Relationships

A Sex Therapist Says ‘Love Will Not Get You Through’ a Relationship—Here’s What Will

June 17, 2026

Falling in love is adorable. Staying connected once life, laundry, work, kids, phones, stress, resentment, and the group chat enter the room? That takes a little more than chemistry.

On GlowLab with Susan Yara, certified sex therapist Dr. Mindy DeSeta gets right to it. “I always tell my clients, especially my couples who are newly together, I’m like, ‘Listen, love got you into this. Love will not get you through this,’” she says.

Yara immediately asks the obvious question: “What does?”

“Skills,” DeSeta says. “You need to learn the skills.”

Here are the four she says keeps intimacy alive long after the honeymoon phase ends.

1. Discuss emotional and physical intimacy

Talking about sex feels so loaded that most people either say nothing or lead with a question that backfires. “They’ll say, ‘What do you like in bed?'” DeSeta says. “That is so broad. And how much pressure is that? So right there we’re already in a defensive place.”

To take the pressure off, she suggests setting the scene first with “something intimate and kind of sexy like a nice dinner or a walk on the beach—something relaxing.” From there, keep it light. Stick to maybe two “little talking points” like “what turns you on” and “what turns you off,” which are way less daunting to answer than being put on the spot about your entire sex life.

It doesn’t have to be this broad TED talk, either. DeSeta’s point is that intimacy conversations don’t have to be deep, serious, or flawlessly worded. They just have to happen.

2. Be a teammate

“Life is hard, so you have to be a teammate against life with this person,” DeSeta says. The thing is, nailing this skill has a sneaky side effect. When you’re crushing it as co-managers of the kids, the finances, and the calendar, you start to sound less like partners and more like, in her words, “my roommate.” Which is, of course, “super not sexy.” Keep the logistics, just don’t let them become the whole relationship.

3. Learn and earn your partner

According to DeSeta, one of the biggest mistakes couples make is assuming they already know everything about each other. The reality is that “you’re constantly evolving,” which means there’s always something new to learn.

That’s where the “earn” part comes in. “A relationship is built or broken based on the small things,” she says. That could mean making the morning coffee, picking up the dry cleaning, or remembering something they mentioned in passing and following through later.

Those little efforts tend to come naturally at the start, when you’re both curious and trying to impress each other, and they’re the first thing to slip as time goes on. Which brings DeSeta to one of her biggest pet peeves: “The biggest third person in the room is your cell phone.”

It’s hard to keep learning and earning your partner when your attention is glued somewhere else.

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4. Don’t lose your autonomy

The last skill is staying you, which DeSeta says gets harder the more life piles on, especially once kids enter the picture. It’s easy to vanish into what everyone else needs from you, and the cost is real. “You lose a lot of what made you feel sexy and confident,” she says, and that tends to take your libido down with it.

That’s why she pushes people to protect their own lives outside the relationship, the friends, the hobbies, whatever makes you feel like yourself. The person your partner fell for had a whole world of their own, and keeping that going is a big part of staying attracted to each other.

When the spark fades anyway

Even with the skills, attraction shifts, and DeSeta says that’s normal. “It’s actually okay for [the honeymoon stage] to end because it means your relationship is evolving,” she explains.

For couples who’ve stopped having sex altogether, her advice is to ditch the same tired routine and switch things up, starting with the timing. A lot of her couples swear the “afternoon delight” beats exhausted late nights, and she’s a big believer in bringing back the flirtation you had at the start. It loops right back to earning your partner. “I have to earn my partner,” she says, “and one way to earn them is tell them how beautiful they are.”

Listen to the full episode on GlowLab, available wherever you listen to podcasts.