Understanding Physical Attraction And Why It Can Fade Over Time
After years with a woman, many men find that their level of physical attraction for her decreases or is lost altogether. It can occur for various reasons, but it isn't always the harbinger of a breakup. With open communication, dedicated effort, and some professional help, you can rekindle the spark of passion with your wife or girlfriend. Read on to learn why physical attraction can fade over time and how to bring it back.
What is physical attraction?
At the beginning of a relationship, your brain floods your body with oxytocin, a neurochemical that makes you feel good when you're near the object of your affection. You may remember the early days of your relationship and how you and your partner couldn't keep your hands off each other. Being near, intimately so, with her was likely your primary thought at the time.
People with specific orientations or identities may not feel sexual attraction or find it only happens in extremely limited circumstances. There are valid experiences, and some people may not come to understand their sexual identity for years. However, this article specifically references men who have previously experienced a desire for their female partners and have found it waning.
Physical attraction vs. emotional attachment: What’s the difference?
Sexuality is a complicated topic, and physical attraction can have multiple layers. Attraction takes many forms. For example, you can feel sexual, romantic, aesthetic, sensual, emotional, or intellectual attraction for another person, and losing one area can affect others. By contrast, emotional attachment is a more profound connection based on the bond you share, including and beyond the physical.
What are men attracted to?
While every man is different, and so are his individual tastes, there are some common researched-backed physical and personality characteristics most men seem to prefer in potential female partners.
Characteristics men often rate attractive include:
- Physical looks, such as clear skin, full lips, and according to a recent study, a 7:10 waist-to-hip ratio
- Biological factors like pheromones and natural scent, or his arousal reaction to tense or dangerous events
- Self-confidence
- Wearing red clothing
- A good sense of humor
- Making feelings and needs clear
- Speaking with a higher-pitched voice
- Self-care and personal grooming
- Effectively managing stressful situations
- Dressing to showcase your curves
- Not wearing too much makeup
- Smiling frequently
- Making eye contact
Why attraction to your wife or girlfriend can fade
You may find you're no longer physically attracted to your wife or girlfriend for many reasons. Explore some of the possible explanations for a loss of desire for your partner.
Distance
Sometimes, when a couple has been together for a long time, they develop separate lives while living together, not making time to do things with each other. If you and your wife or girlfriend don’t share activities or maintain emotional intimacy by talking about your experiences, you can grow apart, and that distance can lead to a loss of physical attraction when you don’t feel connected to her anymore.
Poorly managed conflicts, resentment, and repressed anger
If you don't have effective ways to manage the conflicts in your relationship, you may have unresolved issues, repressed anger, and resentment toward your partner, which can interfere with your desire for her.
Changes in physical appearance
Many men find they are less attracted to their wives or girlfriends after a dramatic change in physical appearance. The longer a relationship continues, the more comfortable both partners usually feel. They may take less care with their grooming, physical fitness, or overall appearance, and the change can negatively affect sexual attraction.
Too much familiarity
Perhaps you’ve been with her so long that the two of you have merged your identities. While it can be healthy to form a “we” together, maintaining a separate identity can help you consciously choose your partner daily, increasing your physical desire for her.
Mental or physical health issues
If one or both of you is experiencing an underlying physical or mental health issue, it can lead to challenges in your relationship, loss of sexual desire, and other problems that may affect your attraction to your wife or girlfriend.
Infidelity
Some men find that they have difficulty being sexually aroused by their wives or girlfriend after discovering infidelity. It is possible to work past this issue, but it requires open communication and efforts to repair the damage to the relationship and trust together.
What to do if you’re not attracted to your wife or girlfriend
If you aren’t attracted to your wife or girlfriend anymore, there’s still hope for the relationship. Start by examining the potential issues affecting how you feel about her. Are there problems in the relationship interfering with your physical attraction? Are you having medical issues that influence your desire? Is your lack of arousal for her related to your emotional distance? Before you can make an informed decision about what to do, it helps to identify what’s causing the problem.
“It is possible to revive the feelings of attraction in a relationship, but it requires a commitment from both partners and honesty to examine and work on the underlying issues.” Sex Positive Psychology
Find ways to reconnect emotionally
Emotional intimacy can be closely tied to sexual activity for many couples. Find ways to reconnect emotionally with her, rediscovering your closeness and, hopefully, your physical connection. Physical intimacy includes more than just sex, so take time to touch her frequently, retraining your brain to associate her presence with releasing oxytocin and pleasant feelings.
Take time to reevaluate before making a decision
Love and attraction are far from the same thing. It can be easy to make a rash decision when you’re feeling unwanted by your partner or trapped in a passionless relationship. Take some time to reevaluate your relationship and decide what you want. Do you still love her but have physical needs that are going unmet? Express your physical and emotional needs and determine whether you both want to work on finding a solution.
Take action
Once you know what the problem is and have a plan to resolve it one way or the other, take action. Whether that action is breaking up, changing your routine, or making an appointment with a couples therapist, taking the first step can help you gain momentum to push through the difficult times.
Tips for Reigniting the Spark in Your Relationship
- Actively work on the emotional intimacy with your wife or girlfriend.
- Increase non-sexual touching, such as hugs, hand holding, etc., to boost oxytocin production around your partner.
- Plan a regular date night focused solely on you as a couple.
- Change your sexual routine. Check-in with each other and ensure you're both aware of the other's needs and desires.
- Make sex a priority in your relationship.
- Let the tension build. Linger with your foreplay, building the desire between you by sharing fantasies and finding ways to bring romance into the bedroom—or other locations.
Reach out for help
The loss of physical attraction doesn’t have to signal the end of your romance. Sit down with your wife or girlfriend and have an open, honest conversation about how you feel—and your desire to work past it. If you don’t know where to start, try speaking to your doctor to rule out any underlying health conditions or a mental healthcare professional to identify any mental or emotional issues that may affect attraction to your partner.
How therapy can help you rediscover attraction for your partner
Many men who aren’t attracted to their wives or girlfriends still love them and want to make the relationship work. If you are a man who feels physically or emotionally disconnected from your female partner, consider working with a licensed therapist online through a relationship-focused virtual therapy platform like Regain. Individual or couples therapy could help you find healthy ways to express your feelings and needs and practical ways to rekindle the passion in your relationship.
Recent research published in the Frontiers in Psychology journal showed no significant difference in the clinical outcome between online couples therapy and in-person treatment. Both groups in the study showed positive changes in their relationship satisfaction and decreased negative symptoms, such as depression, stress, and anxiety related to problems with their partner.
Takeaway
Many men experience a loss of attraction for their female partners, often for a wide variety of reasons. However, decreased desire isn't necessarily the end of the relationship. The information in this article may offer insight into techniques to reestablish physical attraction to your wife or girlfriend and how couples therapy can help you reconnect emotionally to improve intimacy.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Why am I not attracted to my girlfriend?
As outlined in the article above, there are numerous potential reasons someone might find that they're no longer attracted to their partner. Sometimes, the reason why you aren't attracted to your girlfriend might be obvious to you; you might've noticed a substantial change in them that contributed to the loss of attraction, or you might've noticed that you clash in areas that you didn't clash in before. You might also experience a loss of attraction, whether that's a sexual attraction or romantic attraction, and wonder why or how it happened. If you're stumped and can't find a clear reason you aren't attracted to your girlfriend, there might also be something deeper in the relationship under the surface. Did she cheat? Do you fight often, and are those fights beyond small, healthy arguments? Did you stop having sex or spending as much time together? Has your relationship gotten boring? Think back to when the loss of attraction started and see if any of those scenarios correlate with the time frame in which the loss of attraction took place. If they do, you will have an idea of what you need to work through to bring attraction back into the relationship.
What to do when you're not attracted to your girlfriend?
The best thing to do when you're not attracted to your girlfriend anymore but want to be and want to continue the relationship is to try different methods of bringing romance, passion, and affection back into the partnership. If you're no longer attracted to your girlfriend due to an issue in the relationship like the concerns outlined above, putting in the effort to work through that concern is probably your best bet. Therapy modalities such as the Gottman method include a great deal of guidance on how to increase attraction in a relationship. This therapy modality may be beneficial to you if you find that you're experiencing a loss of attraction for your partner or a situation where the connection is no longer as loving or passionate as it once was.
If you take some time to try to work things out and find that the romantic attraction isn't there anymore, you may have grown apart. As painful as it is, it's okay; people change, and you both deserve to find someone that you align with naturally. If you lose attraction to someone, it doesn't mean that something's "wrong with them," per se. The same is true if someone loses attraction for you. If you lose attraction to someone, it doesn't make you a bad person. If you decide to part ways, go the respectful route. There's no need to attack them or criticize them.
Is it bad not to be attracted to your girlfriend?
If you're not attracted to your girlfriend or partner at all, it'll be difficult to build and maintain an optimal relationship. She deserves someone who's attracted to her just as she is, a person who's attracted to her on a fundamental level. The same is true for you. The hard truth is that if you don't appreciate her, someone out there will, which everyone deserves in a relationship. Just like physical attraction matters more to some than it does to others, people are attracted to different things aesthetically, emotionally, and romantically. We all have preferences, but we can't attempt to fit people into a box if it isn't authentic to who they are as a person. Remember that many different forms of attraction, including emotional attraction, physical or aesthetic attraction, sexual attraction, and intellectual attraction. If none of the potential forms of attraction exist in your partnership, it's probably bad news for the health of your relationship.
Can a relationship work without physical attraction?
When you love someone, you often experience physical attraction toward them and sexual attraction, emotional attraction, and romantic attraction. Even if someone isn't your usual "type," when you fall in love, a person's good qualities stand out to you. A relationship can work without physical attraction, but it depends on the partnership and how much physical or aesthetic attraction matters to each person involved, and how many other forms of attraction show up in a relationship. That said, if the lack of physical attraction or the matter that led you to lose attraction is getting to you, and it's leading you to pick out your partner's flaws, treat them differently, or criticize their appearance, there's a problem. If she dyed her hair and you don't like it, for example, it won't make things better or bring attraction back into the relationship if you say, "I prefer you as a blonde." That is more likely to cause problems and may even come off as controlling behavior. Although many people enjoy doing things in relationships like wearing something they know their partner will like from time to time, ultimately, it's her choice. Work to increase attraction in the relationship through other means such as spending quality time together and verbalizing the traits (not just physical ones) that you like about her. If that doesn't work, it may be time to re-evaluate the partnership.
Why do guys lose attraction to their girlfriends?
People of all genders have the potential to lose attraction to their significant other for a variety of reasons. You may experience a loss of sexual attraction, physical attraction, emotional attraction, intellectual attraction, or romantic attraction for a person. It doesn't have to mean that the relationship is over; you might be in a rough patch, and if you love this person, there are ways to overcome it. Especially if you've been together long term, the relationship may have become mundane or predictable, which can absolutely diminish the attraction you feel for your girlfriend or the attraction she feels toward you. Elements like anger, stress, frequent arguments, or other things that pressure the relationship can cause a lack of attraction and even resentment.
Is it normal to lose physical attraction?
Many people experience a dip in attraction in romantic relationships, including those related to physical attraction. Physical attraction is a part of a romantic relationship, but it's certainly not everything. The amount that physical attraction matters vary from person to person, so it's up to you to look at how much physical attraction matters in your dating life. When you love someone, you may grow more physically and emotionally attracted to them over time. As you get to know someone, you start to notice the sparkle in their eyes when they talk about something they're passionate about, how beautiful their smile is, and the depths of their internal character. The opposite can also be true. If you love this person and want to experience a higher level of attraction and closeness with them, an attempt to work things out and increase attraction is worth a shot. Remember, you can't change someone; instead, you can enhance the relationship between who you are as individuals.
What causes loss of attraction?
There is no singular cause of lost attraction. Sometimes, people change, which is why you're not attracted to them anymore, even if you were previously. If someone has changed significantly as a person, you might feel like you're with a stranger. If you're not attracted to your girlfriend anymore, she might be acting differently, or maybe, you found out something about her or an action she made that doesn't mesh well with you, and as a result, you're no longer attracted to her. It could be a matter of physical attraction, emotional attraction, romantic attraction, or pain that's affecting your ability to experience attraction toward her. If any of those things are true for you, you can strive to work things out or face the idea of potential separation. It could even be that you found out about cheating behaviors, which can certainly lead a person to lose attraction, in addition to trust. Someone might also lose attraction or find that they're no longer attracted to their partner because the initial passion of a new relationship has died down. Things might feel boring, and the spark could be lost, particularly if this is a long-term relationship or if one or both of you are going through a stressful time that leaves little room for romance. The solution is to enhance the romance in the relationship, whether that's in couples counseling or on your own. No matter what the case is if you want to work things out, remember that you can't change or control another person if it's not what they want. Have a conversation about how to increase attraction and affection in your relationship. If you're still frustrated by a lack of attraction to your girlfriend or vice versa, you might consider breaking up.
Why don't I feel sexually attracted to anyone?
If you don't experience sexual attraction at all, you might be asexual. Asexuality is a sexual orientation and spectrum which applies to those who have little to no sexual attraction. If this is new for you, however, something deeper might be going on. Mental health can impact your sex drive and interpersonal relationships. If you find that the issue at hand is that you're isolating yourself from others and don't want to be around anyone, you may be experiencing depression. Symptoms of depression include numbness, low mood, low libido, excessive crying, irritability or agitation, fatigue, possible weight gain or loss, feelings of hopelessness or worthlessness, and loss of interest in activities you used to enjoy. If you believe that you may be experiencing a mental health condition such as depression or issues in your relationship that you'd like to address, seeing a professional counselor or therapist can help. Search the network of online providers at ReGain or find a therapist in your local area.
What's it called when you are not attracted to anyone?
Many people do not experience or experience very little sexual attraction, romantic attraction, or both. Oftentimes, people who do not experience attraction use the labels asexual or romantic, respectively, though every person has a different preference for the labels they identify.
In addition, many people feel varying levels of sexual attraction and romantic attraction, with the degrees to which the two types of attraction are experiencing not always aligning. For instance, someone sexually attracted to people but not romantically attracted to people may call themselves aromantic but allosexual, with “all” being the prefix used to signify that they experience attraction. The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network is a great resource for more information on types of attraction and lack thereof, both completely normal.
If you realize you are less attracted to people than your friends, do not experience sexual attraction, or want to learn more about the different ways people feel sexual attraction, you can find forums there on a variety of different topics. Everyone is attracted to people in different ways, and a lack of sexual attraction does not mean that anything is wrong.
What does it mean when you're not romantically attracted to anyone?
People feel different types of attractions in many different ways. If you find that you do not feel romantically attracted to people, this could mean you identify with the label “aromantic.” There is nothing wrong with you if you don’t experience romantic attraction, even if it seems like you’re the odd one out sometimes. Our society often makes us feel like we need to be attracted to people, fall in love, and get into romantic relationships to live a happy, fulfilled life, but this isn’t the case. Many aromantic people lead extremely fulfilling lives even if they don’t feel attracted romantically to others. Some even choose to find a “partnership” to experience certain societal benefits even though they do not romantically love their partners, though this is not a necessity.
Why do I not feel sexually attracted to anyone?
People feel sexual attraction in several different ways. If you find that you never or very rarely experience sexual attraction, you may identify on the asexuality spectrum. People on the asexuality spectrum may or may not have a libido or experience arousal. Still, they seldom or never feel attracted to or feel the desire to experience sexual situations with others. Those who experience some sexual attraction may only experience it in very limited contexts. According to Planned Parenthood, though some may experience health problems that can lead them to feel sexual attraction less frequently, asexuality is not a medical condition and is completely valid. Many people don’t feel sexual attraction and are totally healthy. If you don’t feel sexually attracted to anyone, there is nothing wrong with you. At the end of the day, your types of attraction and your identities are personal to you, and you can choose to identify with them in a way that feels right to you.
Can you fall in love with someone you're not attracted to?
Many people experience different attraction types, such as romantic attraction and sexual attraction, in different ways. It is certainly possible to feel romantically attracted to people and fall in love with people you do not feel sexually attracted to. There is nothing wrong with you or your relationship if this is the case. However, if you do feel sexual attraction towards people (some people don’t, and that’s okay) but you don’t feel sexually attracted to your partner, this could become a problem later in your relationship if the sexual attraction is something that you value. If this is the case, it may be helpful to talk to a relationship therapist or counselor who can help bring the spark and attraction back into your relationship.
Is Demisexual asexual?
Demisexuality, or when someone is sexually attracted to people only once a strong bond like a friendship is formed, falls under the asexual umbrella. Asexuality, or the lack of sexual attraction, can be a term used to cover a wide variety of other sexualities, hence why it is often called an “umbrella term.” People who are asexual don’t feel sexual attraction at all. Still, many individuals, like people who identify with the term “demisexual,” experience very limited sexual attraction or sexual attraction in only very specific circumstances. For this reason, it is common for those people to identify with asexuality and feel comfortable fitting within an asexual umbrella. Often, you can find resources and information about demisexuality on asexuality forums and information websites.
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