The Atlantic

The Bored Sex

Women, more than men, tend to feel stultified by long-term exclusivity—despite having been taught that they were designed for it.
Source: Antonio Guillem / Shutterstock

Andrew Gotzis, a Manhattan psychiatrist with an extensive psychotherapy practice, has been treating a straight couple, whom we’ll call Jane and John, for several years. They have sex about three times a week, which might strike many as enviable, considering that John and Jane—who are in their 40s—have been together for nearly two decades. Based on numbers alone, one might wonder why they need couples counseling at all.

But only one of them is happy with the state of play. And it isn’t Jane.

“The problem is not that they are functionally unable to have sex, or to have orgasms. Or frequency. It’s that the sex they’re having isn’t what she ,” Gotzis told me in a recent phone conversation. And like other straight women he sees, “she’s

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