Obstacles: What Gets in the Way of Sex

In recent decades, the idea that everyone has the right to sexual fulfillment has been advancing all across the globe, especially in the United States and other Western countries (Twenge, Sherman, & Wells, 2015). And, as we have just discussed, good sex is great for our relationships and our health. Plus, it feels amazing. Yet analyses of the General Social Survey, an annual, nationally representative survey that includes a question about sexual frequency, reveal that Americans have been having steadily less sex over the past 25 years (Twenge, Sherman, & Wells, 2017). It’s true that more people are living alone now than they were 25 years ago, but that’s not the reason for the decline; never-married folks are having as much sex as they used to (Figure 9.12). Surprisingly, it’s married people who are having less sex, and these declines have been about the same across genders, races, parts of the country, and levels of education. If sex is so great, why aren’t couples having more of it? What gets in the way?

FIGURE 9.12 Declining sexual frequency among married couples in the U.S., 1989–2014. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, married couples were having sex more often than never-married people. In recent years, the pattern has flipped. (Source: Adapted from Twenge et al., 2017.)

Finding Time

Over the same period of history that sexual frequency has been declining among American couples, those couples have been getting a lot busier (Finkel, Hui, Carswell, & Larson, 2014). For example, although Americans in the 1970s spent less time at work than people in European countries, by the early 2000s Americans were spending 50% more time at their jobs than workers in Germany, France, and Italy (Prescott, 2004). Americans also get less paid vacation time, and they don’t necessarily use all of it (Schor, 2008). While these changes were taking place at work, demands at home were also on the rise. Between 1993 and 2008, the hours each week that fathers and mothers spent on parenting more than doubled for college-educated parents, and increased nearly as much for most other groups (Ramey & Ramey, 2010). It is hardly surprising that, in large national surveys, men and women report being a lot more stressed out in 2009 than in 1983 (Cohen & Janicki-Deverts, 2012).

The extra time required for work and raising kids has to come from somewhere, and for most couples, it comes from the time that they used to spend alone together. In 2003, American couples were together each day nearly an hour less than they were in 1975 (Dew, 2009). Compared to everyone else, couples with young children spend the least amount of time alone together each day, between 2 and 4 hours less than couples without children (Dew, 2009).

FIGURE 9.13 Too busy to “get busy.” During the same period that rates of sex in American couples has declined, the number of hours per week spent working, parenting, and doing household chores has increased. It’s not surprising that some couples have difficulty finding time for sex.

Consider the effects of all of these demands on the likelihood that couples will be in the mood for sex on a given day. When are they supposed to find time for a romantic or intimate moment? Most couples who live together do sleep in the same bed, but at the end of a long, stressful day, sex may not be the first thing on their minds (Figure 9.13). Mornings are out too, as the looming demands of work and family can be distracting. The presence of young children, needing to be put to bed at night, dressed and readied for school in the morning, and otherwise tended to throughout the day, does not make getting in the mood any easier. Is it any wonder that the declines in sex over the past 25 years are especially large among couples with children (Twenge et al., 2017)? Clearly, couples do manage to find time for sex amidst the domestic chaos and professional stress, but the challenges are real and increasing.

Household Chores

One source of stress with particularly interesting implications for couples’ sex lives is doing housework. By any measurement, modern couples spend far less time on housework than their ancestors did a century ago; we can all be thankful for the invention of the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, and the dishwasher. But despite the conveniences of modern life, couples who live together still have to get the dishes done, the laundry folded, and the children bathed and fed. Who does all this work? As we discussed in Chapter 5, same-sex couples negotiate housework in all kinds of ways (Goldberg, 2013), but in different-sex couples, the burden of housework tends to fall disproportionately on women. During the latter decades of the 20th century, women’s time spent on housework fell by a lot as they began to work outside the home, and men’s time nearly doubled (Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, & Robinson, 2000). Nevertheless, women continue to spend far more hours on household chores than men do—an average of 1.6 hours for every 1 hour spent by men (Bianchi, Sayer, Milkie, & Robinson, 2012).

What does the division of household labor mean for intimacy in different-sex relationships? The answer seems to have changed over time. In the late 1980s and 1990s, straight couples had sex more often the more they divided housework along typical gender lines—the female partner shopping, cooking, and doing dishes, and the male partner paying the bills, maintaining the car, and doing the driving (Kornrich, Brines, & Leupp, 2013). That result makes sense if we imagine that, in different-sex couples, conforming to gender stereotypes is sexually attractive: Men who do more stereotypically masculine chores are perceived by their partners as more masculine, and women who do more stereotypically feminine chores are perceived by their partners as more feminine.

In more recent decades, however, playing out stereotypical gender roles in straight couples seems to be losing its appeal. Newer surveys find that couples have sex more frequently, and are more sexually satisfied, the more equally they divide household labor (Carlson, Miller, Sassler, & Hanson, 2016). What’s changed seems to be the importance of fairness. Couples are now more likely to say that an equal division of labor within the home is important to them (Frisco & Williams, 2003; Gerson, 2010). Feelings of fairness are also more strongly associated with intimacy for modern couples. When partners believe that the way they share responsibilities is fair, both of them feel more intimate, more sexually attracted to each other, and more sexually satisfied (Carlson, Hanson, & Fitzroy, 2016; Figure 9.14).

FIGURE 9.14 The family that cleans together. During the late 1980s and 1990s, couples had sex more often when they divided household chores according to typical gender roles. In recent years, things have changed, and now couples are more sexually active when they divide housework more equally between partners.

If fairness is becoming more important to couples, and if women, despite a lot of progress, are still doing more than their share of the household chores, then it makes sense that sexual frequency is declining in modern couples. Being taken for granted, exploited, or overburdened is not sexy, and it’s getting less sexy every year.

Pornography Use

Throughout history, every information technology ever invented—from cave paintings, to the printing press, to virtual reality headsets—has immediately been used to make pornography (Barss, 2012). For our purposes, we’ll define pornography as any type of media featuring nudity or sexual behavior that is explicitly intended to cause sexual arousal. Porn has always been with us, but finding it used to take considerable effort and expense, not to mention the risk of being identified and shamed. The Internet changed all that. Instead of having to hunt it down, pay for it, and risk being seen purchasing it, we can now access pornography of every conceivable flavor, for free, from the privacy of our homes, via the same devices many of us use for work, socializing, and other kinds of entertainment.

Does the easy availability of pornography have implications for couples and their sex lives? There are three reasons for concern (Rasmussen, 2016). First, exposure to porn could reduce partners’ satisfaction with each other through contrast effects. Pornography actors are selected to be highly physically attractive, and the sexual acts are written, performed, and edited to make sex seem easy and highly satisfying. In real life, our partners usually don’t look like models, and our sexual behavior is not choreographed or free from ringing telephones or nosy roommates. Clearly, pornography can convey an unrealistic standard against which most actual relationships don’t measure up. Consistent with this idea, there is some evidence that, after viewing porn, partners rate their real-life mates less favorably (Kenrick, Gutierres, & Goldberg, 1989). In addition, straight men who watch porn more frequently report lower relationship satisfaction than men who watch porn less often (Bridges & Morokoff, 2010; Poulsen, Busby, & Galovan, 2013; Yucel & Gassanov, 2010).

Second, using pornography may reduce partners’ commitment to each other by drawing their attention to alternatives outside of the relationship. In the world of porn, everyone on screen—from the sexy pizza delivery guy to the sexy babysitter, from the sexy fireman to the sexy nurse—is available and eager all the time. Research indicates that after watching porn, undergraduates in exclusive romantic relationships perceive more potential alternative partners in the real world as well (Gwinn, Lambert, Fincham, & Maner, 2013), and report less commitment to their current partners (Lambert, Negash, Stillman, Olmstead, & Fincham, 2012).

Third, extended porn use may affect partners’ beliefs about what behaviors are acceptable in their own relationships. Porn doesn’t just sell sex; it sells a worldview that emphasizes sex over other aspects of human interaction, like commitment and compassion. Accordingly, men exposed to porn express greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women, especially if they were already prone to aggressive behaviors (Malamuth, Addison, & Koss, 2000). Men who watch porn more frequently are also more likely to view sex outside their relationships as acceptable, and to seek it themselves (Gwinn et al., 2013; Wright & Randall, 2012).

Because of the ways using pornography can undermine committed relationships, the fact that porn is now available everywhere, and easily, could be seen as deeply troubling. Don’t panic. Although most research on the effects of porn use has searched for evidence of harm (Campbell & Kohut, 2017), research with a broader perspective has identified three pieces of news that couples may find reassuring. First, the impact of using porn depends on how often it’s used. Just like eating donuts and pizza, a moderate amount won’t harm you. Among college students in committed relationships, intermittent porn use (less than once a month) has no association with sexual satisfaction. The problems emerge only for those who report watching more frequently (Wright, Bridges, Sun, Ezzell, & Johnson, 2018).

Second, the implications of porn use for relationships are different for women than for men. The negative effects are usually observed among men. In contrast, women’s use has consistently been linked to better relationships. For example, compared to women in relationships who never view porn, partnered women who do watch some pornography report greater sexual satisfaction (Poulsen et al., 2013), and their male partners are more sexually satisfied as well (Bridges & Morokoff, 2010). Of course, these benefits should be kept in perspective. Women use pornography far less than men, and although men’s use of porn has increased as the Internet has made it more available (Wright, 2013), women’s use has remained pretty steady despite the rise of the Internet (Wright, Bae, & Funk, 2013).

FIGURE 9.15 Intimacy and Internet porn. Watching pornography alone has been associated with less frequent and less satisfying sex in couples, but viewing together has been associated with more open communication about sex and greater closeness in the relationship.

Finally, the effects of using porn depends on how couples do it. In some couples, one partner may watch in private, while the other has no interest. In other couples, both partners may enjoy viewing individually, especially when the other partner is not available. Still other couples may watch porn together, as an element of their shared sex life. If these sound like very different types of couples, you’re right, and the differences affect how satisfied they are with their sex lives (Figure 9.15).

When it comes to solitary viewing, what matters is whether or not both partners have the same perspective. Couples in which both partners never watch pornography and couples in which both partners do it regularly are more satisfied than couples in which there is a big difference between partners (Willoughby, Carroll, Busby, & Brown, 2016). When they enjoy doing it together, both partners report higher sexual satisfaction than partners who primarily watch alone (Maddox, Rhoades, & Markman, 2011). Why? When people use porn to explore their own desires, they can develop a better understanding of their own sexual response and what turns them on (McKee, 2007). Couples who do this exploration together communicate more openly about sex (Daneback, Traeen, & Mansson, 2009). The result can be greater closeness and enhanced intimacy in their relationship (Kohut, Balzarini, Fisher, & Campbell, 2018).

Negotiating Differences

Because sex is so important to intimacy, you might expect that couples negotiate their sex lives constantly and in detail. Some do, but for many people, directly asking for what they want in bed can be scary (Theiss & Estlein, 2013). In a culture that sends powerful messages about sex—how to have it, how much to have, and what kinds of sex are acceptable or unacceptable—disclosing your own sexual preferences can leave you vulnerable, even with someone who loves you. If you ask for more sex, will you come across as needy or demanding? If you want less, will that seem distant or withholding? What if you ask for something specific and your partner says no? What if your partner finds your request shocking or disgusting?

Because sexual intimacy activates our feelings about being attractive and desirable more directly than other shared activities couples engage in, it’s no surprise that couples rate their disagreements about sex as more important—and more threatening—than other topics of conflict in their relationships (Papp, Goeke-Morey, & Cummings, 2013; Rehman, Lizdek, Fallis, Sutherland, & Goodnight, 2017). To avoid the discomfort the subject can raise, satisfied partners say they don’t talk with each other explicitly about sex very often (Coffelt & Hess, 2014).

Yet couples can’t avoid the topic forever. No matter how sexually compatible you and your partner might be, the two of you will not always be in the mood at exactly the same time, and you will not always be turned on by exactly the same things. In straight couples, men often (but not always) desire sex more often than women (Baumeister et al., 2001). Even in same-sex couples, one partner will inevitably be more interested in sex than the other. In ongoing gay, lesbian, and straight relationships, these differences tend to be small (Davies, Katz, & Jackson, 1999; Holmberg & Blair, 2009). However, the larger the gap, the less satisfied partners are with their sex lives (Bridges & Horne, 2007). Eventually, most couples will have to negotiate their differences directly.

Without effective ways to communicate about each other’s preferences, some people respond to differences in sexual desire by resorting to sexual coercion—using verbal strategies, physical means, or other manipulative tactics to pressure a partner into having unwanted sex. Among straight college students, one in five women report being pressured into unwanted sex by their male partners (Katz & Myhr, 2008); people in same-sex relationships experience sexual coercion as well (Budge, Keller, & Sherry, 2015). Table 9.5 lists verbal and physical forms of coercion, from a recent study that asked female victims to name the strategies their partners had used to pressure them into unwanted sex (Jeffrey & Barata, 2017). Their responses illustrate the variety of ways people manipulate their partners instead of directly acknowledging differences in desire.

Table 9.5 Verbal and Physical Forms of Sexual Coercion

Type of Coercion	Examples
Less forceful verbal: positive	– Complimenting attractiveness – Sweet talking
Less forceful verbal: negative	– Threatening to break up – Saying they had not seen each other/had sex in a long time – Comparing their frequency of sex to other couples – Implying he loves her so much so she should return the affection – Pointing out everything he has done for her
Less forceful verbal: neutral	– Nagging – Trying to convince – Requesting small acts at a time – Pouting or expressing disappointment
More forceful verbal	– Becoming angry – Yelling and/or arguing
Less forceful physical	– Attempting to sexually arouse her by continuing to touch her – Showing how aroused he is by pressing his body into hers
More forceful physical	– Disregarding refusal and initiating/continuing sexual activity – Using physical pressure or force – Taking advantage to have sex when she is drunk
Source: Adapted from Jeffrey & Barata, 2017.

Table alternative text: Table 9.5 is titled Verbal and Physical Forms of Sexual Coercion. The table lists types of coercion and examples. Source: Adapted from Jeffrey and Barata, 2017.

When victims of sexual coercion describe their experiences, three common themes emerge (Livingston, Buddie, Testa, & Van Zile-Tamsen, 2004). First, the most common tactic is persistence, asking for sex and continuing to ask even after the partner has declined repeatedly. Second, victims often feel that giving in is the only way to appease their partners, avoid a conflict, and escape an uncomfortable situation. As one women expressed it: “[H]e knows that if he whines long enough or whatever, I am going to give in because I don’t want to hear it” (Livingston et al., 2004, p. 291). Third, sexual coercion has severely negative consequences for intimate relationships. Women who have been pressured into unwanted sex feel less satisfied with their relationships (Katz & Myhr, 2008), their relationships deteriorate over time (Collibee & Furman, 2014), and many report feelings of guilt and self-blame as well (Budge et al., 2015; Gutzmer, Ludwig-Barron, Wyatt, Hamilton, & Stockman, 2016).

The good news is that there are constructive ways to negotiate differences in sexual desire. When women in an online survey listed the strategies they use when they feel sexually “out of sync” with their partners, the number-one response (endorsed by 40% of the respondents) was to communicate directly (Herbenick, Mullinax, & Mark, 2014). Occasionally, this direct communication will involve rejecting a partner’s sexual advances, but there are nice ways to do it. In a daily diary study that asked mostly straight, mostly married couples to report on their sex life every day for 27 days, researchers distinguished between positive and negative ways of declining sex (Kim, Muise, & Impett, 2018). Positive approaches included: “I reassured my partner that I am attracted to them,” “I reassured my partner that I love them,” and“I offered alternate forms of physical contact.” Negative approaches included: “I displayed frustration toward my partner,” “I was short or curt with my partner,” and “I criticized the way my partner initiated sex.” The tone made a big difference. On days when one partner rejected the other positively, both partners reported higher sexual satisfaction than usual. The researchers concluded:

When people are not in the mood for sex and find that the main reason they are inclined to “say yes” is to avoid hurting their partner’s feelings or the relationship conflict that might ensue, engaging in positive rejection behaviors that convey love and reassurance may be critical to sustain relationship quality. (Kim et al., 2018, p. 504)

MAIN POINTS

• The idea that people have the right to sexual pleasure has taken hold throughout the Western world, yet married couples have sex less frequently now than they did 25 years ago.
• One obstacle to having more sex is a lack of time; modern couples spend more time at work and on childcare, and less time alone together, than they did 20 years ago.
• Although couples who divided household chores and childcare according to traditional gender roles used to have more sex, now couples who share equally in household chores and childcare have more sex.
• Men who watch pornography frequently are less satisfied with their sexual relationships, but couples who use porn together experience greater closeness and greater sexual satisfaction.
• Because talking explicitly about sex can be threatening for couples, some find it difficult to negotiate differences in sexual desire, but turning down a partner’s advances can strengthen a relationship if it is done with affection and reassurance.

Glossary

• pornography
  Any type of media featuring nudity or sexual behavior that is explicitly intended to cause sexual arousal.
• sexual coercion
  The use of verbal strategies, physical means, or other manipulative tactics to pressure a partner into unwanted sex.