Loss of desire: do today’s young people really have less sex?

This article on diminished desire is published in issue 7 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until February 14, 2023

«Dfter two weeks of holidays in Mexico in which he didn’t even touch me with a finger, he said: “I never wanted you, either sober or drunk. I love you, but we can’t go on”». Elena, 28, marketing manager, had met Luca, 26, digital entrepreneur, three years earlier. Five months of so-to-speak normal attendance: “We used to see each other on the weekends and we even did it two or three times”. With her first lockdown he moved in with her. And the disaster began. «I didn’t notice it right away: for a couple of months we continued to have relations, on my initiative. Then less and less, until total abstinence. At the beginning Luca made excuses: the forced proximity, the home clothes, the stress of the job. The times I tried to approach him, he couldn’t. I offered him to try Viagra, i sex toysto watch porn together, to go to therapy: he has always declined. He maintained that things had to happen naturally and that if he touched himself, in the bathroom, he was fine. All this hadn’t stopped us from planning the future: we talked about children, about buying a house together. Every evening I thought: maybe it’s the right time. Every night I was wrong: we lay in bed next to each other, and we were very far apart. He said to me: “We are like those couples who have been together for 20 years and have lost desire”. I hadn’t lost desire, but sleep and self-esteem. Me I was convinced that I was the problem, and that if I exercised more, if I did my hair or dressed differently, maybe I could stoke him. For me it had become an obsession, but I didn’t tell anyone about it because I was ashamed. I’ve never felt so alone in my life.”

In reality, Elena alone is not at all. The latest Censis-Bayer report on the sexual behavior of Italians reveals that 1.6 million people between 18 and 40 years old they don’t have sex, 11.6 percent of the total (twenty years ago they were 3 percent). To these must be added the 220,000 “white couples”, i.e. with stable emotional relationships but without any sexual intercourse, and the 700,000 who say they are not interested in sex right now. A quick look at other Western countries confirms the trend. In recent decades, the average frequency of sexual intercourse in Britain has dropped from four to three times a month. In Germany, the percentage of young people who are inactive between the sheets has risen from 7.5 to 20.3 percent. In the United States, it has doubled.

“Precisely because it is universal, the problem cannot be seen on the surface”, affirms the psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja who has dedicated his latest essay, Il decline of desire (Einaudi, 2002). “Sexuality, which was one of the great protagonists of the 20th century, is today heading towards dissolution, and very few talk about it”. The professor explains the reasons for this recession with a metaphor: “Faced with the ever greater sexual freedoms that civil society has conquered since the 1970s, man withdraws in fear like a climber who, having reached the top, is frightened by the abyss that he himself had wanted to challenge”. To this decline in desire is added the perpetual state of economic, health, environmental and geopolitical crisis, to which recent history has accustomed us: “instability generates anxiety and depression, which are the main enemies of eros”. Not even the digital revolution helps: «social media generate frustration, with their imposition of unattainable models; dating apps season courtship with a cold element and the exponential spread of online pornography narrows fantasies and pushes real erotic activities into a corner ».

Donatella confirms. She is employed in a transport company, 33 years old, she has been with Giuseppe, 35, for ten, and they have been living together for five. «I think he watches a lot of porn. He prefers those to me. He has never been passionate: I still remember one of the first weekends we spent together. We had been dating for a couple of months, we went to the mountains. I thought I wouldn’t get out of bed for 48 hours. I was wrong: on Sunday, after a lunch washed down with a good wine, I was a little tipsy and felt like it. I come closer, I start kissing him. He, a piece of ice, says to me: “Come on, let’s get ready now that we have to go home, the match is at 6pm”. For years I have cultivated the illusion that the scarcity of relationships was due to the scarcity of opportunities: we were both still living with our parents. Unfortunately, living together has not solved anything. We do it very little, once every two months if it goes well, and in a very mechanical way. He is modest by nature, if I come out of the shower naked he feels uncomfortable: “What are you doing around like that?”, He tells me. And he’s also an introvert: many times I started crying because I didn’t feel wanted, but he never asked me why”. The reason, instead, why he didn’t think about leaving him? «Because, apart from this aspect, I’m fine with Giuseppe: I trust him blindly, he supports me in everything, he’s thoughtful, kind. It’s hard to find a person who gives you everything you want, you always have to give up something: bad sex is the compromise I had to accept».

Giada, on the other hand, does not accept it. Two years after the last relationship with her husband, she still gets angry: «The other day I threatened to leave home. I can’t spend the rest of my life in the cloister. Bruno looked like a beaten dog, he started crying». She is 43 years old social worker, he is 47 craftsman, they have been married since 2009. «Things cracked when I got pregnant six years ago. For nine months she did not touch me, fearing to hurt me. She even talked to my gynecologist, explaining that it’s not like that, but there was nothing they could do. I had become a little doll not to be crumpled. After the birth of our son, I too was reborn as a woman. Breastfeeding gave me a pleasure comparable to that of sexual intercourse: I rediscovered my body. AND in bed I began to ask for more: more fantasy, more unpredictability, less routine in foreplay. For Bruno it was as if I spoke another language: he makes love like I clock at work. With zero momentum. For a while we went on to do it once a month, only on my initiative. Then I stopped asking, but not asking him why. He always replies: “I have found peace of mind”».

A survey of white couples conducted in the United States by researchers Bob and Susan Berkowitz shows that 68 percent of men who have lost sexual interest in their partner cite the fact that she is not uninhibited enough as their primary reason. 25 percent, on the other hand, say they prefer to masturbate. Psychoanalyst Zoja is not surprised: «Although this form of solitary satisfaction is innate, the fact that it increasingly replaces the physical approach between two individuals denounces the narcissistic drift of society and the progressive weakening of erotic investment. This escape from the intimacy of bodies is one of the many manifestations of a profound existential unease and self-hatred, starting with the physical aspect».

This seems to be the case with Margherita, 38, entrepreneur, two children with Alberto, 39, designer. «Our relationship started off crackling: we made love everywhere, even four times a day. Passion survived the two pregnancies. Recently, however, it has been lost. I have lost desire. It’s like I fell out of love with myself primarily: I like myself less, I see myself suddenly aged. I just launched my own line of body products, I work a lot, my face is always tired. After years of laughing at women who resort to touch-ups, now for the first time I’m thinking about it. I never want to make love, I’ve even come to use our son: he struggles to sleep and I carry him in my bed so that he acts as a barrier between me and my partner. Alberto suffers from feeling rejected, but he doesn’t complain. He takes refuge in video games, reading or TV series. Me in childcare, which satisfies me and allows me to postpone the problem. Until when, I don’t know.”

“Until a third person turns up,” Zoya replies. «Beyond the apparent conventions, every couple longs for the fusion of tenderness and passion».

That fusion that Claudia and Marco lost almost immediately. He’s an architect, she’s an interior designer, they’re both 29 years old, they’ve been together for five and the times they make love can be counted on their fingertips. Marco recounts: «I don’t know whose flame went out first. We work a lot, we earn very little. All our energies are absorbed by starting a career that is struggling to take off. When we break, I relax playing the Playstation, she watches a TV series. We love each other, we support each other, I see her as the future mother of my children. But if I said that I feel like jumping on her every time she enters the house, I’d be lying. It will be because Claudia lacks a bit of that seductive côté that would turn me on, it will be because I am always tired and the idea of ​​starting an hour-long session between kisses, caresses, foreplay and intercourse makes me give up: the fact is that I often prefer to do it myself. She never complains, the rhythm of once a month is probably fine for her. The truth is, we don’t have much time to think about it. We live a hectic everyday life, with the constant worry of not making it: there isn’t much room for poetry».

And, says Zoja, “in a world where magic and enchantment are torn away, the drought of love can only reign”.

Other articles by Vanity Fair that might interest you:

– Emma Marrone: “I haven’t had sex for a year”

– France, Macron: “Free condoms in pharmacies for young people between 18 and 25”

– There are 237 reasons why we have sex

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