
Reach Out: Contact Revive Intimacy Couples Counseling to inquire about current or upcoming therapy groups. You can ask questions about the group format, timing, and focus, share your situation and goals, and discuss whether group therapy would be appropriate for you.
Initial Consultation: Before joining a group, we’ll typically have a conversation to determine if the group is a good fit for your needs. This ensures that all group members share similar goals and are at a similar place in their therapeutic journey.
Intake Process: If a group is appropriate for you, you’ll complete a brief intake form covering background information, practice policies, and consent. This process is designed to be straightforward and supportive, creating a collaborative start to our work together.
Group Commitment: Therapy groups work best when members commit to attending regularly for the duration of the group. This consistency builds trust, allows for deeper work, and creates a supportive community.
Cost and Insurance: Revive Intimacy Couples Counseling works with out-of-network benefits. When you reach out, we can discuss pricing and whether your insurance plan offers out-of-network reimbursement. Understanding the financial aspect upfront helps you make an informed decision about participation.
Flexible Approach: The therapeutic process is grounded in trust, curiosity, and mutual respect. While groups follow a general structure, there’s flexibility to address the emerging needs and concerns of group members. Your experience and comfort matter throughout the process.
What Happens After the Group Ends
Therapy groups are typically time-limited, running for a set number of weeks or months. What happens after the group concludes?
For many participants, the group provides foundational skills, insights, and confidence that they continue to apply in their relationships. You might leave the group with:
- Improved communication skills for discussing intimacy with your partner
- Reduced shame and increased normalization around your experience
- Practical strategies for rebuilding emotional and physical connection
- Greater self-awareness about your own needs, barriers, and patterns
- Connection to others who have faced similar challenges (while respecting confidentiality, some groups choose to stay in touch for ongoing support)
Some people continue with individual therapy or couples therapy after completing a group, using what they learned in the group setting as a foundation for deeper individual or relational work. Others feel equipped to continue the work independently, drawing on the tools and insights they’ve gained.
The end of a therapy group isn’t the end of your journey. It’s a checkpoint along the way. The work of maintaining intimacy in a long-term relationship is ongoing, but a therapy group can provide the knowledge, skills, and confidence to navigate that work with greater competence and hope.
Your Relationship Deserves Attention
If you’ve been living in a sexless relationship, you know how easy it is to push the issue aside, to focus on work or parenting or daily logistics rather than confronting something that feels overwhelming or painful. But the disconnection doesn’t go away through avoidance. It persists, creating distance between you and your partner even as you navigate life together.
Your relationship deserves attention. The intimacy you’ve lost or never fully developed matters. Your feelings of loneliness, frustration, and sadness matter. And your desire to reconnect, to feel like a romantic loving couple again, to rebuild a sex life that brings you both pleasure and connection, that desire is valid and worth pursuing.
Therapy groups for sexless relationships in Austin offer a supportive, structured way to address these challenges. You’ll work alongside others who understand your experience, guided by a therapist trained in both couples therapy and sex therapy. You’ll break the silence that has surrounded your struggle, gain new tools for navigating intimacy challenges, and move from isolation toward connection.
The path forward isn’t always straightforward. Some weeks will feel discouraging. Some conversations with your partner will be difficult. Progress might be slower than you’d like. But you’ll be moving forward rather than remaining stuck, and you’ll be doing so with support, guidance, and community.
Taking the Next Step Today
If you’re ready to explore how a therapy group for sexless relationships might support your journey, the next step is simple: reach out. Contact Revive Intimacy Couples Counseling to learn more about current and upcoming groups, ask questions about the process, and begin a conversation about whether group therapy is right for you.
You don’t need to have all the answers before you reach out. You don’t need to know exactly what you want or how to fix your relationship. You just need to be willing to take one step forward, to say that the silence and isolation have become too heavy to carry alone, and that you’re ready to explore what support might look like.
In Austin, Lakeway, Westlake, and Bee Cave, therapy groups for sexless relationships are creating spaces where people can speak honestly about their struggles, learn from each other’s experiences, and develop practical tools for rebuilding intimacy. These groups won’t solve every problem or guarantee specific outcomes, but they offer something essential: community, guidance, and hope.
Your relationship may feel distant right now. The physical intimacy you once shared may seem impossible to reclaim. But you’re still here, still wondering if change is possible, still holding onto some thread of hope that connection can be rebuilt.
That thread of hope is enough to start with.
Reach out today to learn more about therapy groups for sexless relationships and to explore how group support might help you move from desperation and isolation toward connection and possibility. Your journey toward rebuilding intimacy begins with a single conversation.
About Revive Intimacy Couples Counseling
Revive Intimacy Couples Counseling is a therapy practice serving couples and individuals in Austin, Lakeway, Westlake, and Bee Cave, Texas. As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist, I specialize in couples therapy, sex therapy, individual therapy, family therapy, and grief counseling. I offer therapy groups for men and women in sexless relationships, providing supportive community and practical tools for those navigating intimacy challenges. My approach is grounded in curiosity, compassion, and evidence-based therapeutic modalities designed to help couples reconnect, improve communication, and rebuild meaningful intimacy in their relationships.
To learn more about therapy groups for sexless relationships or to schedule an initial consultation, visit www.reviveintimacy.com or reach out directly to begin the conversation.
