Hot, passionate, awkward, embarrassing: these are the kinds of sex stories my friends and I love talking about.
We dissect the warts-and-all tales of one night stands, casual flings and on-off relationships, but when it comes to talking about sex drive – or lack of – for women in their 20s, everyone is suddenly tight-lipped.
In hushed tones, a friend recently confided that she and her partner only have sex once a week. With palpable embarrassment, she confessed that while she loves her boyfriend, she just didn’t fancy jumping his bones all that often.
I had absolutely no shame in telling her that my relationship is exactly the same – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I know I’m not the only one turned off by the idea of constant sex. In fact, a third of women either aren’t enjoying or aren’t all that interested in sex, according to a recent study by the University of Glasgow.
Despite this statistic, most media marketed at women would have you believe we are all sexually liberated floozies who can’t get enough action. There’s very little discussion around women like myself who enjoy a healthy but less frequent sex life, and that can feel alienating. It makes you feel like a matronly prude, clutching her pearls while the hair-tossing horny girls have all the fun.
Three years ago, my sex drive pretty much dropped off the face of the earth when I was prescribed SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) to treat anxiety. As anyone who has ever taken antidepressants will attest, the body takes a while to adjust to all the new serotonin in its system.
I lost my appetite, twitched constantly, had trouble sleeping, sweated profusely and ground my teeth. None of these things exactly scream ‘sexy’.
After a few weeks, my serotonin thankfully levelled out. My anxiety became more manageable, but my sex drive never fully recovered. And that’s OK. I like having sex around once a week. My boyfriend is fine with this arrangement. My relationship hasn’t suffered.
But for a long time, the steady stream of sex-related conversations and content around me made me feel like a leper.
Anxiety is funny. You can know the facts but still worry about the possibilities. The possibility I kept coming back to was that I was some kind of sexual outcast. Was there something wrong with me?
A quick Google search assured me that a reduced sex drive is a totally normal side-effect of antidepressants. In fact, a survey by YouGov found most people only have sex once a week. Nonetheless, I, like my aforementioned friend, liked to worry about the possibility everyone else was having endless crazy, kinky sex – except for me.
When you’re worried about your own libido, suddenly it seems like sex is everywhere. Sally Rooney’s written more sex scenes than I’ve had hot dinners. Megan Thee Stallion’s verses are basically erotic fiction. There are plenty of sexy moments – both good and bad – on popular women’s shows like Fleabag, Younger and Euphoria.
Meanwhile, whenever a lack of horniness is mentioned, it’s usually as a problematic or comic plot point. Podcasts like Call Her Daddy and Guys We F*cked make no bones about discussing everything from blowjobs to breakup sex. And, ever since Michelle Bass and Stu Wilson disappeared under a table together in 2004’s Big Brother, sex has been a focal point of much of our reality TV programming.
The message is clear: now women have been sexually liberated, we should be utilising our right to shag. But that viewpoint doesn’t account for women like myself who have had their sex drives altered by medication, childbirth, contraception or dozens of other reasons.
Female horniness is impossible to avoid, particularly when you’re an un-horny female, and that has to change.
I’m not calling for a new wave of TV shows starring normal couples having a low-to-medium amount of sex. Sex is the stuff of scandalous plot lines, juicy gossip and Mills and Boon legend.
I’m not denying anyone the right to talk about shagging. But we also need to have more honest conversations about lower female sex drives in order to end the shame around them.
From intimate discussions over brunch to sexed-up podcasts, blogs and films, it would be nice to see women openly embracing their mediocre sex drives every once in a while.
Do you have a story that you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing stephanie.soh@metro.co.uk
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/12/woman-guilty-no-sex-12834275/
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