Emily is 27 and lives in Texas. She likes her boyfriend, finds him attractive, and describes their four-year relationship as “genuinely good.” But sex, she told me, happens “once or maybe twice a month.”
“I want intimacy,” she said. “I just don’t want activity.” After a day spent answering messages in her job as a social media manager, being vaguely alert to everything, what she wants most is to lie on top of him and be still. “When I get home, my mind is racing, and the only physical touch I want is to be held,” she said. “I don’t want to perform.”
Sarah, 39, is married with two young children. She and her husband still like each other—which, after 10 years of marriage, she insists, is no small thing—but they have sex less than once a month, and it is definitely not a priority. “It’s for date nights and special occasions, which is maybe once every two months,” she said.
