CARNAL NATION

According to The Standard, the results of a Chinese study published by the International Society for Sexual Medicine suggest that a significant number of young and middle-aged couples in Hong Kong have not engaged in sexual activity with their partners in the past year. Reasons cited for not having sex with their husbands and wives vary significantly according to gender.

Researcher, Jean Kim, of the Centre for Health Behaviours designed and administered telephone questionnaires to 808 married men and 2,038 married women between the ages of 25 and 59. Among respondents aged 45 to 59, 17 percent of men and nearly one third of women had not engaged in sex with their spouses for at least one year. Only 5 percent of married men aged 25 to 44 reported not having sex for the past year, while the statistics were higher for women. Over 8 percent of married women between the ages of 25 and 34 and 12.4 percent aged 35 to 44 had gone without sex in the same time period.

Women claimed they didn’t have sex with their husbands due to poor marital relations, mental health struggles, loss of satisfaction, depression and falling out of love. Men blamed their wives’ nagging and many used excuses including the need to work late and feigned erectile dysfunction to avoid sexual encounters. Others admitted to suggesting that their wives sleep with their children in order to get out of sex. Husbands generally found their wives attractive and did not cite appearance as a reason for not having sex.

Long working hours, drinking and the stress of unemployment were not identified as factors leading to sexless marriages. However, age was found to have an impact on marital sex lives with older men and women significantly more likely to have not had sex in the past year. Educational level, as a marker of socio-economic status, may also influence the sex lives of men, as those with less education were nearly four times as likely to not have sex with their wives.