I nearly spit out my drink when she told me.

“What do you mean they’ve only had sex three times? They’ve been married for seven years. How is this possible?”

My friend and I were out for brunch, discussing a conversation she’d had with one of our mutual friends. Apparently, this mutual friend has been trying to initiate a more active sex life with her husband since they tied the knot close to a decade ago, but he shrugs off her advances. They love each other but she’s frustrated - and rightfully so. As I told my brunch partner in between sips of my mimosa, “If I was in her shoes I’d be crawling up the walls.”

My sexuality is intrinsic to who I am as a person. This is something I’ve always known about myself, so it’s hard for me to imagine staying in a relationship that didn’t include mutual desire, pleasure and satisfaction. But “sexless marriages” are actually way more common than we might think.

Generally speaking, experts define a sexless marriage as a relationship where sex is infrequent (less than ten times a year) or non-existent. Amber Hawley is a licensed marriage and family therapist and owner of couplesfix.com. As she explains, “I have couples that have not had sex in over 15 years,” and then there are others “where it’s once a year - maybe once every six months - which we would still categorize as sexless.”

Poke around online and it’s easy to get the impression that a huge segment of the population is suffering from one giant dry spell. There are hundreds of online message boards dedicated to the discussion of sexless marriage or “bedroom death” - many of which have tens of thousands of members.

To gain some perspective, I spent an afternoon speaking with people on one of these popular message boards, Reddit. While everyone’s experiences with sexless marriage were different, one thing was abundantly clear: Being in one is emotionally gut-wrenching.

When asked about the biggest challenge of being in a sexless marriage, one member shared that it was like “losing yourself.” The member wrote, “To those who don't see or feel that sex as an intrinsic part of themselves it's difficult to explain. Sex is such a complex facet of being human. It can be steeped in deep shame and used as weapon both physically and emotionally. Being constantly sexually rejected tells your partner do not want them. It tells them that you accept or put up with everything about them, except that.”

Other members echoed similar feelings of rejection, sadness and frustration. “You're still in love with your spouse, and you know they are with you, too, but it feels like this big chunk of your relationship is just missing.,” said one. “There's a hole where the physical intimacy should be….It's the rejection you feel when you make a slightly flirtatious offhand comment and feel their whole body tense up with the unpleasant possibility you might proposition them. You're being rejected, either implicitly or explicitly, every day by the one person you're supposed to know wants you.”

Being a woman in a sexless marriage with lower libido (LL) partner can feel especially isolating. As one woman shared, “The men always want it stereotype is so pervasive that people, my partner included, ignore your concerns entirely, as though you should be happy to be sex-starved because it's seen as a bother.”

No one deserves to be in a relationship where they continually feel rejected, hurt, frustrated and/or where their needs simply aren’t being met. But, can a relationship that’s become sexless ever be satisfying again?

Amber Hawley is optimistic. “It can be fixed absolutely, I've seen it!” she said.

“The key is what led to the lack of sex in the first place. Feeling connected as a couple and sex go hand in hand. Did the sex dwindle because of life events such as a trauma, having kids, chronic illness, hormones? If so, it can be a matter of needing to make sex a priority again.”

However, both partners need to want to fix things. As Hawley points out, if the lack of sex is because of a buildup of resentment stemming from conflict and communication issues, “those things need to be worked through and addressed before things will likely change.”