Why Are We All Having So Little Sex?

Matt, a 34-year-old data analyst from Texas, and his wife dated for seven years before getting married in 2013. When they didn’t live together, they had sex every time they saw each other. After they moved in, however, he says things changed. Their sex life became inconsistent. They’d have a really active week and then a month with nothing, or just one at-bat. It began to hurt their relationship. At one point early in their marriage, Matt’s wife got pregnant, but they weren’t sure the marriage was going to make it, so they terminated the pregnancy. Part of the problem for Matt, who spoke to TIME about his sex life on the condition his last name wouldn’t be printed, was that he didn’t know how to talk about sex with his wife. “I really didn’t want to be pushy on that issue,” he says. “She has the right to say no, always and forever.” Yet he struggled with the notion that no was the automatic answer. He didn’t understand why they weren’t having more sex. If Matt’s story sounds familiar to you, you are not alone. Americans are not having sex. They’re not having sex in droves. According the General Social Survey, a profile of American behavior that has been gathered by the National Opinion Research Council at the University of Chicago since 1972, the fraction of people getting it on at least once a week fell from 45% in 2000 to 36% in 2016. One study of the GSS data showed that more than tw...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Sexual Health Source Type: news