Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - How to Have Sex Again After a Long Dry Spell

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

Let’s be honest, every long-term relationship has seasons where sex gets pushed aside. Between changing bodies, kids, work stress, money stress, and just plain exhaustion, months can slip into years without intimacy. So what do you do when you want sex again, but it feels awkward, foreign, or even impossible to bring up? In this Language of Love Bite, I walk you through how to gently break the silence, rebuild emotional closeness, and take small but powerful steps back into an erotic connection with your partner. You will see that reigniting passion is not about pressure or performance, it is about safety, communication, and rediscovering each other in a playful, sensual way. We discuss: Why passion fades in long-term relationships (and how resentment sneaks in) The role of emotional safety and non-sexual touch in reawakening desire How to use “sensate focus” to rebuild intimacy step by step The surprising power of non-demand kissing to spark erotic energy A sensual awakening ritual you can try tonight to gently reignite connection When and how to seek support from a certified sex therapist (AASECT.org) Desire is never truly gone, it is just waiting for permission to return. If you want to go deeper into creating sacred, satisfying intimacy, check out my book Sex Magic for step-by-step practices to awaken erotic pleasure and deepen connection. And do not forget to subscribe to the Language of Love podcast for more bite-sized tools to transform your love life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Bites, where I tackle your most asked questions and requested topics. These episodes are designed to be fun, quick, and to the point. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. so let's face it every long-term relationship goes through ebbs and flows but when you bring in changing bodies changing lives kids work stress financial stress world stress for most

couples especially those with kids but I think for most in long-term relationships we often move into a period where sex goes by the wayside and for many of us we can go months, if not years, without regular sex or even any sex. So what do you do if you've been in a really long dry spell, you haven't had any sex, and you want to get things started again? At the end of this, I'm going to give you a special sensual awakening ritual that you can try to reignite some of the passion between you. But let's start with understanding why passion dies. It's most often due to busy lives and distractions and exhaustion. But what often grows out of that is resentment and disconnect. And so for many couples where sex has gone by the wayside,

along with it has gone non-sexual physical affection, like cuddling, hand-holding, kissing, those sorts of things. And there's often a buildup of resentment and frustration that makes each of you feel even more disconnected. And it feels like there's even a larger valley between the two of you. So the first thing I want to say is I'm going to give you some ways to reconnect. But if for some reason this doesn't work, this is a really amazing place to bring in a good sex therapist. And you can find a sex therapist easily at an organization called ASECT, A-A-S-E-C-T. ASECT stands for the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. So you can go to A-A-S-E-C-T.org and find a therapist,

a sex therapist near you, and they can guide you and kind of take the pressure off of you trying to navigate it yourself through the process of reconnecting. But let's talk about some of the things that someone like me, a sex therapist would do with a couple that you can do on your own. If you haven't been having sex for months or years, it will feel really awkward to come back together. The first thing you need to do is to talk about it and set that intention, right? So often couples haven't even talked about it. It's just this 800 pound gorilla sitting in the room with them. So you need to put it on the table and you can do so in a non-blaming loving way. If you haven't already talked about it and say, listen, you know, I'm really missing you

physically. I know it's been a long time since we had sex. I really want to begin reconnecting with you. Would you be open to that? Right. Or maybe you've already both decided you want to open to that, but it just feels too awkward and weird to get started. So once you've established that you're going to start again after a dry spell. Start emotionally, okay? So really begin to pay attention to how much time and energy you're putting into direct connection with one another. Most couples don't spend more than 15 minutes a week talking to one another about things other than the logistics of their lives. So to start with, if you just start spending 15 minutes twice a week, talking together about things that aren't logistics, listening to music together

with your phones and technology put away, spending quality time together, doing something fun or playful together. All of these are ways to create emotional safety and bonding that makes things much less awkward to connect physically, especially for her, because for women, a big part of their willingness and ability to relax into a sexual situation and even want one is their emotional connection to the person they're going to have sex with. So fuel that. Hey, it's Dr. Laura Berman. I've been a sex, love and relationship therapist for over 30 years. And the main question I always get asked is how the heck do we spice it up in a long-term monogamous

relationship well if you want to take your love life your sex life to the next level whether you're in a relationship or not check out my free course on quantum sex it's going to teach you how to take your sexual response to the next level capable of full body orgasms how to use sex magic to manifest your dreams and how to connect on an even deeper level sexually with your partner Just go to drlauraberman.com and you'll find it right there on the homepage, the quantum sex free course. Check it out. Let me know what you think.

And when you're ready to start getting physical, start slow. Start with what therapists call sensate focus. so say we're just going to touch each other and not even sexually so we're going to avoid the breasts and genitals and for 10 minutes you are just going to totally receive my touch and I'm going to touch you not to massage you and not even to turn you on just to communicate love and reverence through my touch and touch them from head to toe with your hands with your forearms with your hair, however you want, but make it sensual and loving. Avoid the breasts and genitals on both of you. Start on your partner's back and then do that for five minutes. And then they flip

over and do their front. And then it's the next person's turn. So just do that maybe once or twice a week for a while, and then talk about it. How did that feel? Did you notice any part felt better than any other part. Did you like the pressure? Do you want more? Keep it in the positive, not what you didn't like, but what you'd like more of when you give the feedback. Then once you're comfortable with that, maybe you do the same thing, but with a genital brush by, right? Like you're not really lingering on the breasts and genitals, but you're touching them. And then once you're comfortable with that, and you've communicated around that a few times, then you can start lingering and you're basically rebuilding kind of the bases, if you will,

of your sex life from the ground up, but with a lot more conscious communication and care and partnership. And so what will often happen is as you start moving through these phases of touch, especially as you start bringing in the breasts and genitals, it just naturally turns into something more. One or both of you starts getting really aroused. Maybe you start kissing, maybe you start connecting more, and then it leads to sex. If it doesn't, you can keep going in a stepwise progression. Once you start stimulating the genitals and the breasts and you leave it there, then the next time you try to have oral sex, and then the next time you have intercourse, you can do it that way as well. But I find that most couples kind of start, it starts taking on

a life of their own once they start bringing the genital stimulation in. And the other thing that I find really sparks desire is what I call non-demand kissing. So if you can spend some time and just say to your partner, we're not going to have sex under any circumstances. Things have been so awkward and it's been so long since we had sex. This isn't about foreplay. I just want to kiss you. So I'm going to kiss you the way I most love to be kissed and we'll kiss that way for a while. And then I want you to kiss me the way you most love to be kissed and kiss that way for a while.

And what is so surprising, even for couples who've been together for decades, is they often learn something new about how their partner really loves to be kissed. And, and this is especially true for women. If she's the one with low desire, I see this time and time again, when she can really settle in and relax into the eroticism of making out, which is something that goes by the wayside, unless it's part of foreplay or sex in a long-term relationship, when she can just get into it and know there's no pressure to go further, often she gets really turned on and wants to go further. No pressure there and no expectations. But what I see time and time again is spending that time

kissing really does refuel the flame between the two of you erotically. So try that. And now I'm going to give you a key ritual to try called the sensual awakening ritual. This is a gentle, embodied and safe practice. You can do it solo or with your partner. So first you want to create a soft, sacred space, dim the lights, light a candle, that kind of thing. Then begin to gently touch your partner's arms, shoulders, thighs, not sexually, but lovingly. And let your hands explore with curiosity instead of expectation. And ask your partner, what would feel good right now? what do you want to feel? And hopefully they'll tell you, but often your partner won't know. And you can say, okay, I'm just going to keep touching you. You tell me if you want more or

less of something, or you can even say green light, if you want me to keep going or red light, if you want me to stop and do something else, but communicate and try this ritual, taking turns, offering some kind of soft, attuned touch with no agenda of it going any further because you don't want to make it about jumping back into sex. It's about remembering that sensual connection between the two of you.

And when you reestablish the sensual erotic connection, desire seems to always wake up on its own, gently, respectfully, and naturally. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow on your favorite podcast platform. And if you're ready to go even deeper and take sex to the next level for amazing pleasure and connection,

pick up my book, Sex Magic. His desire is never gone. It's just waiting for their permission to reignite. I'll see you next time on the Language of Love. Now until the doctor said I'm crazy for your love I want to do is take you home with me. I want to make a move. I want to make a move. But I'm too shy. I can't fall asleep without your arms around me.