The A-team who will end the sex recession

If you’d rather watch TV than get intimate with your partner, you’re not alone. But there are ways to kick-start your libido. Hattie Garlick reports

“You don’t realise it’s happening at first, it just... dwindles. A couple of months passed, then I looked around and thought... Oh.” Alex, 32, a marketing director from Manchester, had been with his girlfriend for six years. They lived together and were happy, “very happy” in fact, with their sex life. Until suddenly... they weren’t. One sexless week turned into a fortnight, a month, then more...

Alex is not alone. According to new data, 98 per cent of us assume others are doing it at least once a month. In fact, one in five UK adults has not had sex in the past four weeks. Indeed, according to the nationwide survey commissioned by Hims and Hers, 30 per cent of us are having less sex as a direct result of the cost of living crisis.

Alex and his girlfriend are saving to buy a home together. As their costs spiralled, they found themselves “working hard all day, then planning our personal life and future in the evening. All these pressures and uncertainties just started to take over.”

By the time he realised their sex life had fallen off the schedule, it was hard to broach the subject. “It’s awkward. You’ve gone from being intimate every week, to nothing, and not really understanding the reasons behind it. The longer it goes on, the more unhelpful pressure you put on yourself.”

As a nation, we need to talk about sex. In theory, we are more sexually liberated than ever. In practice... Britain is losing its libido*. Even before the cost of living crisis, evidence pointed towards financial pressures being a passion killer. In recent decades, three National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal) have put British sex lives under the spotlight. In 2019, analysis of their data showed that frequent sex was associated with good physical and mental health, but also steady employment and higher earnings.

This rings true for Charlotte, who started major home renovations last year. Shortly after, her husband lost his job. The price of their building materials (and groceries) rocketed. “The effects just snowball,” says the 40-yearold baker from London. “Stress prevented me from sleeping, which made me put on weight, which prevented me from feeling sexually attractive. Lack of intimacy contributed to my stress, and so the cycle continued...”

Remove money from the equation and modern life still leaves many of us feeling overstretched and underappreciated. The most recent Natsal survey, conducted in 2010-12, suggested that a third of women aged between 40 and 59 had not had sex in the past month. When researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of Glasgow and University College London asked why, they found it had less to do with the menopause and more with being the so-called “sandwich generation” – caring for young children and older parents simultaneously, while juggling careers, social lives, housework...

“The weight of responsibility just crushes all levity,” says Sabrina, a 39-year-old actress, from London. “It’s impossible to be spontaneous and relaxed when you’re worried about your children, parents and job.” That said, the practical challenges of keeping up an active sex life have increased in the cost of living crisis. “We’ve been turning the heating off to save money. So for one thing, I now go to bed with too many layers on.”

Does this nationwide decline in intimacy really matter? Alex suggests it might: “Without it, you grow apart a little.” Around four months into his own accidental abstinence, he finally broached the subject with his girlfriend. “We decided to schedule a date night every two weeks. Almost instantly, the fact that we were out in the evening, dressed to the nines, holding hands while walking down the street, rekindled something. You’re so focused on the date, you forget everything else.” Today, things are back on track. “In an odd way, they’re actually better. Going through something difficult, then relighting the fire, brought us even closer together.”

If you’re suffering from a sex drought, here’s how to fix it, according to the experts.

Audio is like a blueprint for your mind to fill in the blanks, exactly as you’d like… Gina Gutierrez is co-founder of Dipsea, a company producing erotic audio stories

There’s a lot of talk about people having less sex. And it’s probably true, on a physical level. But there are certainly more younger people having sex online or on the phone.

It can be a great lower-stakes playground for sexual exploration, but I don’t think it’s a replacement for the connection and chemistry that can be experienced physically.

The majority of our listeners are listening solo, even when they are using it as a tool to improve their relationship. It could inspire and spark new ideas about what they might suggest to a partner, how they might ask, even how to say no to something.

The diversity of the themes, scenarios and sexual preferences available on the Dipsea app reflect just how diverse people’s appetites are. Right now, people are loving Irish accents, and a series called Lone Wolf about a rugged rancher type in the American West.

Ninety per cent of women report using mental framing (in other words, imagining scenarios) to get turned on, according to OMGYes research in partnership

with the Kinsey Institute. Audio is like a blueprint for your mind to fill in the blanks, exactly as you’d like...

Asking “What do I want? How can I bring that, confidently, to a partner?” and considering sex as starting with you, rather than with the unit of two people, can have profound consequences. Our audio erotica models what flirtation, foreplay and sex could really sound like, making “getting back out there” feel less daunting.