If you have sex, chances are, you’ll have a good day. But scheduling it makes it feel like a chore. And unlike any other chore or fitness enterprise, you conceive it more as self-indulgence than self-improvement, and as such, even if you’re already in a relationship, it’s hard to find that chin-out determination to get it done. Yet sex is an appetite like any other, a necessity like any other, a nourishment like any other. If you let it go dormant the effect on your relationship might be as if one or both of you are on a permanent diet – and also lonely. That might be fine for both of you, but for many of us, sex is a thing worth prioritising.
At its core, before you introduce any other domestic obstacles, it’s a two-person job, so you have to be attuned to one another; you can’t just decide unilaterally. To take this in ascending order of hurdles; if you’re a childless couple, the main block is going to be each other – not being in the same mood at the same time, not being in the house at the same time. This is true for your entire relationship, not just sex; I once interviewed a fertility doctor, who described working with a couple, trying to find an appointment time for when one was ovulating and both were in the country. They scrolled through several weeks before they managed it. “I felt as if I was beginning to get to the bottom of why they couldn’t conceive,” she said.
