Why couples have less sex: what the research in Asia actually shows

Couples rarely notice intimacy fading while it happens. There is no argument and no decision. There is a busy month, then another one, and at some point one of you works out that it has been a while.

The research in this part of the world keeps landing on exhaustion and time rather than on desire or attraction. Tiredness is something you can do something about. "We lost the spark" leaves you nowhere to start.

What do the numbers in Asia actually show?

A Singapore study followed 657 married women and tracked their sexual activity over fourteen weeks. Women aged 25 to 29 reported sex about 3.7 times a month. For women aged 30 to 34 it was 2.6 times. The researchers reported that this was less often than the women themselves wanted, and pointed to stress and fatigue.

Japan has been measuring the same thing for longer. The Japan Family Planning Association surveys married couples and counts you as "sexless" if you have gone a month or more without sex. Its first survey put that at close to a third of married respondents. Recent rounds have put it near half.

Two countries, two methods, and the answer keeps coming back to being worn out rather than to how people feel about each other.

Why does being tired matter so much?

Sex is one of the few things a couple does together that needs energy from both people in the same moment. Most of the rest can be split or moved. One of you cooks while the other showers. Nobody can be intimate on someone else's behalf.

So it goes first when a household is running flat out. It is the only thing on the list that requires two people awake at the same time.

Is it normal to not feel like it until you have already started?

Yes, and it causes a lot of unnecessary worry.

Sex therapist Rosemary Basson described a model of sexual response that does not run in a straight line. In it, desire does not always come first. For plenty of people, particularly in long relationships, desire is responsive. It turns up once intimacy has already started rather than before it. Sex therapists use her non-linear model for exactly this reason.

The older picture, where desire arrives out of nowhere and everything else follows, is called spontaneous desire. It is real and it is common early on. Responsive desire is a normal pattern too, and couples often quietly decide something is wrong with them when theirs shifts.

If you wait to feel like it before you start, and your desire happens to be responsive, you can wait a long time.

What does this change in practice?

It changes the question you are asking. "How do we want each other more?" is hard to act on. "When in our week are we both awake, unhurried and off our phones?" is a scheduling problem, and scheduling problems have answers.

It also takes the pressure off any one evening. If desire can turn up during rather than before, then starting slowly with nothing riding on it is a reasonable thing to do.

When is it worth talking to someone?

If there is pain involved, if the change was sudden rather than gradual, or if it is causing real distress to either of you, that is a conversation for a doctor or a qualified therapist rather than an article. Persistent low desire can have medical causes, and nothing here replaces someone who can actually examine you.

The short version

In Singapore and in Japan, the research points at stress, fatigue and time. Desire that shows up after intimacy starts, rather than before it, is a normal pattern. If you want one thing to try, find the hours in your week when you are both awake and unhurried, and protect them.