ABSTRACT
Sex is what makes a couple relationship different from all other relationships. Many couples present to therapy stating that they are a no-sex couple; however, others disclose this later in the work. F. Grier wrote about how sexual difficulties arose when the partners share a history of inadequate working through of Oedipal anxieties. A. Sehgal linked M. Glasser’s idea of the ‘core complex’ to no-sex couples, where the claustro-agoraphobic anxieties in adult relating arise from the infant’s earliest relations with its mother. When working with couples therapists look for the shared potential difficulties affecting the partners’ capacity to have and/or maintain an intimate sexual relationship. The couple’s lack of containment in their families of origin, combined with unresolved Oedipal issues, prevented them from developing a sense of their relationship as a third, which M. Morgan explains is vital for a creative couple relationship.
