Q: My wife and I have been married for 27 years, we're deeply in love with each other, we get along great and she is my best friend. We started dating when were both 18 years old, and up until the time our second son was born, the intimacy between us was great.

We did notice one thing along the way: Most of the time we were intimate with each other, we had also been drinking alcohol. After our second son was born, we pretty much stopped drinking altogether, and our sex life suffered. At the same time, my wife, the daughter of an alcoholic, started to have issues with the role drinking had played in our sex life.

We've been in couples therapy for about 10 years, and while we have seemed to resolve her emotional ties to sex and alcohol, she now seems to have no sexual desire at all. This has been difficult for me to cope with. Do you think we need more therapy?

— Joe

A: When you go to general couples therapy, these therapists rarely—if at all—touch on sex. So, bless them for helping with all the other issues, but the final piece—incorporating all this growth, awareness and resolution into your sex life—sometimes falls flat. 

Find a sex therapist, and ask your wife to commit to three sessions and see how it goes. I guarantee if it is a good therapist, they will engage her and support her in a way that will help her.

Also, the cause of her low libido may have nothing to do with her emotional problems of the past. She may have a low libido because she is hormonal or it may be physical, and it is important to figure out how to get to the bottom of that problem with help from a doctor.

— Dr. Laura Berman
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