Sex File: Why has he stopped initiating in bed?

"This is such a common problem that if you stick your question into ChatGPT you'll get a perfectly reasonable response compiled from the musings of millions of agony aunts and uncles around the globe, all desperately trying to eke out a 700-word response."

Mon, 10 Mar, 2025 - 01:00

Suzi Godson

My partner and I have been together for ten years and until recently I've always felt like we both initiated sex quite equally. In the past six months, however, I've noticed it's always down to me, which is making me feel less interested. How can we meet in the middle?

This is such a common problem that if you stick your question into ChatGPT you'll get a perfectly reasonable response compiled from the musings of millions of agony aunts and uncles around the globe, all desperately trying to eke out a 700-word response. I take a more academic approach, but sexual initiation in long-term relationships is not the kind of topic that attracts grant funding, so there is a real dearth of research on it.

I was, therefore, delighted to discover Prelude to a Coitus: Sexual Initiation Cues Among Heterosexual Married Couples, a 2012 study by Yvette Curtis and her colleagues at the University of Alaska, which explores this very subject in great detail. Curtis recruited 15 couples aged from 29 to 74 who had been married for an average of 23 years. The 30 participants were asked to keep individual journals to record their, as well as their partner's, sexual initiation cues and whether or not they were successful. There are two types of sexual initiation cues: direct and indirect. Direct is self-explanatory. Indirect is more circuitous (romantic dinners, etc), and it's also more common. However, Curtis's study found it to be less effective.

Although you describe your previous ratio on initiation as equal, your husband may actually have been initiating more than you. Many studies have shown that men tend to initiate sex more than women, so there is clearly something off about your husband's present behaviour. I can understand your irritation, but nagging him is not going to help him find his mojo. You are an otherwise happy couple, so why not turn what might otherwise be a potentially difficult conversation into something much more exploratory?

One of the most interesting findings in Curtis's study was not one that she had expected at all. Couples reported that the process of recording sexual activity in their journals made them think more deeply and talk more openly about the kinds of sexual cues they gave and received. Although it wasn't designed to be a therapeutic intervention, it turns out that talking to each other about sex and thinking about all the things that you say and do in order to indicate to each other that you want to have it is a pretty arousing activity in and of itself.

You and your man obviously need to talk, but make the conversation spicy, not prickly. Rather than focusing on what has been going wrong in the past six months, tune in to what you have both been getting right for ten years. Talk about what sexual cues you enjoy and what turns you on. Remember the crazy sexual experiences you had when you first met and plan some repeat sessions. Don't be shy. Be explicit and be precise. As the American psychologist John Gottman says: "The less direct you are about what you want, the less likely you are to get it."

Over to you.