New love is intoxicating, and I’m not being metaphorical. There is also the possibility that one partner in a heterosexual relationship is gay. Other men may have low testosterone (although there is a lot of dispute in this area). Libido can be affected by a number of things, including depression, medication, stress, health, affairs, previous sexual trauma, pornography, pain with sex and relationship dissatisfaction (having sex while going through an ugly divorce is probably an outlier).Įrectile dysfunction is a factor for some men, especially over the age of 40. Many tell me intimate details, so glad to have someone in whom they can confide. A pause, then relief that it’s not just them, followed quickly by the desire to hear more. The responses from women are so similar that I could script it. I say this to friends, acquaintances and even people I barely know on airplanes (after they learn what my job is). When I ask someone about her sex life and there is a pause or a generic “O.K.,” I say, “You know, the libido issue is often with the man.” There are spaces between words that tell entire stories. My experience led me to listen differently to women speaking about their sex lives with men, whether in my office or in my personal life. We were terribly mismatched sexually, and it wasn’t something that he was interested in addressing. I worried that no intervention would be sustainable, and the time not addressing the issue had simply taken its toll. Not at all.Įventually I decided that sympathy sex once or twice a year was far worse than no sex. The fact that people who hated each other were having more sex than me did not make me feel better. The answer was “Not really.” One who was going through an especially acrimonious divorce told me that she and her future ex still occasionally had wild sex. I started to circuitously ask friends if they ever felt similarly rejected. Messaging around sex is everywhere: It’s used to sell almost everything, and news articles remind us that various hormones and neurotransmitters may spike in response to having sex. I understand the confusion about frequency. If both people are truly happy, then it’s a healthy sex life. As a gynecologist, I’m frequently asked about the “right number” of times to have sex a month. Sex 10 times a year would have been 10 times more than what I was having. Why? Because I was the one begging for sex from an uninterested male partner. I have debated admitting this publicly, but my story feels different than the narrative advanced by our patriarchal society. According to one study, approximately 15 percent of married couples are sexless: Spouses haven’t had sex with each other in the past six months to one year.
There are varying definitions of a sexless marriage or sexless relationship: no sex in the past year, no sex in the past six months or sex 10 or fewer times a year.