No sex please, we’re in a relationship: Can your union be healthy while going without?
The contraceptive pill is mainstream, no-strings-attached sex is now very much the norm and apps provide a never-ending carousel of potential love matches at your fingertips.
Yet there’s never been a younger generation less interested in sex than this one.
In fact, research shows sex between couples is declining — in the US, anyway.
Melissa Hadley Barrett, a sexologist at Restorative Health Clinic in Perth, suspects a sex-free relationship is the norm for a growing number of Australians too.
“The statistics are there to show that people have less sex now than they did in the past,” she told The Sunday Times.
“People who were born in the 1930s were having more sex than people are now.”
Camera IconMelissa Hadley Barrett is a nurse practitioner, sexologist and director of the Restorative Health Clinic in Perth, WA. Credit: Supplied
While there is no official definition of what makes a relationship “sexless”, studies tend to put couples having sex fewer than 10 times a year into this category.
So what, exactly, is going on?
“What I see in my clinic as a factor is that life is just too busy and people just don’t have as much time for sex,” Ms Hadley Barrett said.
“There are also too many other distractions — people are watching Netflix, playing video games, and there are a whole heap of other ways to be entertained.
“Women and men are looking after their kids and elderly parents, and may just be exhausted from working and life.”
But can a relationship survive — or even thrive — without sex?
The short answer, according to experts, is yes.
Ms Hadley Barrett said many couples enjoyed happy, healthy relationships with no sex or hardly any.
Sexless marriages are something I see often at my clinic.
But there are a few caveats.
If couples wanted to remain satisfied and connected to each other in meaningful ways, they needed to be communicating honestly about sex, she said.
This is because both people need to understand and accept the reasons sex has stopped.
For a sexless relationship to really thrive, she explained both people needed to be happy with the frequency of sex.
This was made easier when you both had similar libidos, she noted.
“Sexless marriages are something I see often at my clinic,” Ms Hadley Barrett said.
“The big issue is when one person decides they don’t want sex anymore and the other person is expected to go along with that.”
She said mismatched libidos could destroy relationships by driving a wedge between partners, creating hurt, undermining trust, sparking resentment, and harming self-esteem.
She recommended that couples seek professional help if they did not understand what was going on between them in relation to sex.
However, she stressed it was normal for sexual desire to ebb and flow in a relationship.
“It’s normal to go through periods of low sexual activity,” Ms Hadley Barrett said.
Camera IconSex is off the agenda for an increasing number of couples. Credit: Prinz-Peter/Pixabay
“Certain stages in life are associated with changes in sex frequency, such as after the birth of a child, menopause, and old age.
“Men in their 40s tend to start reporting issues with erectile dysfunction, and by the time they hit the age of 50, one in three men have erectile dysfunction and need help.
“By 60, that’s one in two men, and by 70 only one in five men can get an erection without help.”
Ms Hadley Barrett said many of the obstacles to a fulfilling sex life, including erectile dysfunction and low libido, could be overcome with professional help.
And it’s intimacy, not sex, that holds relationships together anyway.
She said sex was just the icing on the cake, not the main ingredient, and remembering this would help couples take pressure off themselves.
What really matters is the attention you pay to each other.
There were also countless ways to enjoy sexual experiences that went beyond what popular culture suggests “good sex” should look like, she added.
“Sex is not all about penetration,” Ms Hadley Barrett said.
“If one of you has a problem, like painful sex, then you can have what is called ‘outercourse’ rather than intercourse where you do all sorts of intimate things together like giving each other a sensual massage, but the biggest thing is to make sure you are communicating with each other.”
People may be surprised by how many women I see at my clinic who want more sex from their partner.
Dr Tamara Hunter, a gynaecologist at Woom in West Perth, said there were many reasons sex stopped, even in the most devoted relationships.
“The population of people I see who are expressing concern about not having sex with their partners are women who are perimenopausal or post-menopausal and this is largely because their libido is dropping, and in many cases sex is also quite uncomfortable for them.
“The fact there is no oestrogen around impacts on tissues and arousal for women, and the rest of their lives can be affected by this.
Camera IconDr Tamara Hunter inside the Monash IVF clinic in West Leederville. Credit: Justin Benson-Cooper/The West Australian
“Then there is the anxiety they feel due to the expectation on them which only compounds the problem, but if the guy is educated about what these experiences are like for women, and if both people are on the same page, they will find ways to fulfil each other from a sexual point of view.”
Ms Hadley Barret agreed a variety of factors explained sexless marriages, including a drop-off in desire because of life’s stresses or hormone changes, as well as smartphones and TV streaming services offering too many distractions from it.
As for how many times a week, a month or a year couples should be having sex, neither expert has the answer.
Dr Hunter said the right amount was the amount both people in the relationship felt kept them connected, satisfied and confident that each other’s needs were being reasonably met, and Ms Hadley Barrett agreed.
“Society puts expectations on us but there should be none,” Dr Hunter said.
“Thinking about how to be intimate with somebody does not have to be all about putting a penis in a vagina.”
Ms Hadley Barrett suspects another reason younger generations, especially, are having less sex is down to women in the past feeling obliged to satisfy their husband’s sexual desires, whereas today’s women are more likely to put boundaries in place and practise self-love.
But it’s a myth that men are always up for sex and women are always avoiding it.
“People may be surprised by how many women I see at my clinic who want more sex from their partner,” she said.
“A male’s response, which I see quite often, is ‘My wife is complaining I don’t love her anymore’, or, ‘She thinks I am having an affair and it is not that — I am just so busy at work and just so exhausted from life that I am genuinely not interested in sex anymore’.”
She said partners who were worried they were going from honeymooners to roommates needed to know it was never too late to bring sex back into the relationship.
How to have great sex at any age:
Late teens and 20s:
Millennials, or Generation Y, are the first generations to actually be having less sex than their parents did at the same age.
A major US study found just 44 per cent of teenage girls had had sex, compared with 58 per cent 25 years ago, and for boys a similar pattern emerged..
Ms Hadley Barrett noted certain contraceptive pills could reduce libido, just as other medications could, including some anti-anxiety pills and hair growth treatments. Sometimes medications can be switched if they are interfering with a young person’s sex life.
She also said some young men avoided sex over anxiety about their penis size when in reality, “the average penis size is not actually that big”.
She added: “In porn, men are picked from the right-hand side of the bell curve so they have unusually humungous penises.”
At least once a fortnight she treats young men who are “absolutely beside themselves thinking their penis is not normal”.
To help kickstart their sex life she reassures them that “there’s nothing wrong with you”, even showing them a book on male anatomy so they can relax about it.
30s and 40s:
Major dry spells are common as couples encounter pregnancy, childbirth, miscarriages, rearing children and work stress.
Dr Tamara Hunter said if intercourse was off the agenda, there were many other ways couples could be intimate, from sharing a bed together to holding hands, kissing, cuddling and enjoying non-penetrative sex including foreplay.
“This might involve mutual masturbation, using a toy on your partner, oral sex, lying down on top of them and rubbing bits, or giving each other a sensual massage,” Ms Hadley Barrett said.
She said women frustrated over loss of libido could dive into some spicy literature, dubbed “cliterature”.
“Most women over the age of 40, or mothers with young children, don’t feel spontaneous desire anymore — it turns into responsive desire instead,” Ms Hadley Barrett said.
“Reading erotica is a great way to make your brain think about sex and bring on that responsive desire.”
She said men’s testosterone levels were highest in their 20s but then they started dropping, along with their sex drive.
“We can treat that issue with testosterone replacement,” she said.
Dr Hunter noted sex could be painful for women in perimenopause but if they wanted to try penetrative sex again, there were treatments that could help.
“It’s about using things like vaginal moisturisers and vaginal oestrogens because there are a whole lot of things that can be utilised to make sex more physically comfortable,” she said.
50s, 60s, 70s and beyond:
Research from 2012 found two-thirds of women, including those who were as old as 80, were satisfied with their sex lives, and 67 per cent of participants had an orgasm “most of the time” during sex in comparison with the younger participants.
The study suggested sex did get better with age, and, according to Ms Hadley Barrett: “Older people are having sex and, in my experience, lots of it.”
She said this may be because they were more likely to have the luxury of time and privacy with children off their hands, and there was more awareness around the treatments available to support a healthy sex life in older age.
She said topical oestrogen, for example, could alleviate vaginal dryness and help make sex comfortable, while there were many ways to successfully treat erectile dysfunction in men, from tablets to injections.
Physical limitations such as dodgy knees or hips could usually be managed with creative sex positions, she added.
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