If you engage in sex, you're statistically more likely to have a positive day. Yet, the very idea of scheduling it can transform this potential pleasure into a mundane task. Unlike other forms of self-improvement, sexual intimacy is often viewed as indulgence, making it challenging to muster the determination to prioritise it, even within a committed partnership.
However, experts argue that sex is a fundamental appetite and a form of nourishment. Letting it lapse can leave a relationship feeling perpetually deprived and lonely. For many, it remains a cornerstone of connection worth actively safeguarding.
The Core Challenge: It's a Team Effort
At its heart, a fulfilling sexual connection is a two-person endeavour, requiring mutual attunement. The first hurdle is often simple synchronisation. For childless couples, conflicting moods and mismatched schedules can be the primary barrier. The issue extends beyond the bedroom; one fertility specialist recounted the extreme difficulty of finding a single appointment where a couple were both in the country and the woman was ovulating, highlighting how daily logistics can stifle connection.
Michelle Bassam, a psychological and sexual therapist with 25 years of experience, advises that intimacy shouldn't be confined to the bedroom. "You can maintain intimacy throughout the day by being tactile. Showing interest in your partner can be enough," she says. Conversely, neglect—withholding attention or touch except as a prelude to sex—can swiftly derail a couple's closeness.
Navigating Life's Major Passions Killers
The arrival of children presents the most dramatic shift for many couples. The transition from spontaneous connection to exhaustion, resentment, and disrupted sleep is stark. Jodie Slee, a sex therapist of 16 years, confirms this is a high-risk period for relationships, both sexually and otherwise.
Her advice starts practically: "If a woman gets an extra hour of sleep a night, that increases her libido by 14%." The physical and identity changes of motherhood also take a toll. "Motherhood is not seen as a sexy thing," Slee notes, highlighting the cultural clash many women face. She advocates for parents, especially mothers, to be "a little bit selfish" in preserving a sense of their pre-child self.
Key strategies include building a support network for overnight childcare, preventing temporary dry spells from becoming permanent voids, and ensuring domestic workloads are equal to prevent resentment from poisoning physical intimacy. "Make sure the workload is equal," Slee stresses, "so that one person is not doing all the night feeds and the labour."
Beyond the Nursery: Teenagers and Boomerang Kids
As children become teenagers, demands on time may lessen, but self-consciousness often increases. Bassam emphasises that while privacy is important, parents provide a crucial template for healthy intimacy through simple, affectionate gestures.
The obstacle course doesn't end there. With a third more young adults living with parents this century, the 'boomerang kid' phenomenon creates new challenges. Many feel uncomfortable being sexually intimate in their childhood home, a feeling not helped by family photos in the spare room. This issue extends to any multi-occupant household, where couples must communicate their need for private couple time to prevent their bond from being constantly "obliterated by the group's demands."
Reframing Scheduling and Seeking Novelty
Contrary to the truism that scheduling sex spells doom, therapists suggest a reframe. "If you reframe it, you're not scheduling, you're prioritising," explains Jodie Slee. In long-term relationships, desire often becomes more responsive than spontaneous. Waiting for the perfect moment might mean an indefinite wait.
Planning also alleviates the pressure of tracking a drought, which itself creates anxiety and further avoidance. Once intimacy is prioritised, the next step is keeping the spark alive through novelty, or what was once called "erotic defamiliarisation."
"Novelty is the thing that creates the honeymoon period—your body is flooded with dopamine, which is spiked by novelty," Slee says. This doesn't necessitate extreme measures. For many couples, novelty can be as simple as using a different room or wearing a different outfit. The comfort of long-term familiarity offers a safe space to experiment, where even a failed attempt shows your partner they are on your agenda.
The ultimate motivational example came from the first couple Slee ever worked with: in their early 80s and together for 50 years, they were having sex every other day and sought therapy only to 'spice up' an already active relationship. Their secret? They never allowed the sun to set on an extended dry spell, proving that a vibrant, intimate connection can be a lifelong journey, not just a fleeting phase.
