Compromise between mismatched libidos

A. Sexual activity tends to be at its most frenzied in the first six months of a new relationship. The newly smitten co-exist in a bubble of mutual admiration, obsessive-compulsive longing and untrammelled sexual desire, a state which the psychologist Dorothy Tennov called limerence in her 1979 book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love.

Limerence is a biochemical response. It is triggered in the reward system in the brain when the pituitary gland releases norepinephrine, dopamine, phenylethylamine (a natural amphetamine), oestrogen and testosterone.

This powerful chemical cocktail produces such delirious feelings of euphoria that fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans of the “newly-in-love” find it hard to distinguish between “the brain in love” and “the brain in the throes of mental illness”.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately in your case, limerence only lasts between six months and two years and since the average man only has 11.7 sexual partners in his lifetime, and the average woman only has 7.7, (Natsal 2013) everyone who experiences limerence is well advised to make the most of it.

Obviously, it helps if both partners emerge from the limerent stage simultaneously but sometimes one partner remains in the bubble for longer than the other. When this happens, the restless partner may pull away in order to re-engage with the real world and get stuff done.

The transition can be a little bumpy but if the relationship is going to last, the bonding hormones — vasopressin and oxytocin — eventually kick in and the couple move on to the attachment stage of their relationship.

Advice on mismatched libidos always involves the word “compromise” but a sexual relationship based on one person denying themselves sex that they want while the other is having sex they don’t want, is never going to work in the long term.

It will take a little longer for you to discern whether the dissatisfaction you currently feel is simply the end of the initial physiological rush or evidence of a more significant mismatch, but if you continue to worry that your boyfriend’s sex drive is stratospherically different to yours, then you may need to question whether he is the partner for you.

Some women relish living with men who are very highly sexed because they interpret their incessant desire as an affirmation of their desirability.

Others find it a nightmare; they describe an ongoing emotional battle between being continually pestered for sex and then accused of not caring if they refuse.

Many find themselves avoiding their partners simply to avoid having sex. Ironically, such reluctance probably fuels the fire because dopamine, the neurotransmitter that motivates us to seek sex, is stimulated by unpredictability (Berridge and Robinson, 1998).

When a man can’t be sure that his partner will comply to a request for sex, it creates a variable schedule of reinforcement that strengthens his desire — because the anticipation of a reward generates more neural activity than the reward itself.

People differ in their opinions of what constitutes a good sexual relationship but they usually agree on two basic principles.

Sex must be consensual and it ought to be fun. It certainly shouldn’t leave you feeling inadequate because once a night is enough for you.

Although people’s sexual behaviours are so diverse that comparatives are often meaningless, it’s worth pointing out that the average number of “occasions of sexual intercourse for people aged 25-34” in any four-week period is just 5.4 for men and 4.9 for women (Natsal 2013).

If “average” is presumed to represent “normal” for most of the population, then having sex as you are — a minimum of 16 times a month — does not make you a prude, it makes you a statistical outlier.

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