'I felt like I was his carer': why straight women in relationships lose interest in sex

[Celerity]

In unequal households – the majority of heterosexual homes – domestic and emotional pressures on women can have a direct effect on libido

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/mar/01/i-felt-like-i-was-his-carer-why-straight-women-in-relationships-lose-interest-in-sex



Zoe and her husband, Charles, can’t keep their hands off each other. They were like this in the early stages of their relationship, too – “there was something wrong with us” – Zoe jokes about their prolific lovemaking. But this new, “giddy” phase is different. “It feels like we’ve just started again. But with all this history, and this amazing child, and all this other stuff that binds us together,” she says.

Less than a year before I spoke with her, those bindings were coming loose. Zoe had a young child and she was working a difficult, high-stress job. To top it off, Charles was not helping. He chafed against the constraints of early fatherhood and parenting brought up difficult feelings about his own childhood that he struggled to understand.

“He started projecting all his insecurities on to our marriage,” Zoe says. He’d complain about how they hardly went out, hardly had sex. “All these things that are just a phase of your life when you have a small child … I was just getting so frustrated, because I felt like I was his carer and the carer of a baby.

In the end, she told him she could not cope any more and that there was no space for her emotional wellbeing. She was just worried about him, or catering to his needs, or catering to the baby’s needs. She said: “It would just be easier to have me and the baby, to be honest.”

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