There’s a reason so many long-term couples have more to say about their mortgage than their sex lives. The desire is usually still there. The breakdown happens when someone actually has to ask for it, and most people are so scared of getting a no that, by the time they’ve worked up the nerve, the ask barely comes out as one.

Licensed sex therapist Vanessa Marin calls this the invisible issue. “Couples don’t always fight about it openly; they just slowly stop reaching for each other,” she told the New York Post. Marin, author of the best-selling intimacy guide Sex Talks, estimates that 83% of couples are either avoiding initiation, doing it badly, or feeling hurt by it on the regular.

Fear of rejection is what’s driving it, and the workaround is to make the ask so deniable that it barely qualifies. The casual boob grab, the pointed yawn toward the bedroom, the “I’m just saying, we have an hour”—all technically not asking, all terrible. “If you don’t fully put yourself out there, it doesn’t hurt as much when you’re turned down,” Marin explained. “Nobody wants to have sex with someone who can’t properly state what they want,” she said.

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Shame plays into this more than couples want to admit. A 2025 study found that people high in shame and fear of intimacy pull back from sexual initiation entirely—not from lost desire, but because putting yourself out there feels like handing someone a way to hurt you. Even just the ask becomes a liability.

Pop culture bears some responsibility. Marin points to the standard movie scenario—eye contact across a room, thirty seconds later, clothes everywhere, no conversation. Couples who measure themselves against that assume something’s wrong with them. Good initiation, according to Marin, takes intention and communication. “You have to know your partner, you have to say what you want, and you have to navigate ‘no’ gracefully,” she said.

Her prescription goes by “The Simmer.” Keep the connection warm throughout the day so there’s already groundwork when a couple is finally alone. An afternoon text, doing the dishes, a kiss without any expectation attached. She also recommends asking a partner to name three specific ways they’d want to be invited in. The goal, Marin says, is to make initiation feel like an invitation someone actually wants to accept.

Initiation styles work a lot like love languages. Most people initiate sex the way they’d want to receive it, so one partner sets the mood with candles and builds anticipation while the other just wants to get grabbed. “A partner who knows exactly how to invite you in and make you feel desired is so much hotter than someone just lunging at you and hoping for the best,” Marin said.