I’m a Psychologist, and Here’s What I Tell People Who’ve Lost Interest in Their Marriage

I’ll say something that might not sit well with everyone, but it needs to be said.

Losing interest in your partner doesn’t mean the marriage is broken. It means something important is trying to get your attention, and it’s not always what you think.

As a psychologist who’s sat with countless couples over the years, I’ve seen the quiet unraveling that happens not in explosive arguments but in long silences. In polite dinners. In the absence of a kiss goodbye. People come to me and say, “I don’t know what’s wrong. I just don’t feel it anymore.” Their voices often shake as they confess it, because admitting disinterest feels like betrayal.

But here’s what I know: emotional numbness is often self-protection in disguise.

Let me walk you through what I mean and what I believe can be done when the spark has faded. Not from a place of unrealistic hope, but from grounded, compassionate truth.

When You Feel Nothing: It’s Not Always Nothing

You might be thinking, “Nothing my partner does excites me anymore. I feel indifferent, disconnected. I’m not even sure I love them.”

That numbness isn’t random. It’s a signal. And if you’ve been ignoring that signal, don’t beat yourself up. Most people do. Our culture trains us to see marriage as either functional or failed. You're either passionately in love, or you’re headed for divorce court. But real life exists in the murky in-between.

Sometimes, when someone tells me they’ve lost interest, I’ll ask: “Is it that you feel nothing, or is it that you’ve been feeling too much for too long without resolution?”

Often, the emotional shutdown is a kind of internal burnout. It’s the nervous system saying, I’ve carried the disappointment, the unmet needs, the miscommunications for so long, I’ve gone quiet to survive.

We don't lose interest in a partner overnight. It’s a slow erosion. And the most important thing you can do right now is stop trying to “fix” the marriage from the outside. Instead, start turning inward with curiosity.

Disinterest is Often a Symptom, Not a Cause

Let me give you a metaphor I use in therapy.

Imagine a house. You and your partner built it years ago. At first, it felt full of light. But lately, you walk into the kitchen and feel nothing. No warmth. No spark. Just beige walls and silence.

So you repaint. You buy new furniture. You schedule a date night.

But no matter what you do, the room still feels lifeless.

That’s because the problem isn’t the room; it’s the foundation. If your emotional foundation has shifted because of resentment, suppressed conflict, emotional distance, or years of unspoken pain, then no amount of surface change will make it feel vibrant again.

What does that mean practically?

It means you don’t need a vacation. You don’t need to reignite passion overnight. What you need is emotional excavation. And that starts with two questions:

What have I stopped saying out loud?
What am I still longing for but afraid to admit?

The Hidden Killers of Connection (That No One Talks About)

Let me tell you something I see in session after session: the most common killers of desire and emotional connection in marriage aren’t what people think.

They’re not infidelity. Or sexlessness. Or different parenting styles.

They’re invisible patterns that build quietly over time:

Chronic emotional dismissiveness. The eye-roll when one partner tries to talk about their day. The subtle “you’re too sensitive” in response to a vulnerability.
Unconscious power imbalances. One partner always defers. The other always decides. It kills the feeling of being seen as an equal.
Lack of differentiation. When we become fused to a partner’s emotional state, we lose our own identity—and with it, desire.

And most importantly, a failure to repair.

Every couple fights. Every couple disappoints. But the couples who survive are the ones who repair the breach. Who say: “That thing I said—I realize now it hurt you. I want to understand.” Without repair, resentment builds. And where resentment grows, interest dies.

"But I Don’t Even Want to Try"

If you’re reading this and thinking, “I don’t even care enough to have that conversation,” I want you to know that’s valid.

That deadened place? That’s often grief. And grief rarely announces itself as sadness. It shows up as numbness. As boredom. As disconnection.

But here’s the twist most people miss:

Disinterest is not the end; it’s the call to reawaken.

What are you disinterested in? The marriage? Or the roles you’ve both been performing? Because those are not the same thing.

When I work with couples, we often dismantle those old roles. The over-functioner and the under-functioner. The “logical one” and the “emotional one.” The pursuer and the distancer. And in that dismantling, something extraordinary happens: people start to see each other again. Not as spouses, but as individuals. With their own pain. Their own longing. Their own quiet hopes.

The Myth of “Fixing” Your Partner

One of the most important things I teach is this: you can’t build desire or connection from a place of obligation.

So if you're secretly waiting for your partner to “change” so that you’ll feel something again, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Change doesn’t come from trying to make your partner more interesting. It comes from becoming more curious yourself.

Curious about what parts of you went dormant in this relationship. Curious about who you’ve become while you were too busy surviving the daily routine. Curious about how you both learned to stop looking at each other with wonder.

This isn’t self-help fluff. It’s the real, messy work of re-choosing your partner—or making peace with not choosing them again.

Can Lost Interest Be Reversed?

Yes. But not by doing what you’ve always done, just louder.

When couples ask me, “Can we get the spark back?” I don’t promise miracles. But I do ask them to do something radical.

Stop trying to “get back” to how things were.

Instead, ask: What could this relationship become, now that we’ve grown?

Because here’s the truth. Many long-term couples don't reignite old passion. They create a new kind of connection—one rooted in honesty, mutual growth, and a fierce commitment to emotional courage.

That’s the spark that matters.

My Most Unpopular Advice: Sometimes You Should Let It End

I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say this too. Sometimes, disinterest is the truth. Sometimes, the most courageous thing you can do is say, “This version of our relationship no longer serves either of us.”

Not because you’re giving up, but because you’re waking up.

Marriage is not a moral achievement. Staying is not always noble. And leaving is not always selfish.

What matters is that your decision—whether to stay or go—comes from clarity, not avoidance.

If you’re choosing to stay, then stay fully. Show up. Ask hard questions. Invest in emotional renovation, not just behavioral repair.

If you’re choosing to leave, then leave consciously. Grieve. Reflect. Take the lessons. End with dignity, not destruction.

How I Help Couples Who’ve Grown Numb

If you’re still with me, I want you to know that there’s no shame in what you’re feeling. We don’t talk enough about the emotional drought that often hits long-term relationships. We glamorize the honeymoon and pathologize the plateau.

But the plateau is where the real work begins.

As a therapist, my job isn’t to “save” your marriage. It’s to help you see clearly what’s really happening beneath the silence, the disinterest, the numbness. It’s to guide you back to your own inner voice—because from there, the next right step always becomes clearer.

And whether that step is toward reconnection, redefinition, or release, I’ll say this:

You are not broken. And this relationship is not a failure just because it’s asking you to evolve.

Final Thoughts: The Truth No One Tells You About Love

Love, in the long term, is not a feeling. It’s a daily act of attention. Of choosing presence over autopilot. Of letting your partner become new to you again.

And yes, sometimes, we have to lose interest in the old version of the relationship in order to make space for something deeper, truer, more alive.

So if you’re reading this because you feel nothing right now, take heart.

Nothing is where all great reinventions begin.