Why Are We Having Less Sex? (And What to Actually Do About It)
Your news feed may be full of fears about economic recessions and declining rates of this or that, but the truth is, most of us are quietly living through another kind of recession entirely. We're in a sex recession.
According to the General Social Survey, the share of Americans aged 18–64 having sex at least weekly dropped from 55% in 1990 to just 37% in 2024. For something that has, in theory, never been more accessible thanks to the internet, dating apps, and the endless content that follows us everywhere — why are we having less of it? And it’s not just one group. The decline cuts across gender, age, and relationship status:
• Among adults aged 18–29, the rate of “sexlessness” (defined as having no sexual partners in the past year) has doubled, from 12% in 2010 to 24% in 2024. (General Social Survey via Institute for Family Studies)
• Between 1996 and 2008, 59% of married adults reported having sex weekly or more. By 2010–2024, that number had fallen to 49% and the decline is showing up across all age groups within marriage. (Institute for Family Studies)
If you’re reading this and feeling a flicker of recognition or a quiet panic — I want you to take a breath. You are not broken. You are not alone. And the reasons behind this are more nuanced, and more fixable, than you might think.
The Real Reasons (Beyond “We’re Just Tired”)
1. Chronic Stress and Nervous System Dysregulation
Most of us are operating in a low-grade (or not so low-grade) state of stress that has become so normalized, we’ve stopped noticing it. Financial pressure, the relentless demands of work and caregiving, environmental anxiety, the sheer cognitive load of modern life…it all adds up. And when your nervous system is stuck in hypervigilance, sex is one of the first things to go.
A 2025 study published in Psychoneuroendocrinology found that higher stress is directly linked to lower sexual desire and arousal in the moment, and the effect was significantly stronger in women than in men.
Here’s the part that doesn’t get talked about enough: it’s often nearly impossible to see just how deep the impact of chronic stress runs until something interrupts it. That carefree feeling that washes over you on vacation? That’s not just relaxation. That’s your nervous system finally exhaling after months, sometimes years, of bracing.
When we’re stuck in that loop, connection feels hard. Slowness feels impossible. The intentionality that intimacy requires — being present in your body, being curious about another person’s body — gets pushed out. It’s not a lack of desire so much as a nervous system that’s too overwhelmed to really access it.
2. Screen Time Killing Erotic Attention
Your phone may be one of the biggest threats to your sex life. I know how strange that sounds. And I’ll be honest: I can be my own proof of this more than I’d like to admit.
Our attention spans are being quietly eroded by the constant pull of screens, and this has a direct impact on our capacity for erotic attention — the slow, embodied, sensory focus that intimacy actually requires. We’ve become so accustomed to rapid-fire stimulation that real-life touch, eye contact, and physical presence can feel either not engaging enough, or so overwhelmingly “real” that we unconsciously pull away from it.
Researchers point to what psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls the “Great Rewiring” — the idea that smartphones and endless scrolling compete directly with physical intimacy for our time and attention. “Bedtime procrastination”, that habit of scrolling until you fall asleep, has effectively pushed intimacy out of one of the few spaces where it used to feel natural.
But it goes beyond time. Phones have stolen our relationship with slowness. Intimacy, real intimacy, asks you to savor, to linger, to stay with sensation. That’s increasingly at odds with a brain that’s been trained to swipe mindlessly on to the next thing.
3. Emotional Disconnection That Precedes Physical Disconnection
For a generation more “connected” than any before it, I’d argue we are also profoundly more disconnected. And I think we’re paying for it in the bedroom.
The internet has created an environment where surface-level interaction, a like here, an encouraging comment there, registers in our brains as connection. But it’s a different quality of connection entirely. One that doesn’t require genuine vulnerability, sustained effort, or emotional follow-through. It’s far easier to type out a message than it is to look someone in the eyes and say something real. The quantity of our connectedness may be going up, but the depth is going the other direction.
Dating apps have added another layer: they’ve made physical connection readily available in ways that can bypass emotional connection altogether. I’m not here to moralize about that — strictly physical connection can be wonderful and meaningful on its own terms. But when emotional intimacy gets consistently deprioritized, it doesn’t just disappear from our dating lives. It quietly disappears from our long-term relationships, too.
4. Mismatched Desire and the Myth of Spontaneity
One of the most common things I hear from clients is some version of: “I just don’t feel desire anymore. I used to. What happened? Where did it go?”
Here’s something that changes everything for a lot of people: there are two fundamentally different types of sexual desire, and most of us have only ever heard about one of them.
Spontaneous desire is what we see in movies. It’s desire that arrives out of nowhere, that doesn’t need context or conditions. Some people genuinely experience desire this way or have experienced it this way in certain times. But many people (particularly women, and particularly those under stress) experience what’s called responsive desire. Responsive desire doesn’t show up first. It shows up in response to stimulation, context, and safety. It needs the right conditions to emerge.
If you’ve been waiting to “feel like it” before initiating and that feeling never seems to come — this might be why. You’re not broken. You may just need different conditions than you’ve been expecting.
What Actually Helps
Understanding why this is happening is useful. But I know what you actually want to know is: what do I do about it? Here are the approaches I come back to again and again in my work with clients, rooted in a body-centered, shame-free lens:
Start with your nervous system, not your sex life
If your nervous system is dysregulated, no amount of “trying harder” in the bedroom will help. The work starts outside of it: sleep, movement, intentional breathing, moments of genuine rest and play, reducing the baseline load of stress where you can. When your body feels safe, desire has somewhere to land.
Create conditions instead of waiting for mood
If you’re a responsive desire person (and many of us are), desire doesn’t show up spontaneously, it shows up after you’ve already created the right context. That might mean a slower evening, physical touch that isn’t goal-oriented, or simply removing the pressure for sex to “count.” Pleasure is allowed to be the point.
Address the emotional connection first
Physical intimacy often reflects the emotional temperature of a relationship. If there’s distance, resentment, or disconnection that’s gone unaddressed, it tends to show up in the bedroom. Naming it, even imperfectly and even just to yourself, is usually the first step.
Put the phone somewhere else
I know. But genuinely: charging your phone outside the bedroom, even for a week, can shift things noticeably. Create space for boredom, for presence, for your attention to have nowhere else to go. That’s where intimacy lives.
When It Helps to Have Support
Sometimes understanding the “why” isn’t enough to move through it, especially when stress, disconnection, or long-standing patterns are involved. That’s exactly the kind of work I do with clients: untangling what’s actually going on, rebuilding the conditions for desire, and creating real, embodied change.
If any of this resonated and you’re ready to explore what’s possible, I’d love to connect. A discovery call is a good place to start — no pressure, just a conversation.
You can book yours here. You deserve a sex life that actually feels good. Let’s figure out how to get you there.
Alexia Naomi is a Somatica-certified sex and intimacy coach offering virtual sessions worldwide. She specializes in intimacy coaching for men and support for individuals navigating relationships and sexuality after an HSV diagnosis.