What causes intimacy to fade in a relationship? Can couples recover after infidelity? Why do some people struggle to prioritize pleasure, and what does it take to rebuild connection after trust has been broken?

In this episode of Practice Prosperity, Randall Avery speaks with Dr. Coop-Love, PhD, LMFT, CST, ABS about sex, intimacy, infidelity, pleasure, divorce, and the challenges couples face when trying to maintain healthy relationships.

Dr. Coop-Love shares insights from her work with individuals and couples, including why intimacy can decline over time, how partners can rebuild trust after infidelity, and why open communication around sex and pleasure is so important.

She also discusses her journey as a business owner, including how she built her therapy practice, developed referral relationships, invested in her team, and used the Profit First model to bring more structure to her finances.

Why Intimacy Can Decline in Relationships

A decrease in intimacy is not always simply about sex.

Dr. Coop-Love explains that emotional connection, communication, stress, parenting, exhaustion, and everyday responsibilities can all affect how connected partners feel to one another.

When couples stop spending intentional time together or expressing care and desire outside the bedroom, sexual intimacy may begin to decline as well.

She emphasizes that sex is only one form of intimacy. Emotional closeness, affection, communication, and feeling valued by a partner can all influence desire.

Relationship dynamics can also affect attraction. Dr. Coop-Love recalls working with a woman who had begun viewing her husband more like another person she had to take care of than an equal partner. That change in how she viewed him affected her attraction.

Maintaining intimacy therefore requires couples to pay attention to the overall health of the relationship, not just how often they have sex.

How Can Couples Recover From Infidelity?

Infidelity can create a deep sense of betrayal, but it does not automatically mean a relationship cannot recover.

Dr. Coop-Love explains that rebuilding after infidelity requires honesty, transparency, difficult conversations, and consistent communication.

One important part of the process is understanding which questions will actually help the betrayed partner heal.

Some questions may provide useful context about what happened and why. Others may focus on details that create additional pain without helping the couple move forward.

The partner who was unfaithful also needs to understand why the infidelity happened. Without addressing the underlying reason, it can be difficult to rebuild the relationship or prevent similar problems from happening again.

Trust must then be rebuilt through behavior over time.

The partner who broke the trust has to consistently demonstrate that they can be trusted again, while the betrayed partner gradually works through the process of learning whether they feel safe trusting that person.

Recovering from infidelity is therefore not simply about deciding to stay together. It requires both partners to participate in rebuilding the relationship.

Why Some Women Struggle to Prioritize Pleasure

Dr. Coop-Love also discusses why some women struggle to make their own pleasure a priority.

For many women, pleasure can feel like something that comes after work, children, household responsibilities, and taking care of everyone else.

It may be viewed as a luxury rather than something that deserves attention.

This mindset can also appear during sex. Some women may focus more on satisfying their partner than communicating what they personally enjoy.

Dr. Coop-Love explains that some may even avoid expressing dissatisfaction because they do not want to hurt their partner’s feelings.

That can create a cycle in which one partner assumes everything is working while the other is not having the experience they actually want.

Open communication about pleasure, preferences, and needs can help couples create a healthier and more honest sexual relationship.

Communication Is Essential to Sexual Intimacy

Healthy intimacy requires more than attraction.

Partners need to be able to communicate about what they want, what they do not want, what feels good, and what may have changed over time.

Sexual desire can also differ significantly between partners.

One person may want intimacy more frequently while the other wants it less often. Rather than treating one person’s level of desire as correct, Dr. Coop-Love focuses on helping couples understand each other’s needs and find ways to reconnect.

For busy couples, that may even mean scheduling time for intimacy.

Although scheduling sex may sound unromantic, planning can sometimes create space for connection that would otherwise continue getting pushed aside by work, parenting, and other responsibilities.

The goal is not simply to increase frequency. It is to help couples create intimacy that feels intentional and meaningful for both partners.

Navigating Divorce and Relationship Uncertainty

Not every relationship reaches a clear moment when someone immediately knows whether to stay or leave.

Dr. Coop-Love describes divorce and separation as processes that can involve grief, uncertainty, and changing emotions.

Someone may feel certain about leaving one day and question that decision the next.

Rather than pushing clients toward a specific outcome, she helps them process those emotions and determine what feels right for them.

For some couples, that may mean rebuilding the relationship. For others, it may mean separating and creating a new life individually.

The goal is not to decide for the client but to help them understand what they need and what direction is healthiest for them.

Building a Therapy Practice Around Relationship and Sexual Wellness

Dr. Coop-Love’s work with sex, intimacy, and relationships eventually became part of a larger entrepreneurial journey.

While still employed, she used time after work to research what it would take to build her own practice.

She studied what other therapists charged, reviewed their websites, talked with colleagues who had already started practices, and developed a business plan.

That process helped her define the population she wanted to serve, her pricing, insurance decisions, marketing strategy, and mission.

Even though the work often happened after an already long day, she saw it as an investment in creating something of her own.

Building a Consistent Referral Network

Dr. Coop-Love also took an intentional approach to finding clients.

Instead of relying only on word of mouth, she reached out to organizations that already worked with the populations she wanted to serve.

That included OBGYN offices, rape crisis centers, and organizations supporting people affected by domestic violence.

Some of those relationships continued generating referrals years later.

She also used insurance panels, social media, and therapist directories such as Psychology Today and Therapy for Black Girls to give potential clients multiple ways to discover the practice. These platforms can help prospective clients search for therapists based on location, specialty, insurance, and other preferences.

Her approach demonstrates that strong professional relationships can become long-term sources of business growth.

Investing in People as the Practice Grows

As the practice expanded, Dr. Coop-Love also focused on developing her team.

She enjoys working with interns and early-career clinicians because she can support them as they discover what kind of professionals they want to become.

Her goal is not to turn them into copies of herself.

Instead, she wants team members to develop their own strengths while finding how those strengths fit within the practice.

A similar approach came up in our conversation with Dr. Nekeshia Hammond, who discussed investing in people with skills she does not possess as her business grows.

She has watched people begin as interns, complete their education, earn licenses, become supervisors, and eventually pursue opportunities of their own.

For Dr. Coop-Love, that growth is part of successful mentorship.

Using Profit First to Manage Business Finances

Financial management also became more structured as the practice grew.

Dr. Coop-Love eventually adopted the Profit First model and worked with her financial advisor to modify the system for her business.

Instead of allowing all business income to remain in one general pool, revenue is assigned to designated accounts using percentages.

That gives different portions of the business’s money a specific purpose.

The system also provides guidance for owner compensation, although Dr. Coop-Love acknowledges that she does not always pay herself the recommended amount.

Operating expenses, reinvesting in the business, and making sure her team is paid often take priority.

That reflects one of the realities of growing a business: the owner’s compensation may compete with the financial needs of the organization itself.

Building Stronger Relationships Through Communication

One of the clearest themes throughout Dr. Coop-Love’s work is that strong relationships require intentional communication.

Sex, intimacy, pleasure, infidelity, and divorce can all involve conversations that are difficult to have.

Avoiding those conversations does not necessarily make the problems disappear.

Couples often need to understand what has changed, communicate what they need, and decide together what rebuilding the relationship should look like.

Whether the challenge involves declining intimacy, mismatched desire, betrayal, or uncertainty about the future, connection requires both people to remain engaged in the process.

The same intentionality also appears in Dr. Coop-Love’s approach to business.

She built her practice by investing in relationships, people, financial systems, and long-term growth.

In both relationships and entrepreneurship, sustainable growth starts with understanding what matters and continuing to invest in it.