* Bill and Sandra, heterosexual “intimacy warriors” in their midlife years, married for 24 years, with three young adult children, living in the US. They had hit 9 out of 10 on the spiral of intimacy-destroying behaviors. We have been working together for more than two years. Names have been changed to protect privacy.

Even though they were deeply aligned on faith, finances and values, lack of sex pushed them to the brink of divorce.

Bill: [When we reached out,] we thought the problem was sex.  

Sandra was not initiating or making sex a priority for us. I am not sure she had initiated in years … and since she didn’t initiate and I wanted her to, I didn’t initiate either. This resulted in infrequent sex, maybe twice a month. 

When we did have sex, I sometimes felt like it was a household chore or task—like making me a sandwich—it was not objectionable, but it certainly was not a passionate event.  

Because Sandra didn’t initiate, I felt undesired, and because I felt undesired, I experienced all those years as deep rejection. I had such a mountain of hurt that any small way that she tried to initiate was more hurtful and never helpful.  

Sandra: Right, and, from my perspective, because I wasn’t understanding how I was hurting him every day … for years and years and years … it seemed like his problem. [I didn’t realize it was our problem.] I followed up where I understood him to be providing a path or action plan, and that consistently made things worse, because I never saw that he felt completely undesired and alone and unloved and that I had a huge, huge role in that.

Bill: After some of the early exercises, we realized that it was more than a sex problem — we totally lacked intimacy and did not really understand what intimacy looked like.  We didn’t know.

The harder they tried, the worse it got.

Bill: I felt completely undesired. I felt alone and hopeless that anything would change. We could not seem to improve our situation and resolve our issues even though we had worked very hard on our own. We have a strong faith background, and we've worked with other counselors. We read/tried a lot of self-help books and hadn't really made much of a dent in it. We tried just about everything … with very little to show except increased hurt and frustration … especially on my part. 

Other experts would have deemed them incompatible and beyond saving. They were caught in repetitive negative cycle that they could not stop.

Bill: We had good weeks and good times. When it was good, it was good and harmonious … but in the bad weeks, we weren't seeing each other. My hurt was so deep that I would just shut down, shut her off and go silent … for weeks. I felt so alone and unseen. 

Sandra: I had perceived the ups and downs to have a slightly upward trajectory and perceived myself to be ‘working on it.’  As I always do, I had assumed an optimistic stance, a ‘it's going to work out kind of thing.’ I didn't realize that it actually was a steady trend downhill, getting worse, not better.

Everything became undeniable when he gave her "the letter."

Bill: I had hurt enough, and I broke down and gave her a letter that said that I wanted a period of separation to evaluate the future with the strong possibility that divorce could be the outcome.

Sandra: My husband was going to leave me and so I was experiencing disappointment, despair and abject terror. 

Bill: [It was out of] desperation.

Sandra: For me, I wasn't the one that wanted out; my heart was nowhere nearing needing an out of any form. For Bill, I think he realized that even though he didn’t want to stay and wondered if he could stay, he had a hard time seeing himself leaving. He realized he wasn't honoring God, me, the kids, or all our years together... but he didn't know what else to do besides ask for a separation. So we elected to try another round of counseling. Thank goodness.

Bill and Sandra chose the courageous path of the “intimacy warriors” by working with a sex & intimacy coach, despite their fears.

Bill: I would not paint it that kindly. I was in gobs and gobs and gobs of pain, desperate for some form of an exit ramp.

Sandra: My fear with a “sex coach” was a dread of newness, awkwardness, discomfort. I don’t like any of those things!  But really, I felt like the letter was the bottom, and at that point I had nothing to fear. He was already on his way out the door. If it failed, he would just keep walking. The bottom is kind of a safe place to be in a way — it can only get better.  Finding Irene felt like a gift from God.

Bill concurred: A good gift from God.

Sandra: It was not something that should have happened. We shouldn't have found you, but we did. So, we felt from the beginning that it was ordained.

Bill: It seemed clear to me at that time that this was a sex problem. We are pretty aligned on most things — faith, finances, values, etc. There was no reason for us to not be aligned and really healthy in sex. So, I saw it as a giant sex problem. If we could get the sex right, then the rest of things would fall in place. That's how I saw it eight years ago when I started on the path of fixing us. 

So, we slogged through seven years on our own with counselors, books, with church, with individual counseling, couples counseling, you name it. Nothing worked, until we got here. 

In 2020, I sat Sandra down and told her that I had been waiting for 7 years (since I started working on it) and the sex never got better. It just got more and more frustrating and hurtful. I wanted help from a practical person that could speak to the sex aspect of things, because all of the Christian counselors didn't help any of that. I wanted to talk about sex and focus on that.

The Turning Point

With the safety of the structured coaching process, Bill and Sandra started to open up vulnerably to each other like never before.

Bill: The almost daily aspect of things was incredibly helpful. We would walk away with a tool or an idea or concept every week, that would help us learn and grow. At the same time, there was a lot of repetition of history and regression too, which was maddening, but the daily stuff keeps you focused, it keeps you supported, and it keeps you in a rhythm, you know, it's like a personal trainer.

We started to be more resilient and able to take on tough subjects or questions or circumstances — in sex and other areas of in conflict in our life (for example, kids) — and come out better on the other side. We weathered things well.

Sandra: For me, I felt the discomfort [of intimacy] right away but soon learned that by coming out of the turtle shell (where I lived before), I was not going to die. It was uncomfortable but not unsafe. I was ok. 

There was a lot to learn, a lot of good territory there. I recall some definite bumps, but I felt the curve was a steady upward. 

They had to learn that intimacy lies in the conversations we want to give up on and avoid.

Sandra: Specifically, our trust of one another has grown. My trust of Bill has grown tremendously and vice versa. That has enabled us to stay present. For me, it literally meant I was able to stay in the important conversations that I avoided or gave up on in the past. For Bill, it meant emotionally staying present in conversations without exiting by way of the venting mode.

This trust also has enabled us to make a bond between us in and outside of our bedroom. We created an intimacy that was never there before. And that really has provided the opportunity for really sweeter sex, because there's so much less fear for both of us. 

That sweetness in sex came out of the connection. It's that I'm participating in a loving relationship. I'm being loved. There's just a sweetness to that, that he is making love to me, and it feeds him. Creating love, experiencing love. Creating, not just doing lovemaking. 

Sandra adds: [Before] I was so lost in the words and the instructions about sex. I just didn't integrate it into the relationship or intimacy. I saw it as an aspect or something different from our hearts. This whole process has created a huge shift in me in that integration.

Bill and Sandra kept staying in the coaching process because the experience was so rich and rewarding.

Bill: I would headline this interview with be something like “Come for the sex, stay for the intimacy” or something like that. 

Because it's been all about intimacy and trust. We’ve been having better sex, and I think we're just now really actually getting to sex as a focus. [We came in] with really broken hearts. And it really is about intimacy. It's about trust. It's about having the tools to communicate and not take a step backward in hardship, but take a step forward because we have the ability to fail in a way that is instructive rather than divisive and destructive.

It took a lot of faith and hope to get to where we are now; it wasn’t instantaneous or easy. But now, we have a common understanding and framework that allows us to navigate complex and historically harmful issues.

As a result, they have been able to face challenging situations with a level of intimacy that was impossible before.

Bill: [As an example, this past] Sunday morning, we woke up to a situation that generated fear and uncertainty given our tough history.  However, we calmly and positively spoke about it. Historically, the issue and conversation would have made me go silent for weeks. I would feel undesired and alone. This time, we were able to speak about what happened with transparency because we had a commitment to voice any resentment, to ask for what we want, and to say how we're feeling. In processing it, I didn't do it in a way that hurt her or set her back. 

Sandra: Bill was able to say, ‘I have resentment, and we addressed it. Because we have the daily tools of the check-ins to address it, the resentment didn’t have that much time to build. We have tools to deal with an issue or a wound in a constructive way, before it escalates into a bomb. 

When addressing the intimacy, more physical intimacy became available and more sex followed

Sandra: There's a lot more physical affection. In the ebb and flow of our lives, we very seldom pass each other without acknowledging one another in some way, with eye contact or a smile or an embrace, or a pat or something to acknowledge the literal connection.

Bill: It became quite clear to me that Sandra sees my heart, and I know that she's trying to get better at seeing it each and every day. I'm not alone. That's powerful in giant ways. Even though [live and even] we work together, I have felt alone for a long, long, long time. And now I'm not — I’m hopeful and optimistic and looking forward to everything ahead of us.

Their sex life also shifted into higher gear

Bill: Certainly, Sandra is more open and relaxed regarding sex and what we have is more fulfilling and nourishing. We've achieved far more, far more than I ever dreamed was possible. 

Sandra: I just turned 60 and I think it's really impressive that I'm making these changes at this point in my life with the background and the habits and the neural pathways that I have. I'm really impressed with myself. 

I don't see that any of that was possible without Irene. I can't imagine a circumstance in which I could have made these changes other than what has happened. I would not have believed it if I weren't actually living through it.

Bill: I'm most proud of Sandra. She's just done incredibly hard work. She's done amazing things to become my partner.  She's worked hard and stayed in discomfort with a lot of tough stuff.  Amazing, amazing, amazing.

Living a life of an “intimacy warrior” demands you release fears.

Bill:  More than anything, I had to let go of the past and my fear that the future wouldn’t be any different. I had to reach a point where I trusted that change was possible and happening. I had to have faith in a better tomorrow. 

Today, I think I am more resilient emotionally. I have better tools to deal with things and maybe a better sense of things that would have sent me away into my hurt past, or my fearful imagination.  I'm very transformed. It's true.

Today, Bill and Sandra describe their relationship in a few words:

Resilient. Optimistic. We are able to see each other. We know each other better. We're known to one another more, so maybe the other word is known.

Words of advice to other couples

Sandra: [To couples who are in similar situations and are struggling, I’d say] It’s worth it. If the time and money investment is daunting, know that although it is a big investment, it’s way cheaper than a divorce — FINANCIALLY AND EMOTIONALLY.

It's a big investment, and it's worth it, any way you look at it. 

Bill: Words can't describe how much brokenness existed in my heart and between us as we entered here versus how optimistic, hopeful and amazing we are today.  It's been so far beyond my expectations and dreams.

In our case, we arrived majorly damaged and thoroughly exhausted. Maybe one of our biggest regrets is “boy, if we'd just done this early, when we were only a little tired and had noticed things slipping, we would have had a decade plus of joy.” 

In trying to do this on our own, on the cheap, we just did further damage and wasted many years.

A year later …

Bill and Sandra pushed on as “intimacy warriors” to open new frontiers of intimacy.

Bill: I personally am very thankful for, surprised by, and proud of how the individual work has been transformative for me. Positive changes in my attitude and approach to life have flowed through into our relationship in giant ways. I've been saying for a while, “you come for the sex and you stay for the intimacy.”  Now I can say “you come for the sex, and you grow into a better version of yourself.”

I am much more calm, much more relaxed, much more centered and balanced in my approach to life. Much better at holding things loosely and letting them go. Much less victimhood. I view the world with much less of the scarcity mentality that has chased me for years. All of this then allows me to come toward Sandra as a totally different person in the way we respond to and interact with each other.

Sandra: Absolutely. Before, Bill was making so many assumptions about my heart based on my behavior. When he's able to set the victimhood aside, hold things loosely, and not take things personally, he can give me the benefit of the doubt. So when I do something that feels hurtful for him, he can slow the train down, consider ‘is this personal?’ and ‘what's really going on here?’, then come to me to address it. Then, we have the opportunity to deal with it before resentment sets in.

Bill: Our cycles of working things out are exponentially shorter. From two weeks to two hours to now, frequently, several minutes. Before we’d go long periods of time avoiding issues or problems while the pile of resentment just grew and grew.

Sandra: For me too, I had no idea how much individual help I needed to be a good partner and a better version of me.

The individual work really made a dramatic difference for each of us because we were not speaking each other’s language. For me, I was not speaking Bill’s language. I was literally not understanding the words that he said and what they meant.

I still don’t, but I can ask!

He’d say ‘I want to dance and prance more. I want to be more playful. I want to have more adventures together.’ And I would take that as any number of things. I didn't understand what he was asking, nor what to do about it. So, I froze or I acted, and it flopped either way.

Through our work, I learned that he wanted me to have a joyful heart towards him, and that it would make him feel desired to see that I had a light and desirous and playful heart for him. And even if I had understood what he needed, I couldn’t have just made it happen.  You can’t change your heart by trying hard!  

The individual work that I've done to see what I'm like and who I am, has allowed me to realize that ‘if we peel away this heavy thing and this heavy thing and this heavy thing, then I can be the awesome me.”

Fighting for their intimacy and relationship led Bill and Sandra to more playfulness and fun.

Sandra: Things are dramatically different as a result. I am present. And when I am not, I am open to hearing what Bill needs from me. I'm really proud of myself for doing that — or I allowed it to be done. I allowed God to work on me and do the work. I allowed the process to work on me. I allowed Irene and Bill to work on me. And I worked on it too, but it did not feel like work.

Bill: There's not many people that are our age that are making these sorts of leaps and bounds.

Sandra: I am way more sexy now at 61 and having been married for 24 years. Wow! We’re having waaay better sex today than we had when we were “young.” 

Bill: Just so you know, right before this little interview, we hooked up.

Sandra: Yeah, we had a really nice morning, very playful.

Feeding their intimacy changed the quality of their sex too

Sandra: Bill has always been the one who’s been pushing and pulling for this work, and I've been the stonewaller – not literally but with my attitude. Now we are in this place where he has the freedom to not have to do that. He's not living in so much scarcity and so much pain. So, we’ve created a space for him to be patient, to be slow and to be calm and ask for what he needs without fear or anger. 

At the same time, I am able to deal with the fear issues — the Enneagram No. 9 fear issues, the avoidant personality, my family fear issues, evolutionary fears that I have as a woman, and create a space where I can decide ‘Yeah, that seems scary/uncomfortable, and let's give it a go anyways.’ I am becoming comfortable with discomfort. 

Bill: We just understand each other a lot better. I understand where Sandra’s coming from: how she thinks about things as a woman, her attachment style, her sexual blueprint, how she approaches things…and how I can and should think about them and approach her differently. 

And just because there are differences, that doesn't mean she's not attracted to me. Just because there are differences doesn't mean that she's not interested. 

We see each other a lot more clearly and come to the party with a much better understanding.

Sandra: That just allows for a lot of safety. There's less armor.

Bill: It’s intimacy. It's really coming together not in a stiff way, but more in a relaxed open way. There still are things we're working on, there are fears and misunderstandings, but those are now a small fraction of what they were before. They’re not derailing us.

Yeah, who says that sex doesn’t get better with time?!

Sandra: We definitely have sex more often. There's been a tremendous shift in the quality of my orgasms as a result of a lot more play, foreplay, and focus on pleasure. There's very rarely ever a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am kind of interaction. It's always very mutual. 

We are still working on introducing new toys and adventures, and I'm open to them. I'm able to be very comfortable saying no to what I don’t want, and I am able to redirect to something else that will bring us both pleasure. So that provides for a very different experience.

Bill: We're both much more comfortable in saying what we want and need.

As a man, the benefits of saying what you want with confidence are that you're more likely to get what you want AND, and this is something I did not realize as a man … saying what you want provides a huge amount of safety for the woman. That transparency actually generates confidence and safety for her, the opposite of being demanding or scary.

The shifts in their sex life fed other important aspects of their life

Sandra: It is a full-circle effect — that's the extraordinary part of it. We work together, so we're together all the time, and we have 3 kids all in that awkward mostly-adult-but-not-really stage. This shift in our sex life, which feeds into intimacy, creates so much partnership that we didn't have before—in every area. And that creates genuine affection, genuine trust, and certainly a heck of a lot less fear, which is a killer. That’s it — we just have so much less of the intimacy killers going on. 

We very much have a virtuous cycle going with regards to sex feeding emotional intimacy feeding sex feeding emotional intimacy.

Every once in a while, we'll have like a little bit of a schism and I'll be like ‘Whoa, we better have sex. We better get on it, because I don't like this emotional disconnection. Let’s get it on now.’  I may not be horny for sex, but I am sure horny for the intimacy and connection.

Bill: Coming in, I didn't understand what intimacy was, and I had a lot of my own issues. Sandra didn’t really understand how important sex was to overall intimacy either.

Working with a coach through a customized step-by-step process helped Bill and Sandra find their way to each other.

Bill: You don’t instantaneously get [intimacy]. You cannot get intimacy by reading a book or an article. We read a lot of books, and it did not work.  We needed to have a guide through a learning, building, iterative, and sometimes painful experience of finding our way back toward each other.  

I cannot stop emphasizing that all these lessons would have been impossible to do through a self-help book, or trying a new initiative until it loses steam or doing some counseling and then putting it away and then trying to pull it back out two months later.  We needed the constant supervision, observation, and work we have done in the consistent weekly coaching.

There were also some big surprises along the journey …

Bill: The individual changes that now have made the relationship stronger is the surprising piece. The shifts in our intimacy and relationship have been the result of changes in me, not necessarily what Sandra’s doing.

Sandra: For me, the sweetness of it has been the most surprising thing. It's not just that I've got the tools to work out the problems. It’s the sweetness of where we are today — the safety of our intimacy and how nourishing it is. How sweet it turned out to be for me. Wow! 

I came into this because Bill had an issue, and he was leaving me. In my mind, that was the only issue I had. I didn't feel the need for any of this, and then here it is, and it's just awesome.

My idea of a fix to our relationship was so much smaller or less than what actually happened. 

I just thought that we’d have a better sex life and then Bill wouldn't have to be so hurt and wouldn't have to leave me.

I didn't realize that we really didn't have intimacy.

Now, the way I relate to everyone, to the world and to God, and most definitely the way I relate to myself, has changed. It changes everything.

We are feeling things, and we’re in places we never thought we’d be, individually and collectively.

Bill: We were so caught up in our brokenhearted, little, hurt selves with our own history and issues that we couldn't really interact with each other intimately.

The combination of working on ourselves and then the sex itself, which then feeds our intimacy is so very accretive. It pours over into all facets of our life, including our relationship with our clients, our relationship with our kids, the relationship with my mother, you name it.

Sandra: Last week we had a challenging situation with one of our children, which was distressing and heartbreaking. And you know, one of our first reactions was ‘What's the gift here?’

Previously I would have had to intervene, so that Bill did not tear him up, limb by limb, so to speak. And now we are coming to conflict and challenges more open, curious, and calm.

It was never really about the sex.

Bill: In conversations with other men, it's all about the sex — “We have a sex problem.”

They'd like to have a ‘girlfriend,’ somebody that wants to play and be sexy and have fun with. That's what I think men want and need. That's why men cheat. That's why pornography is such an issue. 

My approach was ‘let's fix the sex because that will fix us.” And in truth, I didn't have the vaguest clue about intimacy, and seeing her heart, and being intimate with her and vice versa. Nor did she; she was not able to see my heart.  The issues were so much larger and more intractable than merely ‘here's how to spice up your sex life.’ 

Sandra: The extent to which we worked on our sex life before had no possibility of helping our intimacy. As a matter of fact, focusing on sex made us have less intimacy and connection.

Bill: The more sex became the focus, the less intimacy. We actually had an okay relationship until we started working on our sex life on our own, through books, articles, etc. The “do it yourself” approach just dug the hole deeper.

Sandra: In most of our conversations with you, if we count all the hours, we have not talked about sex that much, and it has turned out that that's okay. If Bill had known, he wouldn't have signed up. He was here for the sex part.

Bill: Ultimately, I'm getting what I want. It does require patience. It's not instantaneous, but it is happening.

The value they received outweighed the costs

Bill: For starters, super high-quality counseling and coaching from you is a lot cheaper than a divorce and a schism that wrecks your entire family and whatever wealth you've built together. Counseling is a tiny fraction of that from a standpoint of cost.  Don't shy away from it. 

Then the second thing would be that you can't do it yourself. You can't read enough books, articles, listen to enough podcasts or watch enough youtube videos to work it out. You don't know what you don't know. And it's not something that you can do on a couple's weekend away or with a little bit of counseling once a month. 

Sandra nods in agreement: If you had the skills to do that, you would have done it already. 

Bill: Right! Keep in mind that the more time you screw around trying to fix yourself, the more years you will waste and not get back … and possibly create further damage. There's just so much you don't know when you start a process like this one.

Sandra: Once you do commit, you realize that everybody has a voice. If you have a fear or a concern, you voice it. Irene works to make sure everybody stays safe. 

Bill: There's huge value in the weekly process. What's different about Irene is that it is a very intensive process. She came alongside us, in a way that's opposite of how it works with a regular marriage counselor, which is to work for an hour a month and then you’re on your own. 

By virtue of laser sessions, texts, emails, all the material, weekly meetings, individual sessions, it’s a lot of help very quickly. And it can't be compared to anything else. 

Sandra: We did marriage counseling, and you pick it up, put it down, months go by, and nothing is changed. You have to practice all the time if you’re going to make improvements, and this method is based on constant practice.

Bill: The other thing that I would say for other Christians is that my faith was respected and significantly reinforced and amazingly bolstered by Irene. As a Christian, this was the best thing ever.

Sandra: It was so helpful to talk about things with a new language and not the same old Christian-ese. Yet, we would always be speaking the truth, God's truth.

Bill: Irene made this process for us as she got to know us; it isn’t a cookie-cutter thing. She would have a tool for what we were experiencing at the moment, very intimate and customized.

It is a team effort — we made a good team, all three of us.

Also, we want to assure people that we did not have to have sex on camera, in case people are worried about that.

Staying in the fight as '“intimacy warriors” they are, Sandra and Bill are reaping the results.

Back to seriousness, she met us where we are. I am a better person today, and I am a happier person today by virtue of the individual work. 

We have a much healthier and happier relationship. It's a different planet.

Sandra: It seems expensive, but it's such good value. If we didn’t do this, dang, we could have been paying for two households because of the divorce.

Bill: Doing it yourself is a disaster and likely to dig you into a deeper hole.

And if you're 28 and you have these issues, it's a hell a lot better to work on it now than to wait until you're 58 and have decades of wounds/scars.