Women's Health February 27, 2026 0 Comments

Why Your Date Night Routine Is Silently Killing Your Libido – And the Surprising Fix a Sex Therapist Swears By

Ever find yourself staring down the calendar, heart sinking as that “date night” reminder pops up? Yeah, Sarah* knows exactly how that feels. She loves her husband, but the weight of expectation around those evenings—especially the “what comes after”—has her spinning excuses like a pro. Sound familiar? She’s been wrestling with low libido for years despite trying everything from sex toys to hormone testing and couples therapy. And here’s the kicker: piling on weekly date nights to rekindle the flame? It didn’t spark joy—it just added more pressure and anxiety. What if the classic date night solution—a dinner out and a cozy chat—actually kills desire instead of igniting it? Strap in, because it turns out, the very rituals meant to bring couples closer might secretly be firing up stress and shutting down your sex drive before it even has a chance to appear. Ready to flip the script on date night dread? Let’s dive in. LEARN MORE

7 min read

“I dread date nights now,” Sarah* tells me, welling up. “We’re supposed to go out tomorrow, and I’m already thinking of excuses. I love my husband, but I know he’s hoping for sex afterward, and I want to want it too, but it just feels like another obligation.”

The 38-year-old mother of two was healthy, but had been struggling with low libido for five years. Sarah felt like she’d tried everything: sex toys, hormone testing, couples therapy. Nothing worked, leaving her feeling broken and terrified that she and her husband would end up in a loveless marriage.

So, six months ago, they started going on weekly date nights to reconnect. They’d get a babysitter, go to dinner, and had a “no work talk” rule. The whole point was to relax and have fun as a couple, but the opposite happened. Each date only increased Sarah’s stress and anxiety around intimacy.

As a sex therapist who specializes in working with women with low desire, I call this the “chore list” phenomenon: Date nights, sex, even flirting—all the fun stuff starts to feel like a duty, not a desire. You’re checking all the boxes for a happy relationship (you love your partner, are attracted to them, enjoy spending time with them), but you’re still not interested in intimacy. It’s infuriating.

So, what gives? The real problem isn’t you or your partner. It’s desire discrepancy. Most couples don’t know that there are two different types of desire. Men tend to have “spontaneous desire,” meaning the urge to have sex strikes instantly and seemingly out of nowhere. (You’re doing the dishes, and suddenly, he’s ready to go at it on top of the kitchen counter.) Meanwhile, most women have “responsive desire”—they need something pleasurable to happen before they’re in the mood.

For decades, relationship experts prescribed date nights as the solution to reignite connection and tap into responsive desire. But that recommendation has stopped working because when date nights start to feel like a chore, they don’t boost desire. They kill it before it even has a chance to show up.

After working with countless women dealing with this over the past decade, I’ve discovered all the sneaky ways date nights diminish desire and, more importantly, the solution to date night dread.

Why Date Nights are Secretly Killing Your Sex Drive

1. Date night sexpectations create stress and shut down arousal.

When you already feel like you’re letting your partner down due to low libido, date night just seems like another opportunity to disappoint. You know your partner is hoping for sex at the end of the night, and you want to want it, too. You might even enjoy it when you actually have it. But you still dread the whole thing. And that’s confusing AF, right?

Here’s the biology that makes it make sense: Your brain runs two competing systems— your stress response (fight-or-flight) and your arousal response (sex drive). But here’s the catch: They both can’t run at the same time. One shuts off when the other turns on.

When sex starts feeling stressful, which it does when you haven’t been enjoying it, you start to avoid it. That can make you feel guilty, creating even more stress, and eventually, your brain starts recognizing sex as a “threat.” Now, you’re not sitting there thinking, “sex is dangerous,” but your nervous system picks up on the pressure around intimacy and responds accordingly.

The result? Fight-or-flight turns on. Arousal turns off. Every. Single. Time.

This is why you can want to want sex on an intellectual level and still feel absolutely nothing when your partner tries to initiate. Your brain isn’t letting desire through because it’s too busy managing the stress that sex has triggered. The path to getting in the mood has become so loaded with stress that your nervous system throws up a wall every time there’s even an inkling that sex might happen—which, for many couples, is date night.

So, when your partner simply tries to hold your hand as you’re leaving the restaurant, you pull away—not because you don’t love them, but because your body is trying to avoid the stress it thinks is coming. There’s nothing wrong with your body’s response—your nervous system is actually doing its job. It’s just learned to associate sex with stress, and now it’s protecting you from something you actually want.

2. “Classic” date night activities kill sex drive.

Fancy restaurant? Candlelight? Big bowl of pasta and wine? Sounds great… until you feel stuffed, sleepy, anything other than sexy. If it was already hard to get in the mood, now you have the perfect excuse to say, “Next time, babe” (meanwhile, you secretly hope next time never comes).

Better date night plans? Activities that get your blood pumping or spike adrenaline, such as hiking, rock-climbing, dancing, or doing something new together. Plus, if date night sexpectations already make you feel pressure to perform, “side-by-side” activities can feel less stressful than “face-to-face” ones because no one’s being put on the spot. Instead, they give you something to do together.

3. The resentment spiral makes connection feel like a chore.

If you have a partner who’s supportive, they’ve already asked how to help and what you need to feel desire again. That’s great… and incredibly frustrating. Because if you knew, you would’ve done it already! You feel like you’ve tried everything, so you start to shut down. Then, they stop initiating because they don’t want to pressure you or get rejected again. Now, you’re both confused, hurt, and convinced you’re doing something wrong.

Eventually, that lack of initiation extends beyond the bedroom. Date nights, which you thought would be a solution to the problem, are now just another symptom. Your partner tries to put their arm around you at the movie theater, you shrug it off. Or at dinner, you say something funny, and they barely look up from their phone. Over time, when one partner continuously turns away, the other person starts to do the same, until you’re both just going through the motions.

That may not seem like a big deal, but research shows that a couple’s willingness to connect may predict whether their relationship will last. Dr. John Gottman, a renowned relationship researcher, conducted a six-year-long study with 130 newlywed couples and found that those who stayed married responded positively when their partner tried to connect 86 percent of the time. The couples that divorced, however, only did this 33 percent of the time.

What’s worse: Ignoring each other’s attempts to connect does more damage to your relationship than fighting. At least in a fight, you’re still engaging. But when you both stop trying and slowly start to resent each other? That’s when you become roommates and nothing more.

Nearly 75 percent of sexless marriages end in divorce. Sarah was right to be worried. Most couples think intimacy issues will resolve themselves, are just a phase, or hope a few date nights can patch things up. But you can’t just wine and dine this issue away. The real reason desire discrepancy destroys relationships isn’t because of the lack of sex—it’s because the ripple effect leads to a complete lack of connection, affection, and love.

What Actually Works: Take sex off the table on date night.

Since stress kills responsive desire before it even has the chance to show up, you need to remove the pressure altogether. Once you plan a “side-by-side” activity for your next date night, there’s one more thing you need to do: Explicitly take sex off the table.

You might think your partner already knows not to ask, or even hope, for sex, but they aren’t a mindreader. Not to mention, it’s better to have an honest conversation about what’s going on than brush things under the rug for the umpteenth week in a row. Here’s what to do:

Pick a neutral time and place to talk.

Set aside some time at least a few days before your scheduled date (if it’s too last-minute, it can feel rushed and set a negative tone for the night). You want to pick a neutral time of day, a.k.a. not right before bed when you’re already tired or right when your partner comes home as is still shaking off work stress. Maybe you approach the topic while on a weekend stroll, or start the convo when you’re relaxing on the couch after the kids have gone to bed.

Lead with what you do want, not what you don’t.

Try something like: “Hey, I’ve been thinking about our date nights. I know you’ve been feeling rejected and I’ve been feeling guilty, but I really want to enjoy our time together and not be so in my head the whole time. Can we agree that Friday is just about having fun together—no expectation of sex after? I think it’ll help me actually relax and be more engaged.”

Another option: “When I’m stressed about whether sex is supposed to happen, I can’t really enjoy the date. What if we take sex off the table for our next few dates, so we can just have fun together? I think it’ll actually help my libido in the long run.”

The key here is to frame this as something that’ll help you both enjoy date nights more because that’s the truth: When you can relax, you’re more fun to be around, you actually laugh, you flirt naturally, and that’s what you both want.

Now, I know it can feel scary to table sex for a bit because what if you never start again? But getting rid of the pressure to perform gets you out of that fight-or-flight mode. Now, you can just be yourself and remember why you like each other. That paves the way for responsive desire to return because you’re actually dating again. And wasn’t that so fun that you decided to do it forever?

Sarah and her husband didn’t stop going on dates; they radically changed them. They went rock climbing (terrifying, hilarious, couldn’t get in their heads while trying not to fall). They took a pottery class (messy, playful, re-enacting that scene from Ghost). They explicitly agreed: No sex after these dates. That was the rule.

Without the pressure, Sarah finally started to relax. She belly laughed for the first time in months. They flirted more because they were having fun again. She started feeling giddy about time together. Her sex drive didn’t come back overnight. But the we-can-handle-anything energy and security that she and her husband felt in their relationship did. And that’s what finally increased her libido for good.

*Name changed.

Erinn Hoel is a sex therapist in Philadelphia who struggled with low desire for 15 years before figuring out what actually works. Now she helps women unlock their libidos and stop feeling broken using her signature no-BS, humor-filled approach that makes talking about sex actually easy. Take her Desire Assessment and finally get answers to exactly what’s hijacking your desire and what you can do about it.