4 reasons why January can *actually* be a great month for your love life, according to these relationship experts

January sucks. It’s cold, wet, gloomy and the joy of the festive period quickly dissipates into a new year with the same old worries and stresses. It’s the hangover month in every sense. 

December is the great collective masquerade and in January, the curtain drops – especially when it comes to our love lives. People may begin to see the truth of their relationship without all the tinsel and distractions and the reckonings may begin to roll in. 

If there were cracks in a relationship, the holiday season pressure widens them. If there was resentment, it’s now unwrapped and sitting on the coffee table, staring you down.

Every January, I receive a flurry of messages in my group chats where my friends are doing just that: staring down the barrel of their relationship and probably thinking about what life would look like if they broke up with their partner. 

Often, it’s the ‘new year, new me’ energy that’s got them in a panic (nobody has followed through on their breakup potential just yet), but it’s a panic that really sums up how so many of us feel about January.

However, surely there’s another way and January doesn’t have to be confined to a month of misery and breakups? “If we stop treating January as a month of punishment, and instead as a month of recalibration, it can become one of the most quietly transformative times of the year – for sex, for connection, for choosing each other again,” explains psychotherapist, Charlotte Fox Weber.

Below, Stylist spoke to a group of relationship experts about why we should all be viewing January as a positive and joyful time for sex and relationships.

According to Weber, January can actually be a glorious month for intimacy as there’s real potential in the blankness. 

“We are slightly raw, slightly undone, and therefore more available to honesty. The month is practically begging us to be honest. It’s a month ripe for small, tender experiments: asking for what you want, resetting rhythms, ditching the emotional performativity of the holidays.”

She says we should think of January as a deep breath after months of social overwhelm. It’s quiet enough to hear yourself, and, with luck, each other. 

“It can be a time to rekindle desire not by forcing fireworks but by allowing curiosity back in. A month for slow sex, real conversations, and unembarrassed recalibration.”

It’s an ideal time for couples to take stock gently rather than dramatically. And we can also treat January as a month of micro-resets rather than grand reinventions. 

“Do one tiny thing differently. Perhaps you could change the way you greet each other, the tone of intimacy, the rituals around the end of the day. Small shifts create disproportionate emotional lift,” explains Weber. 

“You could also lean into sensuality rather than the spectacle of it all. This is not fireworks season, it’s candle-and-cashmere season. Slow, attentive touch can feel far more intimate now than at any other time of year.”

January carries a strong ‘fresh start’ association and the pressure of needing to upgrade your life might lead a person to re-evaluate their relationship.

It’s also a time when things return to ‘normality’ and some of those issues or concerns in a relationship – that may have been masked amongst the festive spirit – might pop back up.

But January can bring a closer connection with a partner, if that connection is ultimately beneficial for both people. It can be an opportunity to discuss goals and ambitions together, enabling both people to discover alignment and shared hopes for the future.

“It can be a time to enjoy settling back into a regular working routine with a partner, using the colder months as an opportunity to stay home and deepen existing connections, rather than being outwardly-focused.

January can also be a time of feeling as if we’re focusing on goals and achievement and working together with a partner on this,” says psychotherapist Eloise Skinner. For example, many people may be setting themselves health-related goals, like going to the gym, so this could be something you do “with your partner as it can increase connection and intimacy between both people.”

If anything’s going to make us question our current romantic set-up, January can.

“It’s helpful to think of the relationship as a separate organism, which needs to be fed and taken care of and understood. I would say, if difficult emotions regarding your relationship begin in tandem with the new year, first try to process them through the filter question of ‘Is This A Me Feeling?’” explains therapist, Jennifer Cox. 

In other words, is the sensation coming from within you or the relationship? Is your January itch personal rather than partner-based? “This is where trying to see the two as separate is very helpful.”

And January is a common time for people who have long been considering it, to finally take the plunge with therapy. 

“This can bode well for relationships which are in a rocky place, because the individual is then invited to focus on what might need to change in their own internal world – instead of breaking up with a partner to ‘solve’ their potentially longstanding issues. 

Of course, you might then discover that the relationship very much is one of your problems. And that the January focus on new beginnings has simply highlighted what feels in your life feels to be ‘ended.’”

You might have heard of the term ‘locking in’ and for Cox, this mindset very much applies to our love lives in January.

“It’s dark, it’s cold. Why not hibernate and rediscover your intimate life? There’s very little more tempting going on in the outside world, so try instead to focus on rebuilding connection with your current partner. Or, if you’re single, dare yourself to see this month as a cosy time to make new relationships.”

Cox adds: “But, to build healthy foundations, try to emphasise talking and emotional sharing – whether you’re starting from scratch or consolidating your current partnership. What we say to each other is also a kind of ‘intercourse.’

Treat January as a time to become newly-emotionally open… and see how the separate organism of a relationship flourishes!”

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