Not tonight, dear . . . in fact, not ever

Dr. Pam Spurr writes:

Emily, 37, is a successful solicitor with a husband and a two-year-old son. To her friends, she doubtless lives a charmed existence. But recently she sat across from me in a life coaching session. She was very distressed. Having just discovered that her husband of five years had had an affair, she felt that her world had disintegrated. She’d been a good partner, hadn’t she? She was caring and hardworking, wasn’t she?

Closer examination of their relationship revealed that Emily hadn’t had sex with her husband for many months. When I pushed Emily gently on this she was incredibly defensive. It was her view that she was too busy with her career and raising their son to give any thought or time to sex.

Over the past two decades I have worked as a psychologist, life coach and sex expert, and I have found that Emily’s attitude is all too common. And such views don’t bode well for the success of relationships. With increasing frequency, women in their twenties, thirties and forties take a pragmatic, postfeminist view that sex is something over which they have no need to negotiate. In the bedroom, there is no compromise. If a man has a higher sex drive than a woman, then he can sort himself out. If he wants to try something new and she can’t be bothered, tough luck to him.

Eventually, Emily and her husband repaired their relationship – which meant learning how to confront their differences, including sexual ones.