Have you noticed that people in long-term relationships tend to talk less and less about sex over time? This is especially true for married couples.
While this may be a personal observation, the data supports it. According to a nationally representative survey conducted in the United States in 2023, approximately 7% of married adults had not engaged in sexual activity in the past year and 4% had not done so in the past five years. If we include couples with extremely low sexual activity, the figure rises to 14% to 15%. This means that as many as one in seven married adults in the US are in relationships with little to no sexual activity (Lehmiller, 2023).
This highlights the widespread presence of the “elephant in the room”: when you’ve been in a stable relationship for years, sexual activity seems to disappear quietly over time.
Last year’s popular Korean drama, It’s Been a Long Time, addressed the issue of sexless relationships by depicting a young couple who started out having a passionate sex life, but eventually became sexually inactive after a few years.
They weren’t lacking desire; they simply had no desire for each other. The husband and wife masturbated in separate rooms and tried solutions like the wife wearing sexy lingerie, but the husband remained unfazed.
This “asexual” state is also common in neighboring Japan, which is known for its pornographic culture. A 2022 survey of 8,000 Japanese people aged 20 to 49 regarding sexual activity revealed that:
- 45.3% of women and 44.5% of men reported having no sexual partners in the past year.
- 27.8% of women and 23.1% of men reported being satisfied with their sex lives.
26% of women and 46.4% of men reported wanting to increase the frequency of their sexual activity. - Only 13.0% of women and 13.2% of men reported having sexual intercourse at least once a week in the past year, including with commercial sex workers.
Where has sexual desire gone?
In today’s article, we will discuss this question and more. Is “bed death” an inevitable phenomenon in a one-on-one long-term relationship? What is suppressing our sexual desire? How can we have both warm, intimate feelings and a passionate sex life?
01
The “Accelerator” and “Brake” of Sexual Desire
In order to understand why sexual desire disappears, it is first necessary to understand what determines sexual desire. In the late 1990s, Erick Janssen and John Bancroft, professors specializing in sexual psychology, proposed a model of sexual desire consisting of two parts.
First, the Sexual Excitation System (SE), which you can think of as the “accelerator” of sexual desire. This system processes information from the environment related to sexual stimuli, such as sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, or imagination, and sends signals from the brain to the genitalia, instructing them to “turn on!” This system operates constantly in the background, often unnoticed.
The second part is the Sexual Inhibition System (SI), or the “brake” of sexual desire. It refers to factors that inhibit sexual desire, such as dangerous or uncomfortable environments, experiences of sexual trauma, stress, anxiety, and rejection by a partner.
According to this model, sexual arousal requires activating the accelerator and disengaging the brake.
Everyone has a sexual accelerator and sexual brake in their central nervous system. However, our sensitivity to the accelerator and brake varies, which often leads to different sexual temperaments or personalities:
High accelerator, low brake: Approximately 2% to 6% of women fall into this category. While some women desire sex more when under stress, others see their interest in sex plummet. This is often associated with sexual risk-taking.
- Low throttle, high brake: This describes 1% to 4% of women. “High brake” means you are highly sensitive to factors that inhibit sexual desire. “Relatively insensitive throttle” means you require significant attention to become aroused. This type is associated with low desire and difficulty achieving orgasm.
- Additionally, there are high throttle, high brake; low throttle, high brake; and low throttle, low brake types. However, most people fall within the middle range, i.e., moderate throttle and moderate brake.
- People who lack sexual desire or struggle to orgasm often assume the issue is a lack of “throttle,” as in the case of the wife in It’s Been a While, who wears erotic lingerie, stimulates her husband’s genitals to “provoke” him, or stays in a love hotel. However, in reality, a sensitive brake is the strongest predictor of various sexual issues.
Without identifying the factors inhibiting sexual desire, even aggressive acceleration may not produce movement, or if it does, it may damage the car itself.
02
What applies the brakes to our sexual desire?
There are two common types of brakes:
One type involves potential environmental threats, which are more obvious and impact sexual desire more significantly.
The most common examples are stress, depression, and anxiety, which can decrease interest in sex, reduce sexual arousal, and interfere with orgasm.
In It’s Been a Long Time, the husband and wife are living in dire straits. With the Korean economy in decline, the small house they bought with a loan has lost value, while the interest rate on the loan keeps rising.
The wife works as a front desk clerk at a hotel. The husband is a high-achieving Seoul National University graduate who has repeatedly failed in his entrepreneurial ventures. He now makes a living driving a taxi. In the first episode, the taxi was flooded, and the insurance couldn’t cover the damage. To reduce expenses, the wife eats kimchi with rice. The couple can’t even afford to buy a cup of coffee.
When life lacks even basic security, sexual desire is also harshly stifled.
The second type of “braking” is somewhat different. It is more like the handbrake in a car: a chronic, less obvious “rejection” signal that often stems from internal factors.
For example:
- Self-loathing toward one’s body
Studies show that women who are dissatisfied with their bodies have less satisfying sex lives, are at greater risk, and experience less pleasure. One woman described her feelings about her body: “When I feel comfortable with myself, I find it easier to feel aroused. But when I feel bad about myself and my body, it’s harder.”
- Sexual trauma survivors may experience inhibition of sexual desire in information processing.
Past experiences, situations, or thoughts associated with sexuality may be interpreted as threats by the brain, leading to increased inhibition. Sexual trauma can include any unpleasant experience related to sexuality or the body, such as sexual violence or gynecological surgeries. A friend mentioned that her sexual desire was affected after HPV surgery.
- Accumulation of suppressed negative emotions in a relationship
In It’s Been a While, the husband later admitted that he had no desire for his wife because she was too dominant in everyday life. This left him in a constant state of anxiety, unable to relax. The wife, in turn, developed self-doubt due to his repeated refusals and lost her desire as well. Both parties inadvertently applied the brakes to each other’s sexual desire, leading to a negative cycle of “asexuality.”
While there are many types of “brakes,” they all boil down to one thing: whether your brain interprets the world as safe, interesting, sexy, and enjoyable. In other words, it’s about trust. “Letting go of the brakes always comes down to trust,” and to how both parties share feelings and connect in a context of deep trust.
03
How can desire levels be increased in long-term relationships?
This raises the question: how can desire levels be increased in long-term relationships? Many psychologists studying gender relationships have pondered this question, and currently, there are two main schools of thought.
One is Esther Perel’s ‘maintaining a comfortable distance’, which emphasises that desire and love are opposites — love craves intimacy, while desire requires distance.
Esther Perel is an American psychologist and marriage therapist who is renowned for her research on desire, infidelity, and related issues.
Another school of thought is John Gottman’s “turning toward each other’s desires,” which posits that desire stems from deeper, more intimate relationships. The better we understand each other, and the more open we are, the more likely we are to experience sexual desire.
John Gottman is an American psychologist and marriage therapist who is renowned for his work on marital stability and divorce prediction.
While these two perspectives may seem contradictory, they actually employ the same strategy: increasing activation and reducing inhibition.
The profound truth is that both are aware that passion does not automatically occur in long-term monogamous relationships. However, they also recognise that passion can occur if the couple intentionally creates the right environment. For some couples, fostering intimacy is key; for others, creating space is more important.
Sexual desire is like a garden. A gardener cannot force flowers to bloom by gritting their teeth. However, they can create the best possible environment for the flowers to thrive. Then, it is up to the flowers.
No matter whether you desire sex or not, your feelings are always real and normal.
Finally, when did the couple in It’s Been a Long Time resume their sex life? After they divorced and sold the house.
Couples who cannot have sex after getting married can only do so after getting divorced. While this may seem ironic, it could also offer some insight. Besides divorce, is there a way to release the ‘brakes’ on sexual desire within the relationship?
