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Responsive desire is the key to more frequent sex.

Waiting to be “in the mood” can keep long-term couples stuck in a low-sex or sexless relationship.

Scheduled sensuality can be a bridge back to a renewed sexual life.

This post is part 4 of a series.

If you want to never have sex again, here's how: Wait until you spontaneously feel horny or turned on.

Yes, I know that is a little tongue-in-cheek, but I am also serious. Many long-term couples assume they should only make love when desire arrives first. They remember those delicious early days when one kiss could lead to ripping each other’s clothes off, and they assume that is how desire is supposed to work forever.

This type of desire, which sex therapists call spontaneous desire, is often easy to feel in the beginning of a relationship. But over time, spontaneous desire often becomes less frequent. Before you know it, nobody initiates eroticism, weeks turn into months, and before long, the sexual relationship has nearly disappeared. In fact, up to 35 percent of longer-term couples I have interviewed (over 40,000 of them) are not making love at all. I talk about the desire problem in this video.

The Problem With Waiting for Spontaneous Desire

There are different ways clinicians define low-sex and sexless relationships, but in my own work and surveys with thousands of couples, I have seen how common it is for long-term partners to go months, or even years, without making love.

I once worked with a couple who had stopped making love in their 40s and joined my Become Passion online couples program in their 70s. For decades, they........

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