Younger generations are normalizing low sexual desire, giving less importance to sex in their relationships and prioritizing porn and masturbation over shared sexual practices to achieve pleasure. At least that is the x-ray that is extracted from what sexologists say they see in their consultations, to which more and more young people attend.
“Young people, especially generation Z, express themselves more freely on any topic, including sex, and that is why more and more people consult a sexologist or express various concerns related to their sexuality to a psychologist,” explain the psychologists. Rafael San Román and Isabel Moreno, the latter specialized in sexology and couples therapy.
That they consult more, says San Román, ifeel psychologist, does not mean that young people have more problems or sexual behavior disorders, but it has to do with the fact that “we live in a society that looks a lot at sex, that talks a lot about diversity.” sexual, identity, porn…; “There is a sexualizing pressure that makes some young people question whether their sexual life is in line with that discourse, whether they have few or many relationships, whether their porn consumption is problematic…”
Paradoxically, what some sexologists detect in the younger generations is that they give less importance to sex and have less frequency of relationships, even if they have a partner. “Lack of desire or sex has always been one of the common complaints in couples therapy and when you proposed working on that area, the majority said yes; Now, many couples work on the communication part and when you ask them to address sexuality to strengthen the relationship, they tell you no, it’s not necessary, that it’s not that important,” explains Júlia Pascual, coordinator of the strategic brief therapy group. from the Official College of Psychology of Catalonia (COPC) and expert in couples.
And he specifies that it is something that happens with both men and women and that, in his opinion, it has to do with the fact that couples “practice an individual hypersexuality that satisfies them and they do not feel the need to practice sex as a couple and they are also lazy.” “Search for time to give pleasure to the other because that requires attention, delicacy, care, work… and we are in a society that is increasingly focused on the self and where it is increasingly difficult to give to the other without receiving anything in return.”
Silvia Pastells, clinical sexologist and couples therapist for more than two decades, assures that the current lifestyle, full of stress and economic burdens, means that many people do not link disconnecting from everyday life to the erotic but to other things. “pleasurable” activities such as watching a series, browsing with your cell phone…
“We have become comfortable, and the intimate emotional connection, the calm conversations that can foster an emotional erotic encounter are conspicuous by their absence” in the daily lives of many couples, says Pastells.
Her colleague Lara Castro-Grañén, director of Placer ConSentido and coordinator of the COPC Sexuality and Couples working group, agrees that long work days full of stress dampen passion in bed, but considers that it is not the only reason for Decreased sexual desire in young couples in healthy relationships.
It is also important, he says, that the sexual education received is still very scarce and of poor quality and that the average casual access to porn is 8 years old. “It is a very alarming fact, because at that moment they do not have enough resources to contextualize the images they are seeing and that influences the construction of sexuality and their future relationships.”
Pascual also believes that this early consumption of porn at 8-10 years old and without support that shows them that the most important thing is to learn to relate and find pleasure through communication has a lot to do with the lack of desire.
“When they reach adolescence and should begin to be interested in sexual relations, it turns out that there are more and more – especially girls – who say that it is something disgusting, stupid or an abusive and violent practice, because it is what they have seen on the Internet since little ones, when their brain didn’t even know how to divide by two figures,” he explains.
Isabel Moreno details that this porn consumption has a lot to do with the low sexual satisfaction that many young couples experience and that they see in consultation. “They demand themselves by comparing themselves to unrealistic models, which leads them to feel less capable, that they cannot satisfy the needs of their partners, and the consequence is low desire, whether due to problems of erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation in men or of difficulty reaching orgasm or pain during intercourse in women.”
Added to this, says Castro-Grañén, is that some people, especially men, hooked on pornographic consumption and masturbation, feel that sexual relations with their partner do not provide them with that pleasure, they experience it with guilt and shame and this has an impact on the well-being of the couple.
San Román assures that the majority of young people do not have a problematic consumption of porn but, if it is their only source of information about sex and they are not clear that it is a fiction, that generates confusion about how long an erection should last, how long the sexual act lasts, if the orgasm has to be for both people at the same time… “Porn can be a tool for enjoyment, but it is not a documentary about human sexual behavior; In normal sexual life other things happen,” he emphasizes.
Pastells adds that many young people end up internalizing that it is quicker and easier to seek pleasure in pornography and autoeroticism than to have to make an effort to meet someone, to work on the bond as a couple, or to deal with the frustration that the relationship in which they are in you have invested time and effort does not work or is not satisfactory.
“People are becoming untrained in personal relationships, in desiring sexual presence in their partners,” says Pascual. And she indicates that in the consultation she observes how young men normalize low sexual desire and erection problems or naturalize taking Viagra to control their erection because, if not, they do not feel capable of maintaining a sexual relationship.
The director of Placer ConSentido, for her part, focuses on the drop in desire in young women “who have not had a good development and empowerment of their sexuality, they do not know themselves well, and when the relationship is already stable and the desire It is no longer linked to the initial infatuation, they leave sex aside but that worries them because they do not want their relationship to be ruined by that issue, and that is why they consult.
