The Worrisome Increase in Sexless Relationships

Geplaatst op 25-04-2024

In the article Searching for Sex in last Sunday’s New York Times, economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz applies his expertise on Google search data to shine a light on what information people seek online, and what that tells us about our preoccupations. He views the search data as a step above social science surveys – here we have hard data on what people actually do, or at least what their concerns and curiosities are.

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First, let’s look at a trend seen in the General Social Survey. On the GSS, both married men and women say that they have sex about once a week. But the number of sexless marriages has been trending steadily upward:

Source: Austin Institute

According to the Austin Institute, there are two clear reasons for this:

The population is aging, and sex decreases with age.
The median age of marriage is increasing.

But this only explains about a quarter of the increase. What is causing the rest? The AI believes it may be porn usage by men:

“A recent study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine suggests that a rise in erectile dysfunction in younger men may be related to pornography usage. Has the increased accessibility of Internet pornography caused younger men to be more likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction and thereby increased the number of sexless marriages?”

I was surprised to read this, because conventional wisdom holds that sexless marriages are more often attributable to harried young mothers working inside and outside the home. Because men have a stronger sex drive than women overall, we tend to assume that sexless marriages involve a lot of female “Not tonight, I have a headache” dodges.

Stephens-Davidowitz’ found that among married couples, about the same number of men and women search for “my ________ won’t have sex with me.” Among couples in relationships, the women are far more concerned about a lack of sex. “My boyfriend won’t have sex with me” gets about twice as many searches as “My girlfriend won’t have sex with me.”

Moreover, “sexless relationship” is second only to “abusive relationship” in Google searches. Why are so many men in relationships avoiding sex?

According to Google, men have a lot of anxieties about sex, most notably about penis size.

“Men Google more questions about their sexual organ than any other body part: more than about their lungs, liver, feet, ears, nose, throat and brain combined.

Men make more searches asking how to make their penises bigger than how to tune a guitar, make an omelet or change a tire. Men’s top Googled concern about steroids is whether taking them might make their penis smaller. Men’s top Googled question related to how their body or mind changed as they aged was whether their penis got smaller.

Side note: One of the more common questions for Google about a penis is “How big is my penis?” That men turn to Google, rather than a ruler, with this question is, in my opinion, a quintessential expression of our digital era.”

At the same time women rarely search for information related to penis size. For every woman who does, 170 men do the same. And 40% of those female searches concern the pain a too large penis causes. Additionally, as many women search for how to get their boyfriends to orgasm faster as slower. Porn watching appears to be making men both more anxious and less capable of arousal.

None of this is conclusive. As psychologist Dan Ariely points out,“Google is a reflection of what people don’t know and need extra information about.” Stephens-Davidowitz cautions that the data is suggestive rather than definitive.

Still, the data does tell us what people have on their minds, and what problems they want to solve. Excessive porn viewing is negatively affecting relationships both before and after marriage. Who’s got the headache now? And what can we do about it?