6-step plan for when you’re not attracted to your husband or partner anymore

What to do when you no longer find your husband attractive

You’re here because the spark is no longer there – you’re not attracted to your husband anymore. Even if you still love him, you may no longer find him s*xually attractive.

Naturally, your relationship has changed over some time from perhaps the heady days of almost obsessive love to a more contented love and appreciation! It does so for most couples.

Before we can begin to consider what to do about that lack of attraction, we need to figure out what causes it. We can’t come up with a fitting solution without knowing and understanding the underlying problem.

So, let’s dive in.

What’s the reason you’re not attracted to your husband (anymore)

You may have absolutely no idea why you’re no longer attracted to your husband.

Or maybe you’re not too chuffed with their hairiness, their hygiene or the size of their ‘equipment’ (though, let me tell you, that doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to its potential for enjoyment for you both!)

But, I’d like you to take a moment to run through the following lists to see if you recognise one or more of the reasons.

You were never attracted to your husband

Maybe you were never attracted to your husband – you married for other reasons than love. You might have even had your doubts the night before your wedding!

Perhaps you have an arranged marriage.

Or, your ovaries were ringing the bell. You saw the chance of ever having children slip by slowly if you didn’t tie the not with your fiance.

Or you were scared you’d be left on the shelves. You had a chance to marry and knew your spouse would want kids, so you jumped in with both feet.

Do you still love your husband or partner?

If you do, I suspect you feel torn and don’t know what to do for the best – you don’t find your partner or spouse attractive (anymore), but you do love them. Such a conundrum!

Read on to discover the possible underlying reason and what you can do about it.

However, if you no longer love your spouse, you’ll have to make a decision – separate or reinvest time and energy in your marriage to see if you can save it.

Let’s get cracking to discover what might have happened to your relationship, you and your husband.

Your relationship no longer is what it once was

You’ve lost your attraction for your husband because:

1. You live like siblings – you’ve become too comfortable.
2. You’ve been feeling neglected for too long.
3. Your relationship problems have become too overwhelming, and the lack of physical attraction you could once see through your fingers has become difficult to ignore.

Have you changed?

We develop, grow and change daily.

So, quite apart from us getting complacent and in the habit of taking things for granted, you’re not the same as you were when you first met.

Here’s what might have happened, causing you to no longer be attracted to your husband or partner.

1. You’re no longer physically attracted to your husband after having a baby.
2. You’re now attracted to someone of a different gender.
3. You’re having an affair or one-night stand.
4. You were attracted to his personality first, and physical attraction always came second, but now it’s breaking you up.
5. You’re going through or have gone through the menopause.
6. Your differences in values and beliefs increasingly bother you.
7. You’ve become bored in your marriage and the bedroom.
8. He’s never found a way to really please and satisfy you, and it’s increasingly put you off.

Has your husband changed?

1. He’s changed towards you – he’s become mean and disrespectful.
2. Your spouse has a significant weight problem and may even have become obese.
3. Your spouse has lost weight, and now you’re no longer attracted to him.
4. He’s let himself go, no longer taking care of his appearance.
5. Your husband’s libido has taken a nosedive, leaving you feeling rejected, disappointed, hurt and angry.
6. You’re no longer attracted to your husband after he cheated.

What makes a person attractive, if not s*xually

So, what makes a person attractive?

You’ve landed on this page wanting to know what to do now you find your spouse no longer attractive. That may even mean you’re contemplating making a life-changing decision.

Therefore, I’d like you to take a look at the problem in a broader context first because, doubtless, the problem has consumed your thinking of late. That may have caused you to lose sight of his other qualities and the reasons you married him.

What makes someone potentially attractive isn’t only their appearance. They may also be desirable because of:

• Their values and beliefs
• The way they hold themselves
• The balance between their vulnerability, confidence and strength
• Their capacity for empathy, compassion and generosity of spirit
• The way they handle themselves in difficult situations
• The way they’ve overcome adversity (or are still dealing with challenges)
• Their shared hobbies and interests
• Their sense of humour
• Chemistry – that undefinable element
• Their achievements
• Their infectious laughter and positivity
• The way they lead and encourage others
• Their resilience – they’re solid as a rock
• The way they make you feel.

The latter is a real hook.

The need for giving and receiving attention is a human given – an essential emotional need. How easy it is to love someone when they lavish positive attention on us.

Besides that, do you recognise any of the above qualities in your husband or partner, even if you’re not s*xually attracted to him?

Perhaps you’ve tried to hide your true feelings from your husband, but chances are he already knows something is up.

Your husband already knows you no longer fancy him

Perhaps you’re still making love more out of duty than desire. And, despite your feelings, you may give in – even if very mechanically. Or you want to prevent your husband from noticing you’re no longer attracted to him.

More likely:

• You’re seldom in the mood these days.
• You’ve developed avoidant behaviour.
• You avail yourself of one of your standard excuses.
• When you’re in the mood, you’ve got other ways to satisfy yourself.
• You fantasise about someone else while having s*x with your husband.
• You have a great lover who knows how to meet your physical needs.
• You engage in one-night stands.

However, there’s a good chance your husband is troubled by the lack of intimacy in your marriage. He may already feel unattractive in your presence.

However hard you may have tried not to let him know how you truly feel, your body language, actions and non-actions have probably already given your true feelings away.

Here’s what he may have noticed in addition to the above:

• You hope or pretend to be asleep when he comes to bed.
• You avoid looking at him or can barely hide your displeasure when you do look.
• You hardly touch him anymore in case he interprets it as an invite for s*x.
• You kiss him, but it’s without passion.
• You pull away or try to avoid his advances.
• You avoid making love and go through the motions if you do.
• You don’t compliment him any longer.
• You may have commented on his weight.

Your husband may already have become depressed by the decline in your marriage. And, perhaps, so have you.

What do you want?

Since you’ve landed here, desire and physical intimacy are important to you. You’ve sadly seen a slow (or sudden) decline, or you’ve never experienced the height of physical attraction in this marriage.

You may have already been tempted to have an extramarital affair. Maybe you’re already fantasising about making love with someone else and even looking for ‘permission’ to go ahead, hoping to find it among these paragraphs.

However, passion, desire and physical attraction are interwoven in a relationship. And desire wanes for most couples.

I wonder, therefore, if you’ve given the best of yourself in this relationship to make it a success or have given up some time ago.

Have you spent as much time and effort building and strengthening your relationship as looking after your car, home, and yourself?

After all, creating a healthy relationship and happy, long-lasting marriage takes a lot of work and the acquisition of a ton of relationship skills.

What can you do when you’re not attracted to your husband?

When you don’t find your husband attractive anymore, it’s time for my 7-step recovery plan.

Step 1

You’ll have to decide to ask your husband for a break or even a divorce or do all you can to save your marriage.

Your task is to figure out if everything that does perhaps work well in this marriage balances out the problem with intimacy.

Not an easy task, so take your time. There’s no need to decide overnight.

And, I’ve got your back!

Here are my articles that can help you make that decision:

• Marriage compatibility test
• How to decide to stay together or break up.

If, after giving it all some careful thought, you decide it’s time to break up and divorce, then be sure to read the following articles:

• How to tell your spouse you want a divorce
• How to end a long-term relationship

For the rest of this article, I assume you want to try to save your marriage.

Step 2

Be dead honest now – there’s no one looking over your shoulder – and ask yourself (even if you love your spouse or partner):

• Has the relationship with your husband come second place?
• Have you been absorbed by the kids, your friends, the challenges of a particularly challenging time and other stresses and chores?
• Have you spent as much time building a healthy relationship as you could outside the bedroom?
• Have you felt so irritated and frustrated with your husband lately that he might feel you’re pulling the rug from underneath his feet, depressed and worthless?
• Could your husband be feeling undermined by you for any reason at all?

Step 3. Create a happier marriage – 3 tips

1. Deal with your marital issues.

Possibly you’ve already tried, but success has been limited or missing altogether.

Scroll through my Category Map to find the articles that appeal to you. Each article contains detailed information, expert relationship advice and savvy tips.

I’d like you to pay particular attention to my page on how to argue better in a relationship, even if you seldom argue. It has a ton of information on how to set yourself up for having ‘board meetings’ and difficult conversations.

Familiarising yourself with all the info in that article is about learning the essential relationship skills you’ll need to prepare you for the next steps.

I’d also like you to consider marriage counselling at this stage!

2. Focus on and step up your positive interactions

Relationship researcher John Gottman states that couples who have five positive engagements for every negative one tend to be more successful in building a healthy relationship.

Think of:

• Complimenting your spouse or partner
• Verbalising when you agree with them
• Valuing their contributions to the relationship and family
• Teasing and joking.
• Putting their music on.
• Listening to stories about their day.
• Doing something unexpected for them to make their day.
• Playfully touching them – stroking over their head, tapping them on the shoulder, etc.
• Anything else, however small that makes them feel noticed and valued.

3. Brainstorm some new and exciting activities.

The purpose is to entice your brain to release some feel-good hormones that naturally make you feel closer.

It doesn’t have to cost anything if money is a problem. A midnight picnic will do it.

Why bother with all this? How will that sort out your not feeling attracted to your husband?

A change in your attitude and behaviour means that your spouse must adapt their behaviour to make a new ‘fit’. That change may help to increase your happiness.

If your efforts have no effect on your happiness and, in particular, how you feel about your husband, it may be time to consider if a breakup is on the cards.

But, before that – it’s time for Step 4 – dealing with the problem directly.

Step 4. Tell your spouse what you want

Be honest about it. “Yeah, right.” you may think, but how do you do that.

You should have prepared the ground already by investing considerable time and energy into your marriage or relationship as per Step 3.

So, now it’s time to step up your efforts regarding no longer finding your husband attractive by dealing with the problem more directly.

Here’s what you could say to tell him what you want:

• “I really like the way you do…, could you add…”
• “I would love you to do…. instead of … for a while to see how that feels.”
• “We tend to do that, I would love to change that to…”
• “I know you feel… about…, but I would love to see you…”
• “You used to do…, to be honest, I would much prefer if you would do that again instead of…”
• “To be honest, I feel awkward / slightly off / less turned on / cold / … when you do or say…”
• “I feel turned off when you… and feel myself warming up when…”
• “I’m really unhappy when I see you.., hear you…, smell your…. It would make a difference to me if you…”

Step 5. Build your physical relationship without having s*x

Ideally, I’d like you to take this step with the help of a psychosexual therapist. They’re the experts in this field. Psychosexual therapy is a specialist form of talking therapy only.

Why would you be more likely to be successful?

Because it would be so easy for either one of you to sabotage this stage, also, this step is unlikely to be successful if you haven’t been able to deal with underlying resentments and other problems.

However, I accept that you or your spouse may not want the help of a psychosexual therapist, or you may not have access to one.

No s*x? What then?

By building your physical relationship, I mean, stop focussing on having s*x and start exploring how the non-sensitive areas of your body only feel and react.

So, here’s how to go about it:

• Agree you won’t have s*x for the foreseeable future. That’s going to be a tough one to sell to your partner. But it will be easier once they accept it’s not for good and aimed at building expectations.
• Agree not to touch genital and other ‘sensitive’ areas for a while until you feel completely relaxed and comfortable with each preceding stage.
• Take small opportunities to touch your partner or spouse briefly. You might stroke their shoulder in passing, take their hand, pat them on the back, put your arm around them and briefly kiss them more often.
• Build on that with, for example, hand, foot, neck and head massages – still not touching sensitive areas and respecting each other’s boundaries and directions.
• Then it’s time to start the massaging in the bedroom and include the stomach, back, lower legs and lower arms.

You can see now where this is going, I suspect!

Be sure not to move on to the next stage until you each feel ready for it.

You’ll look forward to the next level if all goes well.

What if you don’t look forward to the next stage, something happens you don’t like, or you have questions?

That’s precisely why you need to be able to talk to a psychosexual therapist.

No longer compatible?

What if your distaste is too overwhelming, particularly if you still love your spouse or partner?

If you can’t overcome the problem, no matter what you try, you may then need to consider ending your marriage.

But, my advice is not to consider separation and divorce before you understand what you still have in your marriage with the help of my free marriage compatibility test or comprehensive relationship test.