Why We Shouldn’t Feel So Bad About Our Bad Sex Life

It’s bad enough how bad our sex life usually feels. All these feelings are worsened by ‘knowing’ that we live in a liberated age, where others must be engaged in sexual relations with frequency, confidence, and joy. We, with our secret agony, must surely be the un-liberated oddities. In committed relationships, such self-flagellation can be worse. Because, isn’t modern love inseparable from frequent and fulfilling sex with a long-term partner? Shouldn’t every good marriage be enlivened by constant desire?

But think about it from the reverse viewpoint. That good sex is actually a rarity. Making this case, particularly in his 2012 book, How to Think More About Sex, British philosopher Alain de Botton pushes back against the idea of ‘normal’ sexual behaviour, including how much of sex one must be having. He advises people to redraw their expectations, and stop beating themselves up for the inevitable facts of biological life.