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Relationships are constantly changing. In the beginning, the love hormones are in charge and you bring breakfast in bed every day. After a year and a half, the hormones drop to a normal level and the daily breakfast is replaced by a joint routine. It doesn’t stop at breakfast, the sex changes too. If you suddenly have a lot less sex than when you started dating, you’re not alone.
It is not uncommon for a couple’s sex life to gradually decline until it is almost non-existent. And unless you and your partner are comfortable with that, for whatever reason, then this is bound to lead to problems.
A decrease in the number of times you have sex per week as your relationship progresses is nothing new. In the beginning, you can’t get enough of each other and you go at each other every day. This gradually changes to twice a week and after a while, you don’t even remember when you last had sex. Have you ever wondered why this happens?
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Why couples stop having sex
Various reasons are given why couples stop having sex, or have much less sex than before, and of course this differs per couple. Research from Zavamed , a British medical service, sheds light on the reasons why sex is no longer an option for some couples.
The study surveyed 1,000 men and women from both Europe and the United States. The top reason cited was that 71.5 percent of couples reported that they were simply too tired. About half of the participants said that work or busyness were reasons for only getting into bed to sleep. Part of a busy life is children, with 31 percent of respondents saying they don’t have sex as a result of having children.
Pain plays a role in some people, with 12.8 percent of respondents saying they avoid sex because of some form of pain. This pain can be the result of penetration or other physical discomfort, such as a bad back, knees or arthritis. Knowing that sex will hurt doesn’t make the prospect of it particularly enticing.
Another group of respondents prefers to have sex with themselves. The study found that 9.1 percent of couples do not have sex because one or both partners prefer to masturbate. Although this study provides insight into the reasons why couples no longer have sex, other studies mention more reasons. Here are the other reasons why couples do not have sex:
More reasons
- Low libido
- Affair
- Doubts about the relationship about marriage
- Boredom
- Changed physique of the partner
- Feels unloved
- Sexual trauma
- Depression
- Side effects of medication
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How much sex is normal?
It’s easy to have unreasonable expectations when it comes to sex. Thanks to the media, forums and other unreliable sources, such as the locker room at your sports club, people also have a distorted image of what is normal. What is forgotten is that every relationship is different and that there is no ‘normal’. While some people think they have little sex, they actually have sex more often than average . This is what recent studies say about it.
A recent 2017 study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior found that the average adult has sex about 54 times per year, which works out to about once per week. 1 This is down from about 9 times per year in a similar study done in the 1990s. However, these numbers vary from study to study.
Another study, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, followed more than 30,000 Americans for 40 years. 2 It found that a frequency of once a week was the standard, which equates to 52 times a year.
No matter how often you have sex, a lack of sex in a relationship is only a “problem” if you and your partner’s desires are out of sync. You want more sex, your partner is fine with it, or vice versa. No amount of research on ‘how often sex is normal’ will help you solve this. It may help to figure out whether or not you are oversexed or sex addicted , but only by communicating with your partner can you truly resolve this.
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