In the early stages of a relationship, everything is new. Your partner’s body, their touch, the emotional charge between you, and the physical sensations that come with being desired and choosing someone new.

For many people, novelty heightens sexual desire. Early attraction is often fuelled by:

Increased dopamine and adrenaline
Heightened optimism, fantasy, and imagination
A sense of emotional and physical distance that creates tension and longing

In this phase, sexual chemistry can feel effortless. Desire arises quickly, sex feels spontaneous, and connection seems to take care of itself.

For others, desire works very differently.

Some people need safety, emotional attunement, and trust in order to feel aroused. For them, sexual desire often builds gradually over time, deepening as familiarity, care, and security grow. In these relationships, some of the most meaningful and satisfying sexual experiences occur later, once trust has been established and vulnerability feels safe.

Both patterns are normal.

When desire changes

People often come to relationship or sex therapy at the point where the natural momentum of early desire has shifted.

Novelty has given way to familiarity. Daily life, stress, resentment, emotional disconnection, health changes, or unspoken hurt may have eroded intimacy. Sex that once felt easy now feels effortful, infrequent, or absent.

This can be unsettling. Many people interpret this change as a sign that something is wrong with the relationship, their partner, or themselves.

But a change in desire does not automatically mean failure.

Sexual desire does not exist in isolation from the rest of life. Stress, fatigue, mental health, hormonal changes, medication, illness, caregiving demands, body image, and nervous system load all influence desire. Often, changes in desire are less about a lack of attraction and more about what the body is prioritising in a particular season of life.

So… what’s normal?

Here are some important realities to name:

Sexual desire changes over the course of a relationship. This is not an exception, it is the norm. Desire evolves alongside people, bodies, circumstances, and emotional dynamics.
Cultural and media narratives often portray consistent, effortless desire as a marker of relationship success. In reality, there is no universal standard for what a “good” sex life looks like.
Deeper intimacy can emerge even as spontaneous desire fades. Sexuality can become slower, more intentional, more emotionally rich — and sometimes more pleasurable — even if it looks different from the beginning.

Loss of novelty does not have to mean loss of sexuality. It often signals the need for a different relationship with desire.

Spontaneous and responsive desire

It can also be helpful to understand that sexual desire shows up in different ways.

Some people experience spontaneous desire: they feel desire first, which then leads them to seek sexual connection. This is more common early in relationships, when novelty, anticipation, and fantasy are high.

Others experience responsive desire: desire emerges after connection, touch, or emotional closeness has already begun. For these people, waiting to feel desire before engaging often means it never arrives.

In long-term relationships, many people shift from spontaneous to responsive desire. This is not a loss of sexuality, rather, it is a change in how desire is accessed. When this shift is misunderstood, people may assume something is wrong, when in fact their desire is simply responding to different conditions.

Understanding desire in long-term relationships

If sexual desire has changed, it can be helpful to reflect on a few key areas rather than to assign blame. This helps us to understand what your desire may be responding to.

You might ask yourself:

How is the emotional connection in my relationship right now? Is there trust, openness, and shared understanding?
How do I relate to my partner’s body (and my own) as they are now? Is there space for gentleness, sensuality, or curiosity rather than performance?
What makes me feel close to my partner outside of sex? Shared activities, care, teamwork, building a life together?
What is my relationship with my sexual self at this stage of life? How do I experience pleasure, desire, and expression now?
Are there fantasies, curiosities, or desires present for me? Do I feel safe to share or explore them?

Desire is rarely just about sex. It is deeply shaped by emotional safety, embodiment, autonomy, and the wider relational context.

When to be curious and when to seek support

Changes in desire are common and often temporary. However, it may be helpful to seek support if sexual disconnection is accompanied by ongoing distress, resentment, avoidance, or a sense of emotional unsafety, or if conversations about sex feel impossible to have without conflict, shutdown, or fear.

Support is not about fixing desire. It is about understanding what desire is responding to, and creating conditions where connection feels possible again.

A final thought

People often come to therapy wanting to go backwards and to return to a time when sex felt easy, spontaneous, or effortless. But intimacy, sexual or otherwise, is not something we recover. It is something we create and recreate over time.

Sexuality evolves as relationships evolve. Bodies change. Needs shift. Desire takes new forms.

The question is not whether your desire looks the same as it once did, but whether you are able to meet what is with curiosity, compassion, and honesty. Desire rarely disappears without reason. More often, it is quietly asking to be understood in a new way.