If you’re not already aware, ChatGPT is a new tool based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning that allows people to ask questions using natural language and get responses that are more like speaking to a human being than reading a list of search engine results.

Many people are quite excited about this tool and seem to treat it as an oracle that can answer any question asked.

As an experiment, I recently asked ChatGPT, “how do I fix my sexless marriage?” – a question many desperate men type into search engines like google, bing, and DuckDuckGo.

This is exactly the response I got:

Sexual intimacy is an important aspect of a healthy marriage, and it’s understandable that you may be concerned about your sexless marriage. However, there can be a variety of reasons for a lack of sexual intimacy, and the solutions will vary depending on the root cause.

Here are a few suggestions that may help you start addressing the issue:

1. Communicate with your partner: Open communication is key to addressing any issue in a marriage. It’s important to have an honest conversation with your partner about how you feel and what you would like to change. It’s essential to do this in a non-judgmental and non-blaming way.
2. Seek professional help: Consider seeing a therapist or a counselor who specializes in couples’ therapy. They can help you identify the root cause of your sexless marriage and provide guidance on how to address it.
3. Prioritize intimacy: Even if you’re not feeling particularly sexual, it’s essential to prioritize intimacy in your relationship. This can include holding hands, cuddling, or engaging in other forms of physical touch that feel comfortable and intimate.
4. Address any underlying medical or psychological issues: A lack of sexual desire can be caused by various medical or psychological issues, such as depression or hormonal imbalances. Consider seeing a doctor or a mental health professional to rule out any underlying conditions that may be impacting your sex life.
5. Experiment: Sometimes, a lack of sexual desire can be caused by boredom or routine in the bedroom. Consider experimenting with new positions, toys, or other ways of spicing up your sex life.

Remember that fixing a sexless marriage takes time and effort from both partners. Be patient with each other, and be open to trying new things. With communication, support, and a willingness to work together, you can overcome this challenge and build a healthier, more fulfilling relationship.

Pretty impressive for a non-human to craft this kind of ‘thoughtful’ response, right?

“Missed it by that much”

As an 80’s kid, I grew up watching Get Smart and hearing Maxwell Smart use this term. 

I find it an appropriate response to the response ChatGPT provided to my question about sexless marriage.

While there are a lot of good tips in the response, they reflect the same tired approach that doesn’t produce meaningful results for most people who try them.

The response is based on common and conventional approaches to a sexless marriage…

Talk More, Share More, Try More, Depend More

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I talk with men about sexless marriage nearly daily. 

They’ve all talked plenty… ad nauseam. 

They’ve all shared… tirelessly.

They’ve all tried… repeatedly.

They’ve all depended…. endlessly.

They’ve all failed to regain connection, intimacy, passion, romance, and intercourse.

And most have given up hope that they can ever have what they want.

ChatGPT provides information, not transformation

Search engines, even ones that are fancy enough to chat with a man, can only offer him information.

While information can be really useful, it would be a mistake to think that information causes transformation. It does not.

Information is a bit like a travel guide or map to a great destination. It can get a man to the trailhead of a journey toward his destination but can’t equip him for it or ensure his success. 

In our community, we’re laser-focused on providing effective information in a transformational context where we guide and accompany men through the journey side-by-side as mentors and guides.

This is why we have the high success rate we do with helping men overcome significant challenges in their marriage. We know the trail very well and love walking alongside men as they go.

We know what it takes to reach a repaired, recovered, thriving, loving, and passionate marriage and what produces the most favorable outcomes reliably and effectively.

While we can’t guarantee the future for any man, we can share with him the key transformations we observe in those who’ve reached the destinations they’d hoped.

Five Transformations For Turning Around a Sexless Marriage that ChatGPT Won’t Tell You

We’ve discovered a lot of conceptual truths while helping men in sexless marriages, broken or low-intimacy relationships, and men facing separation, divorce, or relational devastation.

Below are what we’ve observed among transformed men.

#1. He radically changes his sense of value, worth, significance, self-respect, and self-acceptance.

Sexless men typically sacrifice one thing they want (intimacy and closeness) for other things they want (peace, lack of conflict, certainty, a sense of security, and comfort). 

They don’t realize it, but they have a value issue. They don’t value intimacy enough to fight for it. 

The discomfort of no intimacy and connection is “the better of two evils” and better than they might feel facing some deeper areas within themselves and the relationship.

And so they wait. And they wait. And they wait… all in hopes that she’ll change. 

I routinely speak with men who’ve been waiting like this for two, three, four, and five decades.

Waiting never works. It’s a great way to fritter away life. 

What kind of man waits?

Men wait when, deep down, they have a very feeble love and trust in themselves. 

As a result, they’re conflict-avoidant in relationships. Waiting is just hoping a partner changes so they don’t need to experience conflict.

This is the posture of very insecure, anxious, fearful, and ashamed men.

Is there hope? Yes!

To turn around a sexless marriage, a man must begin to honor himself, his desires, and his sexuality so much that he realizes that sacrificing these on the altar of his partner’s happiness does neither of them any good. 

He realizes that endlessly falling on his sword to make his partner feel better is actually an act of aggression and hostility toward himself.

A sexless man must arrive at the place where he values himself enough to be unwilling to make room in his life for those who do not value him – including his partner.

Paradoxically, it’s often not until a man reaches this level of valuing self that others can do so, and often, that is exactly what happens.

How does he do this? By addressing the pillars of his suffering mentioned above: insecurity, anxiety, fear, and shame. 

Without addressing these, he will continue to avoid contact all the way to his dying breath and likely wish that his partner has their dying breath sooner than later.

#2. He changes his understanding of what sex is and what it is not

Men in sexless marriages tend to see sexual intimacy as a place to meet their needs instead of sharing themselves abundantly with their lover for pleasure and delight.

Often, they begin with the belief that they need sex. 

99% of the time, when we ask them what that need is, they say “release” and “connection.”

“Release” can clearly be met without a sexual partner. Ask any teenage boy! Though, for many people from certain religious traditions, this is taboo and increases a man’s frustrations, fear, and shame.

We know and acknowledge that a man doesn’t get married with the desire and expectation of satisfying his own sexual impulses through masturbation. We know he feels ashamed being over forty and still having wet dreams.

We know this is not what a man wants. 

We know and affirm this! We’re men!

However, wants are not needs, and confusing needs with wants confuses him.

No one dies from being unable to have penetrative intercourse! It’s not a need but a strategy men use for something else – like connection.

“Connection” requires a bit more understanding. 

I often ask a man who says he has a “need for connection” some questions to help him elaborate:

“What do you get from [connection] that you didn’t have beforehand?”

“What do you feel differently when your experience [connection]?”

When a man can be honest with himself and me, he often gains needed clarity. He’ll find he has some deeper needs that he seeks to meet via sexual intercourse and intimacy.

If he keeps iterating through these questions, replacing [connection] with the answer from the prior iteration of asking those questions, he discovers something vitally important.

It’s not about intercourse

It’s telling that for most men that come to us with these issues, their deepest longing is not for sex but a deep emotional connection. 

That is very telling about the “real” needs a man seeks!

A man discovers that the “needs” he’s uncovering are emotional, “spiritual,” or existential and have nothing to do with “having sex.”

He learns that he’s been subconsciously using sex to address his deeper fears, shame, insecurities, anxieties, and uncertainties about himself and life. 

He’s been trying to use sex to plug holes in his sense of self, value, worth, significance, and sense of masculinity.

And when he stops – things improve – radically!

But before that can happen, he must arrive at the painful conclusion that he’s been abdicating the power to answer those deep insecurities to his partner, not himself.

Though painful, this is a crucial and liberating moment!

This is often among the chief reasons he is a sexless man. He’s powerless where it really counts – his sense of self.

Without this power, sex becomes a desperate, needy transaction of seeking affirmation, validation, acceptance, and self-worth via sexual encounters.

It becomes a way of “asking for power back, ” resulting in hard emotions whenever a partner won’t oblige.

This is easily witnessed by such a man requesting sex and waiting for a partner to initiate instead of just going for what he wants.

The truth is his partner is tired, disappointed, and resentful of being placed in the role of having to answer her partner’s existential value and worth questions with her attention, gaze, and body. 

To her, that feels icky. It’s objectifying. It feels like mothering. It’s offputting and disconnecting.

Before transformation in the relationship can occur for such men, they must correct their view of self, re-taking the power to answer those questions away from their spouse and answering them within. This is the primary thing we help men do in our mentoring program. We show men how to improve their relationship with themselves. 

Until then, a man’s sexual posture is one of neediness and receivership – both of which are a turnoff to lovers and cancerously erode the relationship’s connection, romance, and love.

#3. He begins putting an end to immature dependency and neediness.

This leads these same men to begin breaking their dependency upon their partners. This is when men report to us feeling more and more alive, vigorous, and whole.

As they recognize their dependency as areas they never learned to mature from parents and caregivers meeting their needs to owning the responsibility for themselves, they regain their power, self-agency, and self-reliance.

This is when men finally begin to truly feel like men and gain access to their deepest masculine mojo!

Ownership, agency, and self-reliance feel better to a man than sex! This is another milestone in a man’s journey!

It’s exciting to watch a man come into his power in this way! 

It’s like watching a caterpillar enter a cocoon and come out a monarch! 

He enters the process feeling like a boy and feels like a king as he emerges.

#4. He learns to create intimacy instead of seeing it as an entitlement to consume

When men first come to us, they usually have some entitled views of intimacy because of their devotion and commitment to a monogamous relationship.

In fact, it’s really common for men to tell us, “there’s nothing wrong with that.”

We’re not arguing that something is wrong but that it’s ineffective. It’s a way of being that appears when relationships start but is incapable of producing the life a man wants in the long term.

Whether a man is in a relationship or not, working hard, paying the bills, not being abusive, and generally being kind is just being a decent human, not being an epic and best-of-breed male.

This common attitude of entitlement is a bit like believing a bountiful garden should grow in the backyard of a home I purchased just because I bought the home; my name is on the deed, I pay the mortgage, and I sleep there every night.

That doesn’t make a beautiful garden grow and produce delightfully pleasing aromas, flavors, tastes, and sights.

Those take cultivation, not anger, entitlement, boyishness, and demands.

In the long term, women don’t sexually or intimately open to men that don’t cultivate. Instead, just like a garden, they grow dormant, weedy, and lackluster in their sexual interest.

This is where immature men just blame the woman, declare this is all too hard, that bar is too high, it’s all not worth it, and just give up and feel like victims.

They erect men’s movements to further disparage the evil women who make it so hard.

Though we understand the hurt, disappointment, and frustration such men feel, the true source of their pain is their unwillingness or failure to see the need to become mature men.

Satisfying intimacy is not automatic

Long-term intimacy is not an entitlement, especially the vibrant, passionate, deeply-connected intimacy a man and his partner want. 

It doesn’t just happen because he wants it to or by covenant, agreement, wedding vows, or even mutual interest.

It is the fruit that grows on a carefully cultivated vine.

What kind of vine? 

A relationship with increasing vulnerability, acceptance, warmth, curiosity, and high regard for one another. Such relationships provide both partners with safety and security.

However, before that kind of intimacy can be cultivated within a relationship, a man must first begin cultivating those things within himself. 

This happens as he sees himself with positive high regard, deep and unconditional self-acceptance, and a willingness to be his true self. 

His vine must then grow to include self-approval and appreciation.

These begin to allow such a man to live openly, authentically, unapologetically, and courageously as himself, even at the risk of feeling rejected.

Until a man can live authentically, he lives as a chameleon, offering edited versions of himself to placate and appease his partner.

He is living falsely. He’s not trustable. He’s an insecure, inauthentic imposter – and she knows it.

Without trust, vulnerability is impossible. Without vulnerability, intimacy is improbable.

#5. He puts an end to connection-killing attitudes and intimacy-undermining behaviors:

When we first meet men in broken marriages and relationships, they are replete with many unhelpful attitudes that undermine and antagonize the very life they wish to create. 

While these are normal and understandable given his circumstances and path, the man wishing to transform his life and marriage must move away from these.

• thinking she’s broken
• blame
• resentment
• contempt
• malice
• judgment
• moping
• pouting
• explaining yourself
• melancholy
• need to be right

Each of these attitudes and behaviors is anti-intimacy. They rob the relationship of warmth, openness, acceptance, and lightness.

Though a man’s partner may have several of these two, someone must go first in letting these go. 

Many we meet get stuck here. 

They become unwilling to go first and enter long seasons of waiting and limbo while they refuse to take action without certainty that their partner will respond. These men remain embroiled in hard and unpleasant emotions. 

As with other areas of dependency mentioned above, they’re also giving away the power over their internal sense of well-being, placing all the ownership of how they feel better and when upon their partner.

Many get stuck here for decades. In fact, sadly, many never leave here and go to their grave filled with hard emotions and ruminating thoughts centered on their partner not changing.

Men that transform break this pattern by going first and going alone.

Emotions point to deeper truths

In our community, we do not encourage men to suppress their emotions. Rather, we show men on this journey how to understand what their emotions can show them about the stories they use to understand life.

Behind every single one of these emotions is an unmet need, and in every single case, that need is one that a man has not yet owned but forfeited to someone else to own and manage – usually his partner.

When a man entrusts the power over meeting his needs to someone else, he inevitably encounters a scenario where he does not appreciate how the power owner handles those needs.

And this… this is where those hard emotions emerge. A man experiences those hard emotions when the owner of his well-being won’t satisfy his needs according to his expectations.

We don’t tell me to stop feeling hard emotions. We help them feel differently by helping them uncover and address all the dependencies that lead to them. 

Men constantly report to us how their emotions dissipate and fade as they replace dependency with self-reliance.

It’s all about insecurity and emotional safety

As men address their dependency and take ownership over more and more of their needs, they become increasingly secure. This is the natural byproduct of learning to meet one’s own needs.

As a man increases his trust in himself, he feels more security and safety, as these are no longer granted to him by others but created within himself.

Security and emotional safety result in feeling calm, confident, and capable. It’s also quite inviting, attractive, and sexy!

Thus, as we help men find a deep sense of emotional security and safety, lose dependency, and gain freedom from hard emotions, they become their best selves and ideal partners.

What kind of man are you ready to be?

We hope you’ve found this article helpful, informative, and inspiring. 

The truth is, many men will be angered reading this. They’re not yet ready to face the daunting task of maturing into their most capable, confident selves. That’s okay; We get it; we were there, too, once!

But if you find yourself positively provoked by this article and feeling stuck in a sexless marriage, dead bedroom, or facing separation, divorce, affair, or relationship despair – we can help!

We’re ready to guide you beyond information from articles, videos, and blog posts and into deep, personal transformation.

It all begins with a FREE call with one of our mentors. Request one now by clicking here.