SO HOW OFTEN ARE WE HAVING SEX?

IT IS a common lament among the midlife coffee-morning set that everyone thinks they’re horribly deprived of the regular and enthusiastic sex they deserve –— and now, it seems, our survey bears this out.

Statistics from the early 1990s showed that 50 per cent of us were having sex at least once a week. But our 2022 survey shows sex appears to have plummeted down the marital ‘to do’ list.

Today, only 19 per cent have sex once a week on a regular basis. However, when you combine that figure with the 16 per cent of enthusiasts happily at it ‘several’ times a week you reach a slightly healthier figure of 35 per cent of the population having sex once a week or more.

But that’s still a significant 15 per cent drop in 30 years.

Fourteen per cent say they have sex ‘several times a month’, while six per cent do it monthly and nine per cent make a effort only on high days and holidays. One in five (many of them in the 65+ age range) is having no sex at all.

Derbyshire-based married couple, Sarah, 37, and her 38-year-old husband say they’re surprised to have found themselves in what has turned out to be a sexless marriage.

‘When my husband and I got together 20 years ago, sex was great and we’d be ripping each other’s clothes off three or four times a week,’ says Sarah.

HOWeVer, things changed after the birth of their first daughter, who is now 11, and although they have had two more daughters, aged nine and five, they haven’t had sex since their youngest was born.

‘Our marriage is happy, I still want intimacy, but I’m afraid I have zero sex drive for my husband. These days, sex just isn’t a priority for me,’ she adds.

‘I think it’s pretty normal to go off sex when you’re in a long-term relationship, but unfortunately there is a degree of shame and stigma surrounding this. So many women end up feeling they should be the perfect wife, mother, housekeeper and a sexual dynamo, too.’

It’s a similar story for business owner Georgina, 32, and her husband, 36, who is a mechanical engineer.

‘Looking at us, you’d think we’re an attractive 30-something couple who are bound to be at it like rabbits — but that isn’t the case at all,’ says Georgina.

‘We’re having a great time with full social lives as well as our careers, and our busy routines just don’t leave us time for having sex.’

After being together for eight years, they got married during the pandemic: ‘Being stuck together meant we lost interest in being intimate,’ says Georgina.

‘It isn’t that we don’t want to have sex — we just want to do other things more. Since we’re lucky enough to live in London, we’d far rather go to the zoo or to the cinema than head to the bedroom.’

Sometimes after date night — especially if there is alcohol involved — Georgina says they will have sex, but she says there isn’t any pressure from either side for it to happen. ‘I’ve never felt more loved and secure in my marriage,’ she says. ‘I think my husband is the sexiest man alive, and I hope he feels I’m sexy, too.

‘But I honestly think that having sex several times a week is a “front” that loads of people feel they need to put on.’

The only sticking point in Georgina and her husband’s situation is that they are hoping to start trying for a family later this year and Georgina is conscious of the commitment involved in conceiving: ‘I know we’ll need to plan to have sex — we’ll probably have to put it in our diaries, otherwise it will never happen. Hopefully when there’s a goal, it will be easier for us to have sex regularly.’

SO WHY AREN’T WE HAVING SEX? WE’RE TOO BUSY

A rATHer alarming 13 per cent of respondents in our survey said they refuse sex about once a week because they’re too tired or busy, while 7 per cent said they turn down the offer a few times a week or even more.

Perhaps not surprisingly, in both cases, the refusal comes from twice as many women as men.

WE’RE GLUED TO OUR SCREENS

THIrTy years ago there were only four TV channels and no box sets or streaming services to tempt you to stay up past bedtime. But our survey showed that a staggering 91 per cent of us are quite happy to while away the evenings watching television or films compared with the 46 per cent who said their idea of a good night in was having sex.

‘If you don’t go to bed at the same time, your chances of intimacy decrease dramatically,’ says marital therapist and author Andrew G. Marshall. ‘An evening spent watching television doesn’t necessarily have to ruin your sex life. If you watch something together, preferably side-by-side

on a sofa, cuddled up, that can be a great way to relax and connect. But the same cannot be said for those couples watching different shows in different rooms, or doubling up on screens and checking their phones at the same time.’ Screens are an issue for Ivy, 32, and her husband, 35, from Berkshire. She admits that they are ruining the couple’s sex life. ‘Technology is absolutely the third person in our marriage,’ she admits.

Although she and her spouse have been together for 15 years, married for ten and have two children aged eight and two, Ivy says they now only have sex once a month or so.

‘When we relax, we do so on our own and that means screentime,’ says Ivy.

‘I started my own business three years ago, and, because a lot of what I do is carried out on my phone, I never really disconnect — I’m forever checking emails and sorting tasks.

‘I don’t feel bad about neglecting my husband, because he is more than happy to spend five hours a night playing on his Xbox. He has a high-pressure job and that’s how he likes to relax.

‘There is still love between us, and we have great fun when we go on special dates together, but there’s none of the burning passion we once shared. It just seems like there’s little time or energy left for sex.’

SOCIAL MEDIA IS TO BLAME

ALTHougH 55 per cent of people say they like nothing more than to curl up with a good book before bed (a figure heavily weighted to the over-55s), it’s sad to note that 67 per cent of our respondents spend their evenings scrolling through social media. Notably it was the 18 to 34-yearolds who said they were ‘very’ (as opposed to ‘quite’) likely to spend their evenings on social media.

‘The problem with smartphones and 24-hour communication is that the old boundaries have collapsed,’ says Andrew.

‘We live in a world of distraction, which means you can get an important work email just ten minutes before bed — sexual desire needs time to bubble up and any mood can be instantly destroyed by an uncomfortable text or tweet.’

one big concern is that so many of us reach for our phone each morning to turn off the alarm, and automatically start scrolling — effectively becoming embedded in the cycle of clicks and ‘likes’ before we’ve even acknowledged the person lying beside us.

Twenty nine per cent of those who share a bed with a partner confessed to spending up to ten minutes on their phone when they wake up, and 18 per cent said they spend up to 20 minutes scrolling in bed.

In each case, the phone users are typically more likely to be women than men.

‘using a phone in bed is a big turn-off,’ adds Andrew. ‘Even if you’re checking the news, you’re giving out the message that your phone is more interesting than

the person lying beside you — it’s certainly not sexy.’

The addiction is real: a staggering 29 per cent of our respondents said they would rather give up sex than their mobile phone or tablet — with the surprising response far more prevalent among women (39 per cent of respondents compared with 19 per cent for men).

And 8 per cent of people confessed that they had refused sex because they wanted to spend more time on their phone.

Admittedly, 45 per cent said they’d be happier to give up their mobile than abandon sex but there’s a definite gender bias here: of those respondents, 56 per cent were men and only 35 per cent were women.

SO WHO ENJOYS SEX THE MOST?

WHEN this question was asked in 1991, the replies showed both sexes thought men got more out of a sexual experience. Twenty six per cent of men and 36 per cent of women believed men had a better time in bed than their female partners. After 30 years of increasing sex equality at work, home and surely in the bedroom, too, we fully expected these figures to have changed. After all, the sex-positive movement allied to feminism, has sought to highlight female desire and the importance of women’s pleasure.

And yet we found almost no change at all. In fact, in some respects attitudes have actually gone backwards.

Today, 29 per cent of men and women said they thought men have a better time in bed (right across the age ranges), and just a tiny fraction of respondents (6 per cent of men and just 7 per cent of women) thought that women have more fun in bed.

Where in 1991, 55 per cent of the population thought enjoyment was equal between the sexes, that figure today has dropped to 53 per cent.

‘Part of the problem is the widespread proliferation of pornography,’ says Andrew. ‘Young people get their sex education from watching videos, which are usually more fantasy than reality. It makes them insecure and portrays this idea of “easy sex”, where everyone is in a permanent state of readiness.

‘It means that we have no idea how to be sensual and initiate a sexual encounter.’

And if such pornography fails to show women prioritising their needs — or even to acknowledge them — it’s hardly surprising that couples who use it think women don’t enjoy sex as much as men.

Back in 1991, our survey showed that men and women agreed that women were more likely to be happy to live without sex than men. Fifty-three per cent of men said women could live without sex, but only nine per cent of males thought they would be able to abandon carnal pleasures for ever themselves.

Women agreed, with an extraordinary 73 per cent saying they’d be quite happy to abstain. Twice as many men as women said sex was ‘very important’ in their lives. However, in our new survey, although 38 per cent of men and 50 per cent of women said they thought men would find it tough to live without sex, a meagre seven per cent of both genders said they thought women would find it more difficult to live without sex. ‘One reason women appear to be coming unstuck is because although we might be able to discuss sex with our friends quite happily, we often find it difficult to talk about sex with our partners,’ says Andrew.

This finding certainly resonates with Sarah, who says she knows her husband is confused about her apparently dwindling libido. ‘Initially, he put pressure on me, saying everyone else had a better sex life than us,’ she says. ‘I knew from conversations with married friends that this was definitely not the case. Plenty of my friends say their husbands don’t really know what they like or want.’ ‘My husband’s answer to our problems has been to buy me sex toys, but that just makes me feel uncomfortable, and frankly it’s easier for

me to say I’ve got a headache or the kids need me, than thinking about — or trying to communicate — the sex life I actually want.’