For some people, saying, ‘I don’t spontaneously want sex as much, shall we start scheduling it?’ can be difficult. You’re acknowledging a change in your relationship (even if, as you said before, that could be a positive one). Why can that conversation feel so loaded?

The idea of initiating a plan for sex is so fraught. We’re all fragile and fearful of rejection, and it requires great vulnerability to say, ‘If we showed up for sex at three o’clock on Saturday, I’d be glad to be there. I’d put my body in the bed.’ To ask for that is to risk being turned down. And our identity is tied to our success as sexual people. Some heterosexual men, in particular, are taught to believe that the only way they can access love and be fully accepted is by putting their penis in a vagina. So if their partner says no, they’re not just saying no to sex, they’re saying no to their partner’s whole personhood. Sex itself is not a drive, but connection is, and we don’t grant men access to other channels for giving and receiving love. If a man in a heterosexual relationship can recognize that there are other ways he can give and receive love, that would take pressure off of sex. It wouldn’t be as much of an obligation for the woman, because she wouldn’t feel she was rejecting his entire humanity just by saying, ‘I’m too tired for sex.’ That has nothing to do with his humanity, she’s just exhausted.