When Sex Starts to Feel Like a Chore: Duty, Exhaustion, and the Stories Beneath Desire

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

Real, Raw, Unfiltered Reflections on the quiet distance couples feel when intimacy turns into obligation.

The Shift Nobody Talks About Out Loud

Most couples don’t notice the exact moment sex stops feeling playful and starts feeling heavy. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in the in-between spaces. The late nights after the kids finally stop calling your name, the mornings when you’re both running late, the weeks packed with work stress, meal prep, errands, and the sense that you’re always behind on something. Somewhere along the way, sex stops being a place where you meet each other and starts being a box you’re supposed to check. Not because the desire is gone, but because the emotional bandwidth required to get there feels harder to access.

When sex begins shifting into duty, couples often feel confused, embarrassed, or frustrated by the change. What they rarely realize is that the experience isn’t just about sex at all. It’s about exhaustion, emotional labor, old survival strategies, shifting identity, and the ways we learned, often unconsciously, what intimacy is supposed to look like.

“Sex rarely becomes a chore because desire disappears. It becomes a chore when connection gets crowded out by everything else.”

When the emotional connection thins, the physical connection begins to mimic that gap. But the meaning couples assign to that shift is usually far more painful than the shift itself.

When Parenthood Rearranges the Entire Landscape of the Relationship

Every couple hits some version of this after kids. Before children, intimacy has a spontaneity to it that feels effortless. The energy is there, the time is there, the curiosity is there. But once you’re navigating homework, bedtime routines, sports schedules, dishes, carpool lines, discipline decisions, and the endless rotation of responsibilities, you’re not just partners anymore. You’re co-managers of a household, and that role can swallow the romantic connection without warning. Women often find themselves carrying the emotional load of the household, remembering the appointments, anticipating the needs, managing the tensions, holding the invisible pieces together. The weight of that labor leaves very little room for desire to rise naturally. And men, who often define closeness through sexual connection, start feeling shut out without ever being told why.

This is where couples misinterpret each other. She may feel touched-out and overstimulated, not uninterested. He may feel unwanted and alone, not impatient or demanding. Both are often longing for the same thing: to feel chosen, but neither knows how to bridge the gap.

The Nervous System Remembers What the Brain Tries to Forget

When sex feels like pressure, the body reacts long before the mind catches up. For many women, the expectation to “show up” intimately when they’re depleted awakens old stories they didn’t know were still living inside them: moments of being responsible for others’ comfort, being taught to endure instead of express, or learning from childhood that their needs were secondary to someone else’s. Meanwhile, for many men, feeling rejected sexually can stir up the younger parts of them that were never taught how to be wanted emotionally. If sex was the only place they ever felt chosen, then any interruption feels deeply personal. Not because they’re fragile, but because their early story wrote a script where desire equals worth. Neither partner is reacting to the moment in front of them. They're reacting to the histories behind them.

“When intimacy triggers anxiety or shutdown, it’s rarely about the partner in front of you. It’s about the version of love your body learned long before this relationship existed.”

When couples realize this, the fight over sex suddenly becomes a doorway into understanding each other more deeply, instead of an indictment of the relationship.

Duty Sex, and the Quiet Resentment It Breeds

When sex starts to feel like an obligation, resentment grows, often silently. No one wants to feel like an item on a to-do list. And no one wants to believe they’re the person creating pressure in the relationship. Most couples try to push through these moments without addressing them, hoping the season will pass. But long-term avoidance turns duty sex into a pattern instead of a moment. Over time, the partner who feels obligated starts associating sex with emotional depletion instead of connection. The partner who feels deprived starts internalizing the distance as personal rejection. And both begin carrying the ache alone.

The irony is that both partners usually want the same thing: to feel connected again without all the tension sitting between them. But without naming the emotional reality underneath the sexual one, couples get stuck in a cycle where both feel misunderstood.

Relearning What Desire Looks Like in Real Life

Desire looks different at 35, 45, or 55 than it did at 22. It’s quieter, steadier, more relational. It requires presence, attention, and emotional space, the very resources modern life tends to drain. When couples begin to accept that their intimacy will shift across seasons, they stop using their sex life as a scorecard for the health of the relationship and start using it as a mirror instead. Not a mirror of attraction, but a mirror of how well they’re tending to each other emotionally. Real intimacy is built in the small interactions long before anything sexual happens: the way you speak to each other, the affection you offer without expectation, the curiosity you show, the gentleness returned after a hard moment. When these pieces are in place, sex becomes an extension of connection rather than a test of it.

“Healthy desire grows in the small, consistent moments where partners feel seen, safe, and chosen, long before anything physical happens.”

When couples begin paying attention to those pieces, intimacy often returns naturally, without pressure.

If This Hits Close to Home

If you’re reading this and something in you is softening or waking up, you’re not alone. Countless couples are navigating this same quiet tension behind closed doors. It doesn’t mean you’re failing. It doesn’t mean the spark is gone. It means the relationship is asking for something deeper than sexual performance. It’s asking for emotional presence.

If this reflection resonated, share it with someone who might need it. These conversations help couples feel less alone in the places they quietly struggle.

For more real, raw, unfiltered conversations about marriage, intimacy, fatherhood, and the inner world of men, follow @themajopodcast on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, and all major podcast platforms. On Facebook, follow me at @thetherapygiant.

If you want more reflections like this between episodes, you can find me at @thegiant_therapist on Instagram and TikTok.

When You’re Ready to Go Deeper

If something in this stirred a part of you that’s been struggling in silence, as an individual or as a couple, I’d be honored to sit with you. I help men, women, and partners understand the emotional patterns shaping their intimacy, heal the stories underneath their reactions, and rebuild a relationship they feel connected to again. To explore whether this work is right for you, schedule a consultation: https://www.thegianttherapist.com/booking-calendar/initial-phone-consultation?referral=service_list_widget

You’re not broken for feeling the way you do.

You’re human, and your relationship is worth understanding on a deeper level.