It’s a date! Is sex in the diary a sensible option?

Suzi Godson gives advice for when you are struggling to fit sex into a busy schedule.

Q. My girlfriend and I are both very busy, so she schedules sex into our diaries. I secretly hate this; how can I convince her to be more spontaneous?

A. Spontaneous sex is something that tends to confine itself to the first six months of any relationship.

By the time a couple are familiar enough to break wind in front of each other, their sex life has usually nestled into a corner of the sofa and learnt how to hog the remote control.

Statistics on ‘how much?’ sex people are having tend, therefore, to be reassuring.

However, the answers to ‘why not?’; will be depressingly familiar to any couple close enough to consider full make-up non-essential.

A survey by US Elle and www.MSNBC.com that asked readers to give reasons why they hadn’t had sex in the last month came up with the following: 42% of women and 47% of men said they had been too busy or stressed; 34% of women and 38 per cent of men said they went to bed at a different time from their partner; 35% of women and 53 per cent of men said they weren’t interested; and 23% of women said that they had such negative body image that they didn’t want to get naked.

Despite contraception, Viagra and the XXX channel, research shows that women have less sex now than in the 1950s.

Three years ago the Kinsey Institute carried out a survey of 853 women aged 20 to 65 and found that just over 40% who lived with their partners had sex two to three times a week.

However, among married women, this dropped to 33%.

The report puts this down to the fact that ‘50 years ago few women had jobs, most homes had no televisions and common activities, such as going to the gym, simply did not exist’.

Dr John Bancroft, of the Kinsey Institute, says that ‘we live in an age where there is little unfilled leisure time’ and ‘sex used to fill that gap’.

It is true that couples who are too busy or exhausted to care about the deleterious effects of falling below national averages for coital frequency almost all notice an upswing in sexual activity on holiday.

However, in the same way that the sight of love handles bulging over your bikini briefs is rarely distressing enough to turn you off your tapas, the faintly awkward pressing of slightly over-familiar flesh creates a sexual Post-it Note.

But this mental note to have sex with each other is normally long gone by the time the flight home has landed.

The less sex you have with a long-term partner, the less you are inclined to have sex with your long-term partner. Period.

So although your girlfriend’s scheduling might seem clinical to you, it deserves credit.

As you say yourself, you are both busy people. And busy doesn’t make for spontaneous.

That your girlfriend refuses to allow your commitments to overwhelm such a vulnerable aspect of your relationship shows real commitment and, to be frank, I doubt she would have instigated this system if she felt that you could be relied on to keep sex on the agenda.

So instead of undermining her efforts and asking her to be more spontaneous, why don’t you try being more spontaneous.

Surprise her with sex when, where, or how, she least expects it.

Join her in the shower at 6am before she leaves for work.

Take her to lunch in a hotel and book a room so that you can make out between courses.

Lay a duvet in front of the fire/ fan, cover it with rose petals and make love when she gets home from work.

Wake her in the middle of the night and . . . on second thoughts, don’t wake her.

After a day like that she deserves her sleep.

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