Can a Marriage Survive Without Intimacy? 5 Things to Consider

It is a widely accepted idea that a marriage without intimacy is doomed to failure. Whether or not this is an absolute fact may be debatable. Most people do sense that closeness matters in a marriage, and clinicians who work with couples would broadly agree. Whether its absence ends a marriage is a different question, and a more open one. Suzanne B. Phillips, Psy.D., ABPP, writes that when sex stops in a marriage the silence around it does damage of its own: it wears away the day-to-day knowing of each other that sexual connection grows from. She names stress, exhaustion, medication, body-image worry and undisclosed physical problems among the ordinary reasons a couple stops. That matters, because the cause is often not a failure of love.

So, can a marriage survive without intimacy? Yes, some do, and some of those are good marriages. What is much harder to live with is closeness that has quietly stopped and cannot be talked about. This page is about telling the two apart, and about what can be done where the second one is what is happening.

The Role of Intimacy in Marriage

The American Psychological Association defines intimacy as a state of close emotional connection in which each person can come near the other, and be known by the other, without discomfort, and which rests on a detailed knowledge of each other.

From this, we can infer that sex does not necessarily need to be included in these 'close, loving, or affectionate relationships.' For many couples sexual contact is one of the ways closeness gets expressed, and its loss is felt keenly. For others it is not, and that is not a fault. People who are asexual, people whose health, medication or stage of life has changed what sex means to them, and couples who have built closeness in other ways all have marriages that work. What matters is whether the two of you are near enough to each other, and whether you can say so.

Of course, intimacy is more than just sex. The types of intimacy include but are not limited to:

• Emotional intimacy: the ability to share emotions with one's partner in safety
• Physical intimacy: the ability to touch, be close, share affection, and have intercourse
• Intellectual intimacy: the freedom to share one's thoughts, ideas, concerns, and interests with one's partner
• Creative/Imaginative intimacy: the freedom to share creative efforts or interests with one's partner

Clearly, true/full intimacy goes far beyond mere sex; one person's intimacy needs may vary widely from those of another. Couples who are doing well tend to have found a workable fit between what each of them needs, which is not the same as needing the same things. Where those needs are badly mismatched, and neither partner can say so, the distance tends to grow.

Emotional Intimacy: The Heart of the Relationship
For brevity, we will refer to intellectual, creative/imaginative, and emotional intimacy simply as emotional intimacy. As such, we can define it as an aspect of relationships varying in intensity and involving a feeling of closeness, sharing personal feelings, and a sense of personal validation.

Without this, marriage becomes more like an ongoing business transaction, lacking the care, support, trust, and acceptance human beings crave and require. Couples in that position often drift apart, or fall into a long silence about it.

Both are common. Neither means the marriage is finished, and for many couples the first move back is being able to name it out loud.

Physical Intimacy: More Than Just Sex
It is non-controversial that most humans need/desire a physical release of sexual energy. Physical intimacy includes this, but it is much more than that. It includes the ability to show affection, to play, and to be comfortable in close proximity.

Some of the healthiest forms of physical intimacy include a massage given to one's partner after they come home from a long day at work, play, tickling, back-scratching, effortless hugs and kisses and more. Physical intimacy largely expresses an intermingled feeling of trust and affection. While uncommon, a marriage can have great physical intimacy with little or no sex.

When trust, affection or a sense of safety is missing, touch is often the first thing to go.

Communication: The Gateway to Intimacy
So, how can we reestablish intimacy where it has been lost? Usually it starts with being able to talk about it. If partners can express what is stopping them from feeling the trust or affection needed for intimacy, and goodwill between partners still exists, there may be hope for the marriage.

Often, relationship counselling is needed for this communication to take place. In a professional marriage therapy setting, troubled couples can have ground rules for healthy communication laid down for them. If both partners put forth an honest effort in such a setting, a real emotional connection can be re-established.

Couples in counselling often find that they express and register affection differently, and that each has been offering the other something the other did not read as love. The popular "love languages" idea captures that much. Relationship researchers reviewing the evidence have found little support for its stronger claims: people tend to endorse all five rather than having one primary language, the categories overlap, and couples whose languages match do not report higher satisfaction than couples whose languages differ. What does predict satisfaction is responsiveness, meaning noticing what your partner actually needs and answering it.

When Intimacy is Lacking: Warning Signs

Intimacy can fade slowly, making its loss hard to spot. Here are some important signs to look for:

• Physical intimacy issues,
• A feeling of distance,
• Neither partner talks about their emotions,
• One partner shares more than the other,
• Touching outside of the bedroom stops,
• Listening to each other is difficult.

Signs like these are worth noticing, but they do not all mean the same thing. Illness, medication, depression, a new baby, grief, overwork and menopause show up this way, and so does a loss of trust. Working out which one it is, together, is usually where repair starts.

The 5 Things to Consider

1. What types of intimacy does each partner need most?
Different people need different kinds of closeness. Psych Central's guide to the different types of intimacy sets out how each kind is built and kept up. Asking each other which kind is most missed is a more useful question than asking whose fault it is.

2. Why or how has trust been lost?
Diagnosing the root of the problem can be like solving a mystery. Rebuilding trust usually asks both partners to look at how it was lost and to work at it in good faith, which is slower and less dramatic than it sounds.

3. What is the root of the problem?
The root cause could be communication failure, sexual dysfunction, disagreement, etc. Being able to talk about it is what makes the rest workable. Where a couple cannot, the problem tends to stay where it is.

4. Has the distance developed into resentment or worse?
Each partner brings something from the family they grew up in, and a couple adds to it over the years. Where distance has hardened into contempt the work is harder and usually needs help. Harder is not the same as hopeless.

5. Does each of you want the marriage to change?
One partner wanting things to be different and the other not is itself information, and it is worth saying plainly rather than testing over months. Where both want it, couple therapy is one of the places this work is usually done. Where only one does, individual therapy is still open to that person.

Conclusion

Can a marriage survive without intimacy? Some do, and some of those are good marriages, particularly where both people want the same thing and can say so. What is hard to live with is the silence: the version where one person is lonely inside the marriage and neither of them can name it. That part is workable, and it is the ordinary work of couple therapy.

If you would like to talk this through with someone, you can search TherapyRoute for a couple or relationship therapist in your area.

Sources

1. American Psychological Association. "Intimacy." APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/intimacy

2. Cusido, C. (medically reviewed by Janet Brito, PhD, LCSW, CST-S). "Nourishing the Different Types of Intimacy in Your Relationship." Psych Central. https://psychcentral.com/relationships/nourishing-the-different-types-of-intimacy-in-your-relationship

3. Phillips, S. B. (2021). "Repairing Sexual Withholding in a Marriage." Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/speaking-about-trauma/202103/repairing-sexual-withholding-in-marriage

4. Impett, E. A., Park, H. G., & Muise, A. (2024). "Popular Psychology Through a Scientific Lens: Evaluating Love Languages From a Relationship Science Perspective." Current Directions in Psychological Science. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09637214231217663