Sure, there could be reasons for sexual draught that have nothing to do with the relationship. Your partner is frigid, cold, lazy, you name it; one one of you is suffering from grief, depression, alcohol abuse, or physical or hormonal issues. OK, that could be it. But the numbers show that if you take all the afore-mentioned possibilities and add them together they're still less likely to be the problem than the number one reason for disappeared sex: unresolved emotional issues. More specifically, Resentment Pile-up.

Most often, when the sex is gone, it is actually lying way deep beneath a compost heap of hurts, unfulfilled expectations, rejections -- the sludge of resentment. OK, so it ain't pretty -- but you already know this.

In Tip #1 (see archives) we talked about a strategy for keeping the resentment from building up. It's a strategy that works best if you start it early in your relationship and develop it as your relationship grows. However, if your relationship is at the point where you wake up one day and realize you haven't had sex in ten years, your compost heap of Resentment Pile-up is probably festering to an acid boil. Too late for prophylactic strategies.
How could this happen to two people who were so in love and who once enjoyed sex so much? Let us count the ways:

1) The honeymoon's over. In his book The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman gives the wild-in-love period of a relationship about 2 years, max. And it is likely that those 2 years are in turn marked off in 6-month turning points. You'll see the end of the rainbow coming.
2) Being "in love" is not the same as loving. Chapman would say that being in love is emotional while loving is taking action. Bottom line: After the Ecstasy, the Laundry (as author Jack Kornfield put it).
3) Wrong expectations. If you disagree with or don't like hearing about 1 and 2; then you're most definitely doing 3. What you're expecting from your relationship does not match the natural ebb and flow of a love relationship. Entertain the idea that it's not your partner you need to change; it's your expectations about "love."
4) There could be a sexual imbalance -- one partner wants to do it more than the other. This is workable, but without taking care of some of the other items on this list, solutions won't come. Resentments build up on both sides. People dig in and entrench.
5) You speak different "love languages." Gary Chapman claims that very few people marry or pair up with someone who speaks the same love language they do. Time to learn a second language.
6) Vicious Circle. Whether the problem is love styles or life styles, each partner continues to do more of the same. Unfortunately, a partner's strategy for coping is often what's causing the problem to begin with -- except that as the rug pulls out from under, they continue to do it harder and faster. Think about this. Ooh baby, it's a kicker.
7) Add all this together and you get Resentment Pile-up.

THE BIG THAW: Step 1
Your relationship is chilly and you're about to give up on the partner, much less the sex. Hold everything. As a last ditch effort, there's a little program you can follow that might just start the spring thaw and you could be heading for summer heat all over again. Here are the steps: 1) Collect the data. 2) Think action not words. 3) Change your program (think and act like your mate) 4) touch without sex 5) Buck up, and risk being open, vulnerable, expressive of your feelings. 6) Don't talk, take action (did I say this?). 7) Have patience.

So let's get on with it.

The very first thing to do when the sex goes away is relearn what turns your partner on. You're both suffering from resentment pile-up, so start at a safe distance, a mere fact-finding mission.

If we're having computer troubles, most of us know better than to just start hitting buttons and banging the screen, even though our frustrations may tell us to do just that. Begrudgingly, we go off on a fact finding mission, try to learn as much as we can about the computer and the problem, assess what we can do, and start fresh. Funny how few of us use this same common sense when our relationship malfunctions.

Even if you and your partner have been living together for years (sometimes especially then -- we take so much for granted) you may be surprised at what you don't know about your partner.

No matter what state of disarray your relationship is in, if things are really frosty, if you can't imagine ever having sex with your mate again, still, compile the facts, sit back and look them over, let them mull around in your head. This is the first step. Look at your partner anew. Pretend you don't know them (you may already feel this way!). But treat their inner secrets as a simple puzzle, not as morass of pain. For step one, you are dispassionately gathering data like a reporter.

To get you started, here are two approaches you can take that, though they would work best if they involved cooperation from your partner, they can also be started alone, just to get your mind loosened up. The first is list making. Try to keep the lists fun and away from hot-button issues.

First, the list assignments. These list assignments shouldn't hurt (much) and might be enlightening. As you draw attention away from he-said-she-said, and focus on tell-me-about-you, you may be surprised to find the process thawing some of those glaciers, even if just to cause a few surface cracks. Lower your expectations; do it with an open mind. Ask questions not to prove something but to learn something. Even if you don't have a partner at this time, it is important to know your own love styles and issues. Make your own lists. The knowledge may save you some trouble in the future. If you have a partner, ask him or her to make a list too.

List exercise 1: List some very specific actions your partner does that turn you on.

The point here is to think about things other than sexual things that turn you on. For example: The way she smiles in the morning when she's half asleep. The way he used to jump in and help with the dishes. The way he deals with our children. The way she used to pay for dinner when we went out to eat. The lists should be fairly long; give yourselves a minimum number of items on the order of ten or twenty. Once you've made your lists, trade them with your partner.

From here, there are two ways you can go, depending on whether things are just a bit chilly or they're at the iceberg stage.

a) If your relationship is an iceberg of resentment, once you've traded lists, say nothing to each other. No expectations, no justifications. Just look over each other's list, and consider it.

Possibly over time, you will find a few things on the list that you wouldn't mind doing every now and again, and then surprise your partner by doing them (or more of them, in the case of something you're already doing). And your partner should do the same for you.

If things are so bad, your partner doesn't want to hear your list, try to get his or hers. Tell your partner that you want to use the information to experiment with ways of improving your relationship -- "humor me," you can add. (If this doesn't work, next stop: therapy.)

b) If you and your partner are at the point where you're trying desperately to make some headway together, instead of simply taking the lists and going off in silence, you might want to have discussions. But never let them go into the blame area. Consider them data gathering missions, not problem solving missions. You're not in a place where you can solve the problem until you have the data.

List exercise 2: The second two lists have to do with your personal love language. A lot of times, the sex won't happen until the partner feels loved -- loved on his or her own terms. The secret that Chapman points out, however, is that people don't register love in the same way.

1) List the little things you do to show your partner that you love them. 2) List the little things your partner could do to show you s/he loves you. Try to create a list that has at least ten items on it.

Again you want to trade lists, if you have a partner. And before you look at your partner's list, you should be aware of the 5 love languages Gary Chapman has uncovered. 1) gifts, 2) services 3) words of affirmation, 4) physical touch, 5) quality time.

These are the ways that people perceive love, according to Chapman. Two things about these languages cause an interesting catch-22 at the heart of many couples' issues. First, if a person is not being spoken to in their love language (for example, they register "service" as love and you are giving them gifts), they aren't going to feel loved. You may double up your efforts and buy more gifts (especially if gifts are what ring your own bell) and your mate -- quite baffling to you -- will still insist that you don't love them anymore. And the second paradox is that a person will tend to want to express love in his or her own language. Chapman claims that your love language is pretty much determined at an early age, and stays dominant through your entire life, so you can forget changing yours or your partner's. If you like words of affirmation and she likes physical touch, you're both going to have to be bi-lingual. Since few partners speak the same language, you can see where this is leading: trouble in paradise.

When you and your partner trade lists, first you want to try and guess what your partner's love language is. Then you want to ask yourself if you can learn to speak it. Can you give gifts, even though you may feel it is silly or shallow?

As you look over your partner's lists, ask yourself casually if there are any little things you notice on that list that you might be able to accommodate pretty easily, things you could change about your approach, your actions, or your love style that might not be so painful at all. Just leave it as an open question as you go through these thawing steps. Don't feel that changing your approach implies you've been doing something wrong. If you and your mate have been playing the resentment game, you've probably heard enough of that and are fed up with it. Instead, just look at it as trying to add more things that are right.

[to be continued…
Next week: a few more fact-finding strategies and then, "starting the big thaw."]