How the RISE Model Moves You from Roommates to Teammates

Long-term couples rarely fall out of love overnight. Usually, they just fall into "logistics mode" where work, kids, and chores crowd out the space for connection. When life feels like an endless to-do list, intimacy starts to feel like just another chore. This shift into the "roommate phase" doesn't mean you are a failure. It is often a sign that your nervous system is overwhelmed and doesn't have the capacity for desire in this moment.

I developed the RISE model based on a decade of experience as a therapist and my own journey of moving from performance pressure to true connection. By focusing on how we regulate, illuminate, strengthen, and empower, we can look beneath the surface of our patterns to restore safety and play. Rebuilding intimacy is not about perfect performance. It is about learning how to stay present in your body and choosing intentional connection one small habit at a time.

In this episode of The RISE to Intimacy Podcast, I walk through four of the most common questions I hear in therapy to show you how the RISE model works. We explore why you might still feel attracted to a partner you don’t want to sleep with, how to bring back passion when things feel routine, and how to stop being "ships passing in the night" so you can start feeling like teammates again.

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1:57 – Why long-term couples feel like “roommates” and how to start reconnecting with your spouse

6:46 – The internal battle that can silently switch off desire (even when you’re still attracted to the other person) and why most people never recognize it

11:18 – An overlooked climate that is needed for desire to grow and shapes how the body responds to touch and closeness

15:21 – A counterintuitive truth about passion that challenges everything we’ve been taught about spontaneity

16:59 –  Why you shouldn’t wait to go to couples therapy if you or your spouse has mentioned the idea of doing so

21:21 – How to bring back passion and sex when everything feels routine or awkward

30:17 – How to prevent drifting apart in a long-term relationship so you can continue growing together

Mentioned In How the RISE Model Moves You from Roommates to Teammates

Come As You Are and other books by Emily Nagoski 

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Full Transcript

Welcome to The RISE to Intimacy Podcast. I’m your host, Valerie McDonnell, and for over a decade, I’ve worked as a sex and couples therapist because intimacy used to feel really overwhelming for me. I felt a lot of pressure to perform, I was disconnected from my body, and I often felt like desire was out of reach for me.

But through my own trauma work, I stopped checking out of my body and started feeling connected to it again. I learned what it’s like to experience intimacy without fear, without shutting down, and without numbing out. Now I’m on a mission to help you do the same thing.

This podcast exists because trauma doesn’t get the last word. You can learn how to calm your body, change the story you’ve been carrying, and rebuild real connection, first with yourself and then with the people you love. Let’s begin.

Welcome back to The RISE to Intimacy Podcast. I’m so glad you could join me today. Today I’m going to discuss four of the most common questions I get asked in therapy, and I’m going to talk to you about how you can start tackling these challenges by using the RISE model, which is a framework I developed to help clients rebuild emotional intimacy, reconnect sexually, and start feeling like teammates again after a long period of feeling out of sync. So I developed the RISE model using research on trauma and attachment styles, along with the nervous system, and I also incorporated over 10 years of experience I have working with clients tackling challenges related to intimacy.

So RISE stands for regulate, illuminate, strengthen, and empower. I designed this framework using research on trauma, attachment styles, and the nervous system, along with over a decade of experience I have working with couples navigating intimacy challenges. So let’s dive in.

All right, the first question is, how do I reconnect with my spouse when it feels like we’re just roommates? So this is one of the most common experiences long-term couples face, and it usually doesn’t mean that you’ve fallen out of love, but it does typically mean that you’ve deprioritized connecting in an intimate way with your partner. That usually means both emotionally and physically.

I know how easy this is to do because, of course, we have to take care of kids if we have them, or maybe other family members, pets. We’ve got to go and make a living by going to work. So sometimes, thinking about prioritizing emotional and sexual intimacy can start feeling like another chore, just like another item to add to our to-do list. But most couples get stuck in logistics mode, like we’re constantly talking about work or kids or bills or some type of activity on our schedule or our kids’ schedule. While all that stuff is important and necessary, it just simply does not promote emotional or physical intimacy.

So for many of us, the stress from adulting alone just causes us to lack sufficient energy to even notice sexual desire. So in this situation, the first thing I’m going to do is help my clients learn how to regulate their nervous systems. Because when your nervous system is constantly overwhelmed, you simply do not have the capacity for intimacy.

But again, it could feel overwhelming if we’re thinking about adding sex or time for emotional connection onto our to-do list. So the best thing to do here, and with most things that I teach and educate my clients on, is to start with small steps that do help you make progress and that you do consistently. Because if I just simply say, "Hey, tonight I want you to go home and I want you to have amazing sex with your partner," when you have come to me because you’re experiencing performance anxiety related to having sex, because you feel pressure around providing orgasm or pressure around getting or maintaining an erection, then me telling you to just go have sex is certainly not going to help. You’ll probably leave, never come back, and you’re never going to do it. Because it’s too overwhelming of a step at that moment for your nervous system.

So what we want to do is start with small steps, again, that make progress, that we can do consistently. We’re essentially building up a habit of building and maintaining emotional intimacy every single day. So something very simple, like taking five to ten minutes in the evening, and not when you guys are right about to go to sleep, but sometime in the evening when maybe dinner is over, and if you have kids, they’re spending time playing on their own, or maybe they’re already in bed, and try to connect with your partner.

Ask them questions. Don’t ask them questions related to work or the kids or how to organize your schedule throughout the week. But this is time when you’re truly trying to learn more about your partner’s inner world. A great question you can also ask during this time, or any day, is, “What is one thing I can do to make your life easier?” I think this is one of the most amazing and loving questions you could probably ask your partner, because this question alone promotes a feeling of support and safety. Like, “Oh, okay, you’re trying to make my life easier. I know you’ve got my back. I know you see that I’m struggling or stressed out sometimes, and you are truly here showing up as my teammate and to support me.” So I absolutely love that question.

Because then, when your partner’s nervous system does feel supported instead of overwhelmed, the body becomes more open to connection. That means emotional connection and physical connection.

So when emotional connection and nervous system regulation are present, the body is finally able to shift into a state where desire has room to grow. But without them, the body stays guarded or distracted or shut down, which makes sexual intimacy feel very much out of reach. With this question, how do we prevent from becoming roommates? You want to build small, consistent, and intentional steps you take every day to promote that bond.

So then the next question that was submitted is, why don’t I want sex with my partner even though I’m still attracted to them? You guys might have thought I was going to say when I’m not attracted to them, but what I hear more commonly is, I don’t notice sex on a daily basis. I don’t notice things that are promoting a feeling of desire in me. I do see my partner. I’m attracted to them. They’re amazing. They’re a supportive husband. They're always there for me. And this person tends to feel really bad about the fact that they are struggling to find what does spark their sexual desire.

Here again with the RISE model, we’re going to focus on step two, which is illuminate. What does that mean? It means we’re going to shine a light on the underlying patterns, emotions, and your nervous system responses that are impacting the relationship beneath the surface. Because desire doesn’t just disappear randomly. It responds to the environment between you or within you.

When I say that, I mean, are you constantly fighting a silent battle—well, silent to everybody else—but a silent battle within your own mind. Is your mind like you have a hundred different tabs open on your laptop and you don’t know which one you’re supposed to be focusing on? And when that happens, that essentially is anxiety.

Typically, it’s anxiety in the form of rumination. We’re thinking about a lot of different things. We might start with, oh, my partner forgot to text me when they got off the plane as they’re traveling. Then an hour later, our mind has put them in the hospital, and they’re having surgery, and they’re really in bad shape. That’s rumination. We start with one anxious thought, and then we end with a very extreme version of that anxious thought.

But if that is something that’s happening with you regularly, that environment within you, meaning what is going on in your brain and your body, if that is very anxious or overwhelmed or unsteady on a regular basis, it is extremely difficult to have space within you to notice sexual desire.

Most people probably have no idea how much anxiety work I do as a sex therapist. I believe that almost every client I see is coming in with some type of anxiety, and that anxiety does essentially serve as a barrier for sexual connection with their partner.

So while we might also need to tend to that kind of environment inside of us, the outer environment, mostly meaning your relational dynamic with your spouse, also has typically faded when this situation comes up. The situation of, “I’m struggling to notice desire for my partner, even though I know I’m still very much attracted to them.”

So your relational dynamic is the emotional climate you and your partner create together, typically without even realizing it. It includes things like how you guys communicate, how you repair after conflict, whether you feel appreciated or taken for granted, whether stress gets shared or one person carries the load, and of course how safe or unsafe it feels to be vulnerable with your partner.

So when this dynamic becomes tense or disconnected, the body naturally turns down desire, even if attraction is still intact. So this is why we’re going to work on the patterns that are blocking intimacy, even though the love and attraction are still there. So why does desire shut down even when attraction remains?

Well, when we look underneath the surface of the issue, the underlying causes often include things like emotional disconnection or unspoken resentment, because desire doesn’t thrive when there’s tension or distance. Also, it could be an overwhelmed nervous system that is stuck in survival mode. So your body, again, cannot access pleasure when it doesn’t feel supported or regulated. It could be that there’s no anticipation, no buildup to sexual intimacy. There may be no more novelty. You may be struggling to create an erotic space.

Erotic space is the emotional, relational, and even psychological room that is needed for desire to grow. Desire typically doesn’t grow when there’s monotony. It certainly doesn’t grow or exist when there’s pressure. To build erotic space, you can include things like playfulness, mystery, anticipation, creativity, flirtation. Also, slowing down. Please, please, let’s slow down. Let’s slow down our entryway to sex.

We need some foreplay. We need anticipation occurring in between, as Esther Perel says, sex doesn’t just end at the last orgasm. Sex begins at the last orgasm and continues until the next one, meaning you should use space in between to build up that erotic space with flirtation, sexual energy, and creativity.

Also, as I’m talking about this, I just want to say that typically when I talk about erotic space in therapy sessions, one person in the couple will come back in the next session and say, “Oh, I sent my wife some articles on different fantasies that we could try out, or different sex toys,” or they might mention something related to BDSM.

Again, I’m like, “Let’s slow it down. Slow that down.” Because when you ask that partner that you just sent all those articles to how they like to connect with you, they’re saying something like, “I just love it when we have time for ourselves at the end of the night to sit on the couch together and talk.” That partner is essentially saying, “I need emotional connection, and that’s what helps me notice my sexual desire.”

Whereas their partner is coming in right away with all these new techniques or new positions or different toys that they can try out. That just typically adds more pressure onto the person that might be stating they have low desire because that isn’t the turn-on for them. So we really need to be in tune here and understand that erotic space doesn’t mean I’m telling you to start role-playing or go to the adult store together and pick out some toys or try to practice some brand-new positions you’ve never tried. No, there is so much you can do, mostly if you learn about your partner’s body and how their body enjoys being touched and stimulated.

This is so very important if your partner has a clitoris. If they do, please learn where it is. Also learn how your partner likes to be pleased when you’re tending to that very magical space in their body. If you find that magical spot, you’re going to do so much good. But you’ve got to be slow, you’ve got to be gentle, and pay attention to your partner’s responses during that time.

Okay, I know I went on a bit of a tangent there. That’s typical me. So let me get back again to this question of, “How do I notice sexual desire when I’m still attracted to my partner, but it feels like it’s pretty much disappeared?” So again, here it is not just about the sex act. It’s about everything that precedes sex and then everything that occurs in between sex.

Most couples lose their erotic space because life becomes logistical or rushed or focused on tasks. But without erotic space, desire has nowhere to land, y’all, even when you still love and find your partner attractive. The exciting part, though, is this: desire is not spontaneous for most people, y’all. Most people. I know we’ve all been fed this story that once we start to have sex, it’s just something that we regularly want and enjoy. But that really is a myth that’s been sold to us, and it is not the typical reality.

Many people experience responsive desire. There’s been more commentary around this in the last probably five to ten years. There’s a great book written by Emily Nagoski, and it’s called Come As You Are. She discusses in great detail what spontaneous desire is and what responsive desire is.

So spontaneous desire is the person that’s like, “Oh, I just have sex every day. You know, the wind is blowing and now I’m turned on.” That’s spontaneous desire. However, responsive desire with my clients typically shows up more in females, where you need something that essentially provokes that sexual desire in you. Responsive desire will respond to things like emotional connection, ensuring that you’re repairing after conflicts, having a supportive partner, incorporating play, ensuring that your body is regulated, and also feeling seen and heard by your partner. So then once couples begin shifting that emotional landscape between them, desire returns naturally and even more deeply than before.

Let’s get to the third question here: “How do we bring back passion and sex when everything feels routine or awkward?” This is such a great question because this comes up a lot. Because many times, once a couple comes to see me, they have not been having sex for months and many times, years. Just a PSA real quick around that. If you or your partner has mentioned couples therapy, I highly suggest you go ahead and do at least one session.

Please do not wait to go to couples therapy when you’re already one foot out the door or when you say to me, “This is our last-ditch effort before we get divorced.” Here’s the reason why. Once you have finally gotten to the space where you are seriously considering divorce as an option, it could feel too overwhelming to go see a couples therapist who, if they are being very honest with you, will let you know that rebuilding an emotional bond with your partner and reigniting sexual intimacy in a way where you both experience mutual pleasure and there’s mutual consent at all times, that is not a one-, two-, three-session situation that can be fixed.

Then you can feel really discouraged to walk into therapy and start hearing from the therapist different things you might be working on or the challenges that you’ll be processing and discussing. Notice, “Hey, this is a lot of work,” because it is, and it should be. We’re talking about a relationship that, if you’re monogamous and you’re married, you are committing to each other from that day until the day that you die.

Of course, we all know divorce does give us a way to get out of that. But please take it from this couple's therapist who is divorced and was married for sixteen years, but together with my ex-husband for nearly twenty. Please take it from me. Divorce should never be an option you consider because you’re not willing to do the work to stay in the relationship.

Of course, I’m not talking about situations here where there’s abuse occurring, whether that’s verbal, physical, sexual. Abuse can also be extreme neglect. I’m not talking about putting the work in to stay with somebody who is abusive or toxic, okay?

However, if you notice that “we just have grown apart,” or “we’re no longer connecting in the way I want us to,” or “we’ve stopped having sex,” and there is not some big, easily identifiable event or thing that occurred, like someone cheating on the other person, that you need to tend to. If it is you have grown apart, you have gone into that roommate phase, and you are really feeling unsure how to reconnect, and yes, you might also be a couple who is having frequent conflict now over this, but I highly encourage you to not view divorce as some easy out because it is not.

Even if you guys are no longer in love with each other, there’s a way to disconnect that is healthy for everybody involved and feels better than just having some nasty breakup. Again, if you have even thought about going to couples counseling, I suggest you try to find a couples counselor and try out at least four weekly sessions. It is going to take you probably at least three sessions to even know if that’s the therapist that you want to work with. You’re going to have to build rapport with them. You have to learn how to trust them.

Therapy is a very intimate, private space. Sex therapy is even more intimate because, of course, we’re talking about things that sometimes we don’t even talk about with our best friend or our partner.

So to get back to the question, which is, “How do we bring passion and sex back when everything feels routine or awkward?” Passion doesn’t just come back by accident. It comes back with intentional effort and energy. So most couples believe sex should always feel spontaneous and effortless, but long-term relationships require intentional erotic maintenance.

So that means creating the conditions where desire thrives. Again, I’m going to say playfulness here, y’all. It doesn’t mean just playfulness in the bedroom. Go play with your partner outside of the bedroom. You can do that in so many different ways. It includes flirtation and curiosity and openness, always ensuring that your nervous system is in a calm state, which is a big goal to accomplish.

But it’s also something that you can work on by taking little steps, as I mentioned before, on regulating your nervous system on a daily basis. But regulating your nervous system, being able to remain in a calm and steady state when you are facing distress or discomfort, that is a skill that will help improve every single relationship in your life. I think truly it is the most important skill probably any of us can learn in terms of how to relate to other people. So we’ve got to be present to notice and receive pleasure.

So with this question, we’re going to use the strengthen step so we can focus on rebuilding the emotional and relational muscles that sustain intimacy over time. Because once you’ve regulated and then illuminated these patterns that were blocking intimacy, you now need to install new practices that keep desire alive, and allow that passion to continue to grow.

So strengthen means practicing the habits that desire needs consistently. This includes repairing conflict quickly, expressing appreciation, using a soft startup in conflict, and that’s something I discuss more in another episode. Also sharing more of your inner world and making each other feel prioritized, because then when your emotional safety strengthens, the body becomes more open, and then desire is much more accessible.

So most couples have never learned to talk about sex without discomfort or feeling pressure and sometimes shame. The way you can strengthen in that area is by naming your desires. Or many times clients that see me tell me they don’t actually know what turns them on or what they want, meaning what they enjoy during sex.

So if you are unable to name your desires, you can work with your partner, and you guys can have discussions and a brainstorming session and discuss things that maybe turn your partner on. You can see if you think those might be useful for you. If you work with me, I give you some worksheets you can do together to help discover what might spark your sexual desire. Also, you can share fantasies in a gentle and non-demanding way, meaning if you’re having these discussions, we’re not having this discussion so that when one person finally says, “Oh yes, my fantasy is for us to check out this play party, sex party, and I think that would be really exciting,” then the next day you come to them and, “Hey, I found this party, and we’re going this weekend.” That’s a little too much.

We’re just sharing fantasies in a way to learn more about our partner and, again, discover more about their sexual template, what turns them on, what excites them, how they like to receive pleasure, and how they like to give pleasure. We can always ask for feedback from our partner and just continue talking about what feels good emotionally if we’re not sure exactly what feels good physically yet. Because the more permission you give each other to communicate in this vulnerable way, then the easier sexual connection becomes.

We can also strengthen sensual rituals. So think of these as the bridge between your emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy. Rituals help your body associate your partner with warmth and closeness and pleasure again. So you can strengthen sensuality through having a nightly five-minute cuddle or a nightly five-minute back rub. Also, slow kissing with no expectation of sex, taking turns initiating small moments of touch, and sensual exploration of each other’s bodies that focuses on noticing and being present with experiencing sensation, again, not on an outcome of orgasm.

So these rituals will retrain your nervous system to experience your partner as a source of comfort and pleasure and not pressure. That’s what we want. So we can also strengthen novelty and play because, again, desire thrives in environments with a little bit of unfamiliarity and playfulness. When everything feels predictable, your erotic energy goes dormant.

So strengthen novelty by trying something new together. This isn’t necessarily sexual. For example, me and my partner have done several new things recently that might seem small to some people, but they were things I had never experienced before. We went to Topgolf. I had never actually tried the golf part at Topgolf. I’d always just been hanging out, having some drinks, and socializing.

But my partner was so patient with me. He took the time, and he showed me how to do it. I actually had so much fun learning that new skill. It absolutely promoted connection between us. He was already doing something he enjoyed, then I was able to also find enjoyment with him in doing that activity together.

So when I say playfulness, that’s what I mean. Let’s have date night where it’s not always at nighttime. Maybe we have a date day. Maybe take a whole day and just spend it together. If we have kids, maybe that’s easier because we’re still home at night to put them to bed. Also, don’t make your date night or date time always be going out to dinner. That is nice. Going out to dinner can be a fun treat. But if that’s what you do every single time, or any other thing, if you’re always going on the same date, and this is true for sex too, if every time you go to have sex with your partner you know exactly what’s going to happen, you know what's going to happen from the time you get into that space until it ends, then it gets a bit boring. It gets too predictable.

We just need to mix it up a little bit, and it’s not some big mysterious thing. These are small things that we can do. You don’t have to go figure out ten new positions you’ve never tried. Instead, probably what’s more productive is truly figuring out your partner’s body and what excites them, stimulates them, and helps them remain present in their body.

So other things you can do to switch it up: change the environment where you’re having sex. Bring back flirting and teasing, and I’ll have a little rant about teasing. I believe teasing is so highly underrated. You can do so much to bring arousal and excitement to your partner without ever touching the penis or the clitoris. Teasing your partner’s body in a slow, gentle, sensual way can be very erotic and can be a really big turn-on. So I think teasing, again, is underrated. Let’s bring it back.

Finally, this part, novelty, again, it does not have to be extreme. It just simply has to interrupt the routine. Now let’s get to the fourth question: “How do we prevent growing apart in a long-term relationship?” A great question, because I have seen so many couples that are very much in love, consider each other best friends, and move through their relationship for years in a wonderfully connected way, to only at year fifteen or seventeen come in and say, “I don’t really know who my partner is anymore. We’re like two ships passing in the night. We rarely see each other. We rarely spend time together. But then some nights he wants to go right into sex, and that’s very difficult for the other partner.”

Again, this is because of a lack of emotional connection. So with this one, we’re going to use the last step of the RISE model, which is empower. Empowerment is about giving couples the tools, confidence, and shared responsibility to maintain connection long-term so that you don’t get stuck in routines and end up feeling like roommates. So here, empowerment means you stop reacting to problems and you start leading your relationship intentionally.

You might shift from saying something like, “Our lives are so busy, we never have time for each other,” to now saying, “We know how to keep our connection alive even when life feels chaotic.” You also create shared agreements that protect your connection. This includes rituals for communication, conflict repair, quality time where we’re not talking about work or kids, and emotional check-ins, because those are the things that sustain intimacy.

Also, you’re both able to take ownership of your emotional and sexual well-being. So instead of waiting for the other person to fix things or initiate a difficult conversation, or instead of making assumptions about what your partner meant, you operate as a team now. You think of questions like, “How do we nurture desire together? How do we share the load emotionally and practically? And how do we prioritize each other consistently?”

You also build a relationship culture that supports passion and not just partnership, because empowered couples actively shape the environment they want to live in. So one where maybe affection and appreciation, sensuality, and repair are built into the structure of your relationship. And you’re able to trust that you now have the skills to course-correct any time. This is a goal that I have for everybody I work with.

Because empowerment doesn’t mean things will never get stressful, or you’ll not feel distant again, or that conflicts just stop happening altogether. It means you have a framework to return to closeness quickly and confidently. In this step, when someone is wanting to know, “How do we prevent growing apart in our long-term relationship?” meaning we haven’t done that but we have a fear of that, we will work on empowering all the previous steps: the regulate, the illuminate, and the strengthen.

We’re taking the skills we learned from the previous steps and we are doing them consistently. We are prioritizing them, and that is the empowerment part. We are tending to these things regularly, and the hope is now they are somewhat habitual because at all times in our relationship we want to be improving or working on our emotional and sexual bond.

When couples finally reach the empowerment stage, they are no longer feeling like roommates waiting for connection to just magically return. They start feeling like co-creators of a relationship where love, intimacy, and desire can keep growing for years to come.

So I hope that you found some value in these questions that I commonly receive from my clients in therapy. If you are asking yourself any of these questions and you would like to take a deeper dive into the RISE model with me, please go over to my website, which is risetointimacy.com. You can either book a consultation with me or check out my offerings underneath the courses tab. Thanks so much. I appreciate all of you, and I will see you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening to The RISE to Intimacy Podcast. If today’s episode resonated with you, know that healing is possible and you don’t have to do it alone. If you’re enjoying the show, please leave a rating and review for us at ratethispodcast.com/rise. It really helps others find us.

I’m so grateful for all your support. You can learn more about my coaching packages for individuals and couples at risetointimacy.com. Remember, sex therapy isn’t for people who are broken. It’s for people brave enough to look beneath the surface.