Florence, 36, is a bank executive by day and a second wife at night, while her husband Raymond, 41, runs a motor repair business and makes enough time to be with Florence, his second wife in the evening.
Raymond has three children from a previous marriage, whom he supports financially and he’s hoping to have a baby with his new wife. But, according to Florence, the only time they have intimacy – when one of them isn’t working and Ray’s children aren’t visiting – is every other weekend.
According to Florence, “my libido is very much linked to my most fertile time of the month and I rarely think about sex at the start or end of my cycle. Raymond gets a bit annoyed and insists the only way we’d improve our chances of conceiving is by having sex more often, instead of just the few days a month when I’m ovulating.
“But our bodies are different. I can wake up on a Monday and think: ‘Oh yes, sex!’ but not feel at all like it at the weekend when Ray’s in the mood…”
According to Dr. Anna Janssen, a clinical psychologist and psycho-sexual therapist, desire is influence by hormones, chief among them testosterone, production of which is stimulated by regular sex. So when a woman goes off intercourse, it can become a vicious cycle. Testosterone in women also declines naturally by an average of 50 per cent between the ages of 20 and 45, with some women experiencing a far greater fall.
Additionally, for reasons that are not fully understood, sex doesn’t provide the physical and psychological rewards and satisfaction for some females that it does for others. More than a third of women either do not experience orgasm with a partner or find sex painful. Perhaps not surprisingly, studies involving thousands of women in Britain, Europe and America indicate that up to half experience prolonged periods of having little of no sex drive.
While loss of libido can hit women at any age, childbirth and menopause are well-recognised triggers.
But is it a myth that men are always in the mood? Janssen believes it is. “I’d say from the couples we see in our clinics, it’s a pretty even split, with an equal number of men and women reporting lower libidos than their partners.”
Mark, a 40-year-old solicitor admits to rejecting Mina, his wife of 16 years’ sexual advances several times a week. While making love eight times a month would be enough to satisfy Mark, 41-year-old, Mina is in the mood for it every night! Mina’s rampant libido is more surprising given that they both work full-time, and they have two young sons of 4 and 2 years old. “There’s an assumption that women who are married and that’s obviously not true in my case”, confesses Mina. “I really enjoy sex, so can see no reason not to have it as often as possible.
“I take the view that once the children are in bed and asleep, there is nothing to stop just making love. Sometimes, I wish it could go on for longer, but afterwards I feel so good, positively glowing. My husband, however, is one of those people who can live with or without sex. He’ll say to me: ‘Stop looking at me like that. I’m not a piece of meat!’.
Mina believes a high sex drive runs in her family and uses her womanly wiles’ to get sex four or five times a week – a compromise between the seven she’d like and the two her husband prefers. “Mark will often say: ‘Oh dear, not tonight’. But if I wear certain things – a little skirt or a flimsy nightie – I know he will find me hard to resist”, continues Mina. “Or I’ll send him suggestive text messages while sitting on the sofa opposite him! Even my friends are astonished I have the energy for regular sex, but I tell them it relaxes me which in turn helps me cope with the daily demands of motherhood and work.
“Even with my well-preserved body, there have been times when Mark’s rejections have left me smarting. I was ready for sex within a few days of giving birth, and when Mark didn’t want it, I took it personally. I’d keep asking him: ‘Is it because of my after- childbirth figure?’. But he’d say: ‘No, I’m just tired. Why aren’t you after being up with the baby half the night as it’s expected of a new mum?’
“Nowadays, I accept that some nights, whatever I try, the answer will still be ‘no’.
So is Mark the envy of his friends for having such a highly sexed wife? “I don’t talk about it because it’s shameful admitting that my wife has a higher libido than me”, he says. But it’s hard work being a solicitor, and when I come home, I just want to rest. Ironically, my wife’s libido was one of the things that most appealed to me when we first met five years ago. Only, I assumed that, like many couples, we were going through a honeymoon period and our sex drives would settle down once we were past the first flush of romance!
“Having sex twice a week is enough for me. All I want to do in the evening is collapse in front of the TV. But then, my wife starts tickling my thigh and whispering in my ear. When that fails, she’ll change into silky underwear or go starkers. But there are times when even that won’t work and I tell her I’m too knackered.
“I sometimes even disappear to the club to escape her advances! How ironic. A lot of men end up looking elsewhere for sex because they don’t get enough at home, whereas I go out to get a bit of peace”.
