When Mariana picks up the phone she is not sure she wants to tell anything, she thinks it is something that only happens to her. She was born when 1990 started, she has a job that she never thought she would have because it was the one she always wanted, she sleeps "like a blessed one", there are streaks with "a little stress, yes", and she shares a flat with two people. From Monday to Thursday there is sport, Friday and Saturday he goes out with his group, on Sundays he plays family, sometimes cinema on Wednesdays and, from time to time, sex sneaks in.
"Very, very occasionally. There are weeks that I don't even think about it. Between when I arrive and put series, the schedule I have, Pornhub and what I cross on Tinder ... It's that, what laziness, I sometimes prefer to do my things by myself. And I think it's little sex. With someone else, I say.
That's what Mariana thinks only happens to her.
Whether something is a lot or a little depends on a multitude of variables, at least what that something is and who measures it. If that something is sex, it's even more subjective. What is not subjective or happens only to Mariana is that there are fewer and fewer. Less sex overall, and less for each generation that arrives. With or without a partner. "It's been happening for four decades," says José Díaz, the president of the Spanish Association of Clinical Sexology (AESC). And adds Eusebio Rubio-Aurioles, already former president of the World Association for Sexual Health and now advisor to WAS (for its acronym in English), which occurs in "what is understood by the West", the industrialized countries, "where the economy has been changing, the traditional structure of society, of family". It does not occur in Asia, Africa or Latin America. "The realities are different, and the quality and quantity of information in the world is unbalanced. These investigations, expensive, do not devote funds, "he details.
Where studies are done, that reality "is a clear trend," Rubio-Aurioles notes. And more noticeable for more than a decade. Or at least more visible. It is pointed out by figures, experts, therapists and health professionals. The why is not one or firm. And, clarifies the also surgeon and doctorate in Human Sexuality at the University of New York, to this it is "difficult to respond with academic rigidity".
"There comes a time when I decide not to devote more energy to that person"
Yes, there are half a dozen possible reasons that specialists point out, and they intersect: precariousness or longer hours, stress and depression, increasingly unstable relationships or confusion, especially among young people, that causes them the growing sexual freedom of women.
Although the trend seems clear to experts, having an exact photo is complicated. More when there are no studies from time to time to know the evolution. In the United States, Díaz recalls, there are two longitudinal ones, over 20 years.
The result of the first was that Americans had sex nine times less per year in the early 2010s than in the late nineties: on average, they went from having 62 sex per year to having 53. The second was research on sexual frequency between 2000 and 2018: sexual inactivity increased among young men and women (up to 34 years), but especially in them and especially between 18 and 24, and mainly among singles. The same declines were seen in Germany, between 2005 and 2016; in Finland, between the late nineties and mid-2000s; or in Australia, between 2001 and 2013.
Marco is about to turn 33. He spoke of many issues around sex, above all, the social change that had occurred in recent years around relationships, among them, the advance towards equality, also on the sexual level, of men and women. The photo, provided by him, was taken by Jorge Grau.
In Spain, the third wave of the Survey on social and affective relations in times of pandemicof the Center for Sociological Research, in March, gives an overview of the present. They asked "what situation" best described "the sentimental and sexual situation" of that moment: 17% "do not maintain any type of relationship neither sentimental nor sexual with anyone", and 5.5% have "an affective relationship without sexual relations". In addition, after the pandemic, the frequency had improved for 8%, and worsened for 16%.
Sara, in her thirties, happened with her partner: "In January 2022 we began to argue often, to gain weight, to be less comfortable with our bodies. Her depression also got worse." To Roser, without a stable relationship: "I live in Barcelona, I am forced to share a flat. Sometimes I think more about the person on the other side of the wall than about my own pleasure, not to disturb. I moved here and there are a lot of people, but I also find it hard to like it, to agree, to want to use protection, to be satisfied and that it has worked enough to repeat." He is 33 years old and talks about apps: "It's quite crazy, you can talk to a lot of people, but then you have to be specific. It's difficult, you get dizzy and there comes a time when I decide not to devote more energy to that person. When yes, it's almost never that bad. And for what, I think sometimes."
Like Roser's, according to the INE, there are more than half a million shared homes. That, derived from exorbitant rental and purchase prices, together with job insecurity, especially among the youngest, and the uncertainty hovering over more than ever since the pandemic, influences. It does "any element of stress," stresses Diaz, the president of the AESC. "And stress is not an abstract concept. It produces changes in the hormonal system that, among other things, generates high levels of cortisol and prolactin, two hormones that in turn decrease the level of testosterone, which is the hormone of desire, in men and women. Chronic stress produces a decrease in desire," says the psychiatrist and psychotherapist.
Also anxiety and depression, even more triggered after the health crisis in a country that is already where more benzodiazepines are consumed in the world. The report on mental health Headway Mental Health 2022placed Spain as the second with the most cases of mental health disorders in Europe, only behind Portugal. It mainly affects women, and increasingly adolescents. It has been happening around the world for years: more than 320 million people suffer from depression, 18% more than a decade ago.
Brenda, 27, of Mexico City, is one of them. He had to go back to his parents, his waning sex threads him to that, to depression and medication: "Sertraline and, later, fluoxetine. What struck me is that my individual sexual activity also decreased. I used to enjoy touching myself a lot, now I don't feel anything."
Among everything Jaime said, the pandemic crept in, the fact of living in small places and the difficulties to know and establish a relationship today. In the picture he is in Bavaria, in a photo provided by him.
Anxiety and depression "are enemies of desire and enjoyment of sex life. One of the symptoms of depression is the lack of desire, not only sexual, even to live, "explains Díaz, who clarifies that not all antidepressants reduce it – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors do, such as those Brenda takes – and that there are others that "clearly stimulate it". Individual sex, masturbation, together with the increase in porn viewing and access to it at increasingly younger ages, are also among the possible reasons pointed out by different specialists.
The Nacho Vidal complex
Antoni Bolinches, clinical psychologist and author of Sex wise, links the decrease in the frequency of sexual relations to two variables: "One is the stressful and complex life of jobs." One like the one Andrés, 34, wears: "I get home around 10 o'clock at night, so exhausted and with so many things in my head, that I barely have dinner and sleep." Or that of Nuria, of the same age, who does not have a partner, but rotating shifts of morning, afternoon, night and weekends. "And so it's hard to match."
The other is "men's fear of performance." A fear linked to two more issues. "The complex of Nacho Vidal, motivated by the comparative grievance with the referents of the penises in erection of pornography", and the change of roles between men and women "that has occurred in two generations", the gradual disappearance "of the demanding man and the accepting woman", says this 76-year-old clinical psychologist, with 45 of career.
"The freer the woman is, the more frightening she is in the man," says the psychologist, thus producing the paradox that "the more sexual freedom, the more refuge in an autonomous and masturbatory sexuality." Of the stories that came to this newspaper for this report, many made specific allusion to what Bolinches points out.
"Either they tell me clearly or I don't go in. I don't know if it's fear of rejection, of going over the line she has or what (Mau, 23 years old).
—Feminism, masculinities... Now we ask ourselves questions that we didn't before, and we self-censor and self-censor in many cases. Before, flirting was an act of conquest of man and surrender of woman. It is already much more horizontal, in the case of heteros. In general, suddenly asking questions emasculates many of them instead of celebrating that everything is that, more horizontal, although it remains to be done (Marco, almost 33).
"Sometimes some are afraid to get close. But it's easy to see when there's interest or when you're bothering you, isn't it? What I do believe is that there are things that aunts used to go through and no longer. Outside. Racist? Out," says Claudia, 25, adding that they are only two of "a good list of nonsense" that will not "endure", and it is "difficult" that "someone does not have something on that list". Nuria, the woman of the rotating shifts of morning, afternoon and night, believes that less and less is yielded: "We have raised the bar a lot, we know what we want and what we do not want, before you gave more or less, but you gave in, today it is a 'I put my demands and, if you do not meet them, next'.
Susana, in her fifties, talks about something similar: "One is already older. I can't find any kind that deserves my attention. My life is also very homely, I work at home and it is difficult to meet people. And in the past, 80% of my relationships were sexually pretty mediocre, pulling bad. Use and enjoyment, a morreo, a magreo and put it. Oral sex, scarce and, when there was one, usually bad. Guys very influenced by porn, very phallic. I'm past that... It exhausts me, it me off."
Susana has gone through relationships that, 'a posteriori', were not worth it. She talks about the fatigue of crossing paths with "phallocentrist" men and she, already in her fifties, says that she has not felt that "wild" attraction of desire for years. He believes that all of the above, plus some other issues, have to do with his present: "I guess everything influences so that now I do not feel like getting involved with someone and I am happy with my toys, my erotic writings, my work and my therapy of friends and alcohol. " Jaime Villanueva
Relationships: immediacy and sporadicity
Díaz, the psychiatrist, points out that in these situations there is not a relationship between two people "but between two genitals," and that this "impoverishes the quality of life of human beings." Mariona Gabarra has been watching it for eight years. She is a sexologist and her theory, from her experience, has to do with the way in which relationships are increasingly produced: "Sporadically". With that growing difficulty to "maintain stable ties" that points out in her theory about the end of love the sociologist Eva Illouz.
Gabarra, also an advisor to Gleeden – a platform dedicated to non-monogamous meetings where one of its axes is that it is designed "by and for women" – meets more and more young people, in their twenties, with sexual problems. In men, erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation. Enter the expectations learned, "enters porn, which is not bad in itself, but as a substitute for the lack of sex education that exists." That of measuring up to someone who does not really know each other.
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"Generations are not learning that even if a relationship is sporadic, it is a relationship. If there is no complicity, chemistry or connection, there comes a time when sex does not bring you anything. They have freedom, many prejudices have disappeared, but they do not enjoy sex, and they tell you so. They end up thinking it's not worth the time or effort to build that relationship." That is in the middle of Jaime's story from an Asturian village. He is now 27 and confinement made him "get used to" being alone. It "costs him much more than before" to try to start something, it has "a cost of time and effort" to which he is not always willing.
Eusebio Rubio-Aurioles, from WAS, believes that the evolution of the Western world, increasingly individualized and where everything is postponed, is having a huge impact on the way we relate to each other: "The consequence? Less contact, less shared pleasure." That's what Fernando (not his real name), 57, is talking about. He was joined by the end of a relationship with a job in which there was little chance of meeting people. Then, covid sank his business and spirits. The last time he had a "more or less satisfactory sexual intercourse was sporadic and lasted only a few weeks." It was 2018.
Fernando lived until seven years ago as a couple. The separation had to do with motherhood and, since then, and with the health crisis in between, the sexual plane changed. In the picture, he, on Saturday, on a street in Madrid. JUAN BARBOSA
Now he finds it "difficult" for a woman to "intellectually motivate" him, like him or attract him enough. Thus, he says, "need, pleasure and desire are forgotten, sleeping or lethargic; And sex becomes a memory." And he concludes: "At 57 years old, apart from the people I know and with whom I maintain friendship and see each other from time to time, no one new enters my life anymore."