Something between you has gone quiet.
Not the arguing kind of quiet — the other kind. You still like each other. You still get through the week together. But sex, or closeness, or both, has turned into a subject with weight on it, and neither of you can find a good way in. That’s the exact spot I work in.
Two different problems. Pick whichever sounds like yours.
Most couples arrive knowing something has gone wrong without being sure what to call it. This is how I’d divide it — and if you choose the wrong door, nothing bad happens. We’ll sort it out in the first session.
Nothing is wrong with either of you. You’re in a pattern.
It builds slowly and nobody chooses it. Sex becomes a thing that can be got right or got wrong. Getting it wrong starts to mean something about who you are. So it gets heavier, and heavier things are easier to put down than pick up.
Then the avoidance widens. It stops being about sex and starts being about touch of any kind, because any touch might turn into a question neither of you wants to answer tonight.
By the time couples reach me, most of them have been living in that arrangement for years and have privately concluded they’re unusual. They’re not. I can describe the whole pattern from one end to the other, which is the first real evidence it can be undone.
The things people find hardest to say out loud.
- One of us wants sex far more than the other
- We haven’t had sex in months, or years
- Sex hurts
- Erections that don’t cooperate
- I can’t get there any more
- I don’t want sex and I don’t know why
- We stopped touching each other at all
- Everything changed after the baby
- Menopause changed everything
- Illness or medication got in the way
- We’re rebuilding after an affair
- We fight about porn
- We want different things in bed
- We’re not agreed on monogamy
- We have never been able to talk about sex
- Something from a long time ago is in the way
- We’re more like roommates now
I’m not the right therapist for everyone.
Better you hear that now than discover it in session four. Here’s who tends to do well with me, and who genuinely doesn’t.
This tends to work if you…
- Both turn up, even if one of you is unconvinced
- Can bear being told something you didn’t ask to hear
- Are willing to look at your own half of it
- Want the work to end, rather than to have a standing appointment
- Still have some goodwill left between you
This isn’t a fit if you…
- Want individual therapy — I only work with couples
- Are hoping I’ll tell your partner they’re the problem
- Need something outside sex, intimacy and relationships
- Live outside New Mexico and Washington
- Want somewhere to report the week and leave it there
I’m Jessa Zimmerman.
I’m an AASECT-certified sex therapist and a licensed couples counselor, and I’ve spent more than fifteen years focused on couples and what happens between them. It’s the only work I do.
I wrote Sex Without Stress, which is where the Sexual Avoidance Cycle got its name, and I host the Better Sex Podcast. My training is in Crucible Therapy with David Schnarch, PACT with Stan Tatkin, and an externship in Emotionally Focused Therapy.
People describe me as warm and fairly direct. I’d put it this way: I think you can respect someone and still tell them something they didn’t particularly want to hear, and leaving that part out is a way of not quite showing up for you.
Worth knowing about certification. Exactly one state regulates the term “sex therapist” — Florida. In New Mexico, as nearly everywhere, anyone at all can use it. Getting there meant over 160 hours of specialized coursework, 50 hours of supervision, and hundreds of clinical hours before anyone would sign it off. It’s the only thing separating one claim from another.
What to expect, start to finish.
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Answer three short questions
Where you live, what you’re bringing, and whether therapy or my online course fits you better. It takes a minute, and it saves you filling in a long form only to find I can’t help.
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Fill in the request form
A questionnaire about the two of you and what’s going on. Read it as the beginning of the work rather than admin — a lot of couples say writing it down was clarifying in itself.
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First session, eighty minutes
Both of you. I’ll want the specifics, not the summary. Most couples leave the first one lighter than they came in, mainly from finding out the thing they’re in has a shape and a name.
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Then months, not years
Three to six is usual, with things to practice between sessions. The aim is that you finish and get on with your life.
Everything happens by video — Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Las Cruces, Farmington, Taos, anywhere in New Mexico. Sessions are $280 for eighty minutes or $175 for fifty, per couple rather than per person, and both figures already include gross receipts tax. Full fees here.
Start here instead. All of it is free.
A lot of people read about this for months before they’re willing to contact anybody. That’s completely normal, and none of the following requires you to become a client.
What people ask before they get in touch.
Do you see people in person in Albuquerque or Santa Fe?
No — everything is by video, which is how I practice rather than a leftover from anything. It also means where you are in the state makes no difference, and neither of you has to drive anywhere after a hard hour.
Can you see us if we live somewhere else?
Only if you’re in New Mexico or Washington — those are the two states I’m licensed in, and a license doesn’t cross state lines. If you’re elsewhere, coaching is an option and it isn’t restricted that way.
Do you take insurance?
No, and there’s a real reason rather than a preference: billing insurance would mean giving one of you a psychiatric diagnosis you don’t have. The fees page explains it properly, along with what I will give you instead.
My partner won’t come. Can I start alone?
I work with couples, so I’d need both of you. But it’s worth asking again with something concrete in hand — a specific therapist, a specific appointment. Plenty of reluctant partners say yes to that having said no to the general idea.
Is it too late for us?
Almost certainly not, and the length of time this has been going on is not what decides it. What decides it is whether there’s still goodwill between you. If there is, there’s something to work with.
This is more workable than it feels.
I’ve watched a great many couples arrive certain they were the exception — too far gone, too long avoided, too different from one another. They were wrong about that. Not because they tried harder in the end, but because they finally tried something else.