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You’re sitting on the couch together at the end of the night. You still say I love you before the light goes off. Nobody’s raised their voice in months. Somewhere in amongst all of that, you’ve started to feel like you don’t actually know the person next to you.
That’s one of the most common things couples bring into my therapy room, and it catches people off guard every time, because nothing has technically gone wrong. There’s no affair, no betrayal, no fight they can point to. Just distance that crept in while they weren’t looking, and eleven years is often about when I hear it.
Why Couples Drift Apart Without One Big Moment
The part that surprises people most is that they can’t pinpoint it. There’s no single event, no big blow up, nothing they can trace the distance back to. That’s exactly why they start doubting themselves. Did I make the wrong decision? Am I the problem? Do we not love each other anymore? Some people get caught in genuinely overwhelming spirals of that kind of thinking.
What’s actually happening is much smaller and much slower. Think about the start of a relationship. You make time to connect. You ask interesting questions, more than just how was your day. Even a walk together feels like an experience you’re sharing. Slowly, that starts to shift. Going for a walk becomes deciding whose turn it is to take the dog. Life gets divided up into logistics, and somewhere in that routine, you stop making time for the things that actually built the connection in the first place.
What Bids for Connection Are (And Why They Matter So Much)
This is where the idea of bids for connection comes in, something I’ve talked about before on the podcast in the Bids for Connection episode. A bid is a small gesture or comment someone makes, hoping to be noticed. You’re having breakfast at a cafe, a gorgeous dog walks past, and you say something like that. Your partner can catch that bid and respond warmly, catch it and brush it off, or miss it completely because they’re on their phone. None of those responses are dramatic on their own. It’s what happens when that pattern repeats, over and over, for years.
I explained this in one of my parenting courses once, and a dad came back the following week to tell me he’d caught one of his daughter’s bids. She’d asked him to play Monopoly at nine at night, which was the last thing he felt like doing. He remembered what I’d said, sat down and started the game anyway, and she opened up about her whole day while they played. That’s what catching a bid actually looks like in practice, and it works the same way between partners.
The Gottmans, whose couples therapy research I use a lot in my own work, have a saying for this: relationships die by ice rather than fire. Their research found that couples who stay together respond to each other’s bids for connection positively around 86% of the time. Couples who separate, it drops to about a third. That’s a significant gap, and it’s built entirely out of small, repeatable moments rather than one big rupture.
Why Spending More Time Together Doesn’t Automatically Fix It
When couples notice the drift, the instinct is usually to cram more time in together. Time together matters, but what you do with it matters more. Some people are genuinely content sitting next to their partner reading in comfortable silence, but that only really works if you’re already feeling close. If you’re feeling distant, being in the same room isn’t the same as connecting in it. I see couples who spend hours in the same
house, one cooking, one wrangling kids, one tidying up, without a single real exchange between them.
Planning matters too. If one partner organises date night and the other just turns up, all the mental load of the evening, the babysitter, the restaurant, the parking, sits with one person. That imbalance becomes its own kind of burden, and it’s a common source of arguments in its own right. If sex and intimacy have become part of that distance too, I’ve written more about that in Why We Avoid Talking About Sex (And How to Start).
What are sexual scripts and why do they matter
Sexual scripts are the blueprint we absorb for what sex and relationships are supposed to look like, and most of us never chose it. (I did another episode on this; you can listen to it here) It comes from the media we grew up with, the conversations that did or didn’t happen at home, and the culture around us.
A common one Tania named is gender: the expectation of how a man is meant to show up in the bedroom versus a woman, and what each person is supposed to want, initiate or tolerate. These scripts feel familiar because they’re so deeply absorbed, which is exactly why most people never think to question them. The work isn’t about having the answer. It’s about being curious enough to ask whether the script actually serves you, or whether you’ve just been running it on autopilot.
Want to learn more about your sexual scripts? There’s a whole module on sex in my relationship reset course – get it on demand in the privacy of your own home here.
Why low desire gets misread as rejection
Here’s where the episode got into something I see constantly in my own room. When one partner has lower desire, the other person’s brain often fills the gap with a story, usually some version of they don’t want me, I’m not enough, or something is wrong with us. Tania’s most repeated line in this conversation was that it’s usually not about you. Low desire is frequently about someone’s own relationship with their body, their history, their attachment style, or something as unglamorous as medication or tiredness that has nothing to do with their partner at all. The rejection someone feels is real. It’s just often attached to a cause that isn’t real.
How to talk about sex without starting a fight
This is where couples therapy and sex therapy actually meet. If you tell your partner you feel rejected because they don’t love you anymore, you’ve made a claim about them, and they will defend it. If you say I feel rejected, I feel uncared for when this happens, and I would like some reassurance, you’ve stayed with your own experience instead of accusing theirs. That distinction sounds small. It changes almost everything about how the conversation goes from there, and it’s the same principle whether the topic is dishes or desire.
The Open-Ended Questions That Actually Rebuild Connection
The kind of conversation you have matters as much as the time itself. If a question can be answered with a yes or no, it’s not doing the job. Real open-ended questions get you somewhere: What was your favourite toy growing up? What was the hardest part of your week? Is there something you hoped you’d have achieved by now that hasn’t happened yet? The tone matters as much as the question. These aren’t meant to be interrogations or ammunition for an old argument. They’re an invitation to actually be curious about the person you’re with.
I’ve put together a free guide of these, called Open-Ended Questions for Couples, if you want somewhere to start. Pick one and ask it in the car or on a walk this week. You don’t need to work through the whole list.
The REV Framework for Feeling Properly Heard
Asking better questions only gets you half way. The other half is what you do with the answer. I teach couples a framework called REV: reflect, empathically attune, and validate. Reflect means showing you’re following along, repeating back what you’ve heard every few sentences. Empathically attuning means responding to how the other person feels, not how you’d feel in their situation. Validating means acknowledging that their reaction makes sense, given what they’ve just described.
There’s an old piece of research called the still face experiment, where a parent playing with a baby would suddenly switch to a completely neutral expression. The baby would do everything it could to get a reaction back. We’re wired the same way as adults. A blank, neutral response from your partner can feel more threatening than an angry one. Using REV is the opposite of a neutral face. It shows someone you’re actually listening, without trying to fix, interject or defend.
Why Updating Each Other Still Matters After Years Together
The third pattern I see is couples who stop updating each other. If you’ve shared something before and felt unheard, it’s natural to start sharing less, not out of spite, just because the need isn’t being met. People are changing constantly, even the people you’ve known for over a decade. What you loved a year ago might be different now. Something you hated might have become nostalgic. If you stop asking and stop offering, you’re both working from an outdated picture of who the other person is.
This gets even bigger around identity shifts, like becoming a parent. Saying something as simple as I’m not sure who I am right now is a genuine opportunity for connection, not a burden on the relationship.
How to Start Reconnecting This Week
None of this needs a grand gesture. It’s rebuilt the same way it faded, in small moments over time. Start noticing the bids you’ve been missing. Ask one better question this week. Try REV the next time your partner needs to vent rather than jumping in with a fix.
If conflict has become more of the pattern in your relationship than distance, my guide Why Couples Keep Arguing and What It’s Really About walks through that instead. If you want to go further, my Relationship Reset course covers this along with intimacy, rituals of connection and the other people who matter in a relationship, at your own pace.
If you’d rather work through this with a couples therapist directly, the team at The Therapy Hub can help.
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Website: marievakakis.com.au
Read The Full Transcript
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[0:00]
A common thing I see in couples who come to see me is that they feel like ships in the night. They get along fine. They’re really kind to each other. But they can’t remember the last time they had a proper date night, just the two of them. And what they tell me is that they don’t feel known by the other person. Nothing bad has happened. Somewhere along the way they drifted apart, and they can’t explain why, because nothing has really gone wrong.
Today I’m answering this question: “My partner and I have been together eleven years. We don’t fight much. We still say I love you. We still sit on the couch together at night. It just feels like we’ve stopped actually knowing each other. Is that normal after this long, and can it come back?”
Yes, it is common, it is normal, and there are things you can do to change that. I want to give you three reasons emotional intimacy fades in relationships, three things I see in the couples I work with, and something you can do about it this week that doesn’t need a big grand gesture.
[1:00]
Welcome to This Complex Life. I’m Marie Vakakis, and each week we make a bit more sense of the messy, complicated, and every now and again gloriously beautiful business of being human, mostly the relationships we’re in and the mental health tangled up in them. I’m really glad you’re here. Let’s get into it.
The part that surprises people when they’re trying to describe this situation to me is that nothing happened. They can’t pinpoint the distance they feel to a particular thing, an event, a betrayal, a big fight. There’s no one thing that broke it down or broke it up. And that’s why they start to doubt themselves. They start to think, did I make the wrong decision? Am I the problem? Do they not love me? Do I not love them? Some people experience such racing thoughts that it becomes utterly overwhelming.
[2:00]
One of the things I see in these relationships is that it’s little bits over time that slowly change. Think about when you’re first dating. You make time to connect, you start to ask interesting questions, more than just how was your day. You’re really trying to get to know a person. You might plan a fun activity, and even something like going for a walk together feels like an experience you get to share. Then slowly it starts to become a chore, like rock paper scissors over who has to walk the dog tonight, dividing and conquering the chores.
So somewhere in the routine of life you stop making time for those things. But more than that, it’s not just the activities, it’s the little moments of connection. I’ve spoken before about bids for connection. They’re the gestures or comments someone makes that we can catch and respond to.
[3:00]
Say you’re having breakfast at a cafe and a beautiful dog walks past, and you think, oh, that’s gorgeous, I love Burmese Mountain Dogs. Your partner could turn around and say, I’m allergic to dogs, don’t even think about it. That means they’ve caught the bid but responded negatively. Or they might ignore you completely, or say, I’m doing something, don’t bother me. If they responded with, oh, that’s a really cute dog, that’s catching the bid and responding to it positively.
I was explaining this concept in one of my parenting courses, and a dad came back after a session and said, I caught one of my daughter’s bids. I said, tell me more. He said his daughter came up wanting to play Monopoly late at night. His instinct was to tell her off, it’s too late, we’re not playing Monopoly, but he remembered what I’d said about bids for connection, so he said, sure, let’s set up the board.
[4:00]
As they started playing, she began sharing things about her day and what was happening at school. These little bids can expand into a bigger conversation or stay small on their own. He could just as easily have said, I love Monopoly, it’s time for bed, can we play tomorrow after work, and that probably would have had a good result too. These little moments we catch from each other, when they stop being seen or get responded to poorly, that’s one of the signs.
It’s not something you can look back on your week and pin to one moment. You might not even notice it’s happening, until you reflect and think, I’ve slowly stopped bidding, I’ve slowly stopped making those comments. Maybe you even walk together in silence, or each play on your phone, so there’s no opportunity to make those bids.
[5:00]
That’s one of those things that melts slowly. There’s a saying from the Gottmans that relationships die by ice rather than fire, so it’s often a slow, gradual melting that leads to dissatisfaction, rather than one big explosive fight. Gottman research, one of the modalities of couples therapy I really like to use, shows that couples who stay together respond to each other’s bids for connection positively 86 percent of the time. Couples who separated, it was around 33 percent. That’s a big difference.
So responding to your partner’s bids for connection in a positive way is something you can start doing tonight, the second you’ve finished listening to this. When I explain this to couples, they often look relieved that it makes sense, and then they feel a bit of guilt or sadness because they didn’t mean to do it.
[6:00]
They weren’t angry at their partner. Maybe they got busy, overwhelmed, or even complacent, and took things for granted. I’ve said this so many times, but relationships take work. They take effort. They need watering, tending to, and we can forget that sometimes. It’s a very common thing for couples to slowly drift apart. If you want somewhere to start today, it’s noticing those bids for connection.
The second thing I see is people start to feel like they’re drifting apart, so they try to cram all these things in. They spend more time together, which is nice, spending time together is important, but what you do during that time is where I see the real value.
[7:00]
Different people have different preferences. Some are content sitting next to their partner reading a book, having them in their orbit, but that might only work if you’re already feeling close and connected. If the relationship has slowly drifted and you’re feeling distant, you might need more than just spending time together. It’s about the kinds of conversations you have, the questions you ask each other, more than how was your day, more than logistics, have you paid for the dog food, have you booked the dentist. Those conversations need to happen, but they don’t help you feel known.
I see some couples who spend enormous amounts of time in the same room but not quality time together, one cooking dinner, one playing with the kids, one tidying up, one running a bath. They’re doing a lot in the same space, but not really connecting. So quality time is more than an amount of time, it’s what you do with it. There are two factors here. One is how you organise that time together. If you organise a date night and all the pressure falls on your partner to organise everything around it, that’s not helpful.
[8:00]
I talked about this in a previous episode on desire and intimacy, that someone might try to ignite passion by organising a date night, but leave their partner to pick the restaurant, or they’ve booked the restaurant but not thought about who’s picking up the kids, what about groceries, are we changing the sheets, do we need a taxi home, what about parking. Once you have children, that effortless spontaneity just doesn’t work, and some people are in denial about that, wanting to stay fun and spontaneous when it’s not possible.
That can feel like extra burden on your partner if you say, cool, I’ll book dinner, and that’s all you do. Sometimes people even fight about it. So there’s the planning of the activity, and then there’s the kinds of questions you ask. Open ended questions are really important here. If a question can be answered with a yes or no, it’s not an open question.
[9:00]
There are things you can Google, apps you can get, I have a list of open ended questions you can download, there’ll be a link to that. These are questions that really get to know your partner, things like, what was your favourite toy growing up, what was the hardest part about your week, is there anything you’ve been looking forward to, is there something you hoped you’d achieve this year that hasn’t quite come about, how are you finding the reintegration back into the workforce, how are things going now that we’ve settled into our new home, does it match what you expected. Being curious and open minded, and your tone matters. If you use these questions to find ammunition, so what do you think about this now, you’re getting it wrong, that’s not what I’m talking about.
[10:00]
If you want to build genuine connection with your partner, it’s about being curious and being able to tolerate that they might want to vent, and that doesn’t mean you have to do anything different. If they start venting and want to get something off their chest, don’t try to fix it, don’t try to take it away. Listen, and after every couple of sentences, repeat back what you’ve heard. A lot of people think they’re listening when they say, yeah, I understand, but, or I understand, and, and try to interject, and that doesn’t help someone feel heard. Learning how to ask good questions and then learning how to listen is really important.
One of the things I teach people about active listening is REV, reflect, empathically attune and validate. This helps you get those deeper questions answered while keeping the conversation going.
[11:00]
The R stands for reflect. Say I’m telling you something, after a few sentences you might say, so what you’re saying, Marie, is there’s an acronym that helps people feel really understood. I’d say, yeah, that’s right, keep going. Then I keep going, and after a few more sentences you reflect again, so this is what you’re saying, after a few sentences you can jump in with another reflection. That’s showing you’re listening throughout the conversation.
Then there’s empathically attune, which is about really sensing what’s happening for the other person. Responding with empathy isn’t about how you would feel in that situation, it’s about what they’re describing they feel. Say I tell my partner, I’ve had a really tough day, a load of stressful clients, tech issues, our payment system went down, a website glitch.
[12:00]
If he jumped in with, oh, that’s fine, it’s all good now, it’ll be fixed, that’s not what we’re talking about. Using the REV framework, he’d reflect back, oh, you’ve had a really tough day, these tech issues, that’s so annoying, and then describe how I’m feeling, it sounds like that might be really overwhelming, or, you look like you’re spent. That’s having empathy for what the person is feeling, not thinking, if I was in that situation I wouldn’t feel that way, so why should they.
[13:00]
And the last one is validate, being able to acknowledge that it makes sense for them. I can see that would have been a really frustrating day for you, Marie, a full day of clients and a payment system that crashed and all these tech issues, no wonder you’re feeling overwhelmed. It’s acknowledging that their experience is their truth, and validating it back. If you’re struggling to build a deeper connection, start with the bits you can do better, try to be a better listener and ask better questions. The REV framework is a great way to deepen your listening skills so the person feels genuinely heard.
A blank or neutral face can actually be quite activating. There was an old experiment called the still face experiment, done on babies, where a mother would play with her baby and then hold a neutral face, and the baby would respond in all sorts of ways trying to get her attention, trying to make eye contact.
[14:00]
We have a sensitivity as a species to a neutral face, we can see it as quite threatening. So using the REV framework, actively showing you’re listening by reflecting, empathically attuning and validating, keeps the conversation going for your partner. It’s not about trying to fix it, interject, rebut it or defend yourself. It’s simply reflecting, empathically attuning and validating, being a good listener.
The third thing I see is people stop updating their partner, and this connects to when your partner doesn’t listen in a REV way. If you’re trying to share something and update them on how you’re feeling or a work issue, and you haven’t felt listened to or understood, you might not intentionally withhold it, but you stop sharing a little because you’re not getting that need met.
[15:00]
Sometimes we like to vent and have what I call a stress reducing conversation with our person, we want them to see us and hold us, physically or metaphorically, so we feel cared for and like someone’s on our side. When they say, oh yeah, but, or you should have done this, or I told you not to, or here’s what I would have done, none of that helps. Being a good listener helps with this third thing too, and it’s something both people can improve on, the updating.
If someone asks, how was your day, and you say, yeah, it was fine, try to go a bit deeper, both as the question asker and the answerer. Ask, what was the best thing that happened, is there anything you’re looking forward to tomorrow, was there something that surprised you about your day. And in your answers, instead of, my day was good, try, I felt really accomplished today, I got a lot done off my to do list, or, I was surprisingly chilled considering the difficult conversation I was expecting to have.
[16:00]
You can level up by offering more information. The other part of updating is like open ended questions, we stop asking because we think we know the answer, and I don’t think that’s ever really possible. Even identical twins move through the day in different spaces and have new experiences, new thoughts. You might have listened to a new podcast, read a book, had a conversation with a friend. Our brains are constantly updating and learning, so what you thought ten years ago might be different now. A band you loved might sound awful now, something you thought was awful then might be nice now because it reminds you of your childhood or teenage years, and it’s actually nostalgic.
[17:00]
I know there’s music I thought was terrible as a teenager that feels nostalgic and fun now, even though it wasn’t actually that fun back then, it just reminds me of those times. We need to keep updating those things, updating our partner, but also ourselves, thinking about who am I now and what do I like now. That can be quite confronting. Some people feel a lot of grief becoming a parent, thinking, who am I now, what’s this new identity, and sharing that with your partner is a really good opportunity for connection. Even saying, I feel like I’m not sure who I am anymore, I didn’t expect it, or I did expect it but not this much, it’s caught me off guard.
Just sharing what’s happening for you is a key skill for couples, so you stop seeing that slow melting ice and feel more connected. If you want some specific questions, here are a few you can try.
[18:00]
What’s something you’ve changed your mind about this year? What part of your week did you actually enjoy? Is there something you’d like us to try doing differently in the next couple of weeks? These can be really helpful starting questions. Give them a go and see if it brings up anything new for you. You could even share this episode with your partner and ask, what do you think about this, have we done any of these, are we missing each other’s bids, do you even notice my bids, how are we going on date night or open ended questions. Oh, I didn’t realise I don’t listen in a REV way, I don’t reflect, empathically attune and validate, I had no idea that was what you needed from me. Use it as a conversation starter.
[19:00]
So yes, to the question I answered at the beginning, it is normal, it does happen, and it can be brought back. It won’t be one big grand gesture. It’s these small things being reintroduced. Just like you slowly drifted apart, hopefully it doesn’t take that long to come back together, but it does take intentionality and little moments over time. You can start with a big hug and a kiss, start asking more open ended questions, show a bit more attention, catch each other’s bids, and listen and respond in a REV way.
If you want somewhere to start, I’ve put together a list of open ended questions for couples, the kind that don’t have a yes or no answer and don’t turn into a discussion about the calendar. It’s free, and there’s a link in the show notes. You don’t need to do all of them, pick one and ask it while you’re driving this week or walking the dog and see what happens.
[20:00]
People wait for big conversations. They think reconnection has to be a serious talk, sitting down to address the state of the relationship and coming away with action plans, and that sounds exhausting, and it doesn’t work like that, especially if you haven’t even been aware of what you’re doing that’s contributing to it. Some people put this off for years thinking it needs to be one big conversation, and that drift just gets bigger. Emotional intimacy isn’t built in one gesture or one conversation, it’s rebuilt in the small ones, the cute dog that walked past, the cup of tea you brought your partner, the hug and the kiss, the extra open ended question, the real connection and listening and responding to them attentively.
These small things build up to a significant amount over time. It’s like putting coins in a piggy bank, bit by bit, until you’ve built up real savings.
[21:00]
So yes, it’s normal, and yes, it can come back, and you don’t need to overhaul everything. Just start small. I’d love to hear from you, what are some of your favourite open ended questions, and if this landed for you, share it with someone else who might need to hear it.
You don’t need to overhaul everything. Start by noticing how many small moments you let go of during the week, and start to pick some of them up. If you want to go deeper, I have my Relationship Reset course. It’s available on demand, with questions, videos and a workbook, and it walks you through the key themes I think all couples should be talking about, friendships, intimacy, rituals of connection, and more. Go through the workbook, ask each other the questions, one at a time over a few months, I highly recommend it.
Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you next time.
