Desire, Exhaustion, and the Space Between You

By Derek Colvin, LPC-S, CGT - The Giant Therapist

Real. Raw. Unfiltered Reflections on Wanting, Withholding, and the Quiet Places We Hide in Marriage

There’s this strange, familiar ache in long-term relationships, the one that shows up right in the space where desire meets exhaustion. It doesn’t come with fireworks or dramatic endings. It usually creeps in quietly, in the unspoken moments at the end of the day. One partner rolls over with hope, the other rolls over with nothing left to give, and suddenly a simple mismatch becomes a story both people feel alone inside. It’s tender, it’s confusing, and it hits far deeper than the surface-level jokes we make about sex and sleep.

And if we’re honest, it’s rarely about sex itself. It’s about what sex represents - connection, care, being wanted, being remembered. And when that part of the relationship starts hiccuping, people don’t just miss the physical closeness. They miss the feeling of belonging to someone, even when the day has drained everything from them.

When Desire Isn’t Synced Up

Most couples hit a moment in their marriage where desire stops lining up neatly. One person still feels the pull at the end of the day, while the other feels a bone-deep exhaustion that doesn’t leave much room for anything beyond closing their eyes and hoping the world will be quieter in the morning. And it can feel confusing, because it wasn’t always like this. There was a time when the pull toward each other felt effortless.

But bodies age. Responsibilities expand. Hormones shift. And intimacy becomes less about spontaneous heat and more about remembering how to reach for each other in the middle of a life that keeps taking more and more space.

“It’s not that the desire died, it’s that life got louder than the signals you used to send.”

I see this in the therapy room constantly: the men who feel rejected and don’t have the language for the hurt beneath the anger, and the women who feel guilty for not wanting what they used to want but are too exhausted to explain why. People blame libido when the real story is usually unspoken stress, resentment, or loneliness hiding underneath the surface.

The Clash of Meaning: Why Sex Isn’t the Same Experience for Both People

Sex never means the same thing to both partners, and it never has. For some people, sex is the main doorway into connection. It’s how they feel love, affirmation, closeness, and reassurance that the relationship is still alive. For others, sex is where emotional safety lands after connection has already been built. If the outside-the-bedroom intimacy is thin, sex feels more like pressure than bonding. Those differences create a subtle, painful misunderstanding: one person reaches for closeness while the other withdraws to protect what little energy they have left. It’s not rejection, but it feels like it. And that feeling can snowball into resentment so quickly you don’t even realize you’re in a new cycle until it’s already shaping the distance between you.

"Most fights about sex aren’t about sex — they’re about feeling unseen, unheard, or alone.”

When couples can finally name what sex has symbolized for each of them - connection, validation, safety, escape, reassurance, affection, relief - things start to shift. Not because desire magically syncs up, but because the shame around it loosens.

The Invisible Work That Makes Intimacy Possible

Every couple who has been together a long time learns the same truth: the bedroom is only as alive as the relationship outside of it. If you haven’t laughed together, touched each other gently, repaired conflict, or had an actual emotional conversation in a while, your body will know it before your brain does. Intimacy can’t be separated from the emotional climate of the home. When the connection outside feels thin, intimacy inside often collapses under the weight of all the unspoken tension. And yet, rebuilding doesn’t usually require something dramatic. It’s the small things that start to stitch the relationship back together. A hand on the lower back when you pass each other in the kitchen. A text that says, “Thinking about you” instead of the usual logistics. Sitting next to each other on the couch without being on separate planets. Those things matter far more than people think.

“Desire doesn’t fade because you stopped loving each other — it fades because you stopped tending to the quiet places where connection grows.”

People underestimate the power of slow repairs. They want the spark back instantly without recognizing that sparks only exist when there’s oxygen. Connection is that oxygen.

Relearning Each Other in This Season of Life

One of the most underrated parts of long-term relationships is the constant need to relearn each other. The version of you who desired each other at 22 is not the same couple navigating exhaustion at 40. You’ve changed. Your bodies have changed. Your responsibilities have changed. Your energy has changed. The relationship asks for more creativity now, not because something is broken, but because you are both different than the people who first fell into each other’s arms.

And that’s okay.

I often tell couples: you’re not trying to get back to who you used to be. You’re learning how to be

close as the people you’ve become. That means adjusting, communicating, experimenting, slowing down, and sometimes laughing about the fact that your best nights together have to be scheduled around work, kids, and when your nervous system can finally exhale. Scheduling intimacy isn’t unsexy. Losing each other slowly is.

Finding Your Way Back to Each Other

If there’s been distance, emotional or physical, you don’t fix it through pressure, guilt, or demand. You fix it through presence. Through curiosity. Through humility. Through conversations that feel uncomfortable in all the best ways. Through shifting from “Why don’t you want me?” to “What helps you feel closer to me?”

“Desire grows in the places where we feel emotionally safe, not where we feel obligated.”

When couples finally get this, things soften. You stop tallying who initiated last. You stop reading every “not tonight” as a verdict. You stop assuming the worst. You start meeting each other where you actually are instead of where you think you should be. You start connecting again, slow, steady, human. And from that place, intimacy stops being a fight and becomes an invitation again.

If This Hit Home…

If this stirred something in you, maybe a longing, maybe a fear, maybe a truth you’ve been avoiding, you don’t have to figure it out alone. This is the work I do every day with couples and individuals who are tired of feeling disconnected and are ready to understand themselves and each other on a deeper level, finally. If you want support navigating the space between desire and exhaustion, I’d love to walk with you through it. Book a session with me at thegianttherapist.com, and let’s start untangling the places where the relationship feels stuck.

And if you want more real, raw conversations about marriage, intimacy, and the inner world of men, follow @themajopodcast on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, and everywhere else.

You don’t have to quietly struggle through the distance. You can learn to reach for each other again, and feel wanted, chosen, and understood in ways you may have forgotten were possible.