Doing it – or not – in long -term relationships is the last sexual taboo, says Hannah Betts, who is more turned on by the promise of an early night…
How often do you and your partner have sex? OK, now give the real answer. Why, in an age of personal revelation, are we so reluctant to admit we’re bored in bed with a long-term partner? Baring all about a fading spark or lacking libido is unusual, so it was refreshing to see Made In Chelsea alumnus Jamie Laing recently confess that all is not swinging from the chandeliers a year after his nuptials.
Laing, 35, who hosts the Newlyweds podcast with wife Sophie Habboo, 30, admitted that, since he put a ring on it, he has become ‘lazy’ in the bedroom. Habboo maintains that he is ‘bog standard’ in his predilections and ‘can’t be bothered’. The presenter elaborated, ‘Once, I rolled on top of Sophie and she said, “Oh, get on with it.”’ Their candidness came as many were still traumatised by former sex god Robbie Williams’s declaration, ‘Everyone knows there’s no sex after marriage,’ and that, frankly, he’d rather eat a tangerine.
How the mighty are fallen. One minute you’re a shag-happy, erotic Duracell bunny, the next you’re comatose, wearing bed socks beneath a sign reading ‘Do not disturb’. My partner and I aren’t even married and yet, a decade on from meeting, we seem more aroused by an early night than all-night exploits. A blackout mask has replaced my La Perla blindfold, and it is the dog – not Terence – who yearns to bask between my thighs (whippets crave warmth). There was a time when my sex life was my life. These days, I wouldn’t rather have an orange, but I might just trade it for a bath.
We’re far from alone. When I ask around about passion in long-term relationships, the first response I receive is a curt:
‘Oxymoron’. Others allude to weekly ‘maintenance sex’ that ‘actually happens every month’. A chap who has been hitched for 25 years tells me that ‘relations’ require ‘recourse to the wank bank’, another that it’s a case of ‘birthdays and Christmas’. In fact, the only individual able to brag about her sex life pauses after a couple of minutes to say, ‘Oh, wait, you mean with my husband? Christ, no. That would be a fetish too far.’ A YouGov survey released in 2020 revealed that sexually active Brits do it an average of once a week. Although, whether this is a genuine figure or some fictional fantasy remains moot. Those in their late twenties are more likely to engage in weekly intercourse than any other cohort, with almost half (43%) of 25 to 29-year-olds reporting this. Two in five people (38%) aged 35 to 39 had not done the deed in the past seven days. By 40 to 44, a fifth were reporting having no sex whatsoever. By 74, this figure was 57%.
