Wake up at seven, work eight hours, answer thirty emails, do the shopping, take the dog out, have dinner… And at 8:30 p.m., sex. On the calendar, with alert included. It seems like a joke, but it’s not. More and more couples do it: they schedule their sexual encounters as if they were a work meeting or a yoga class. In times of stress, screens and endless days, intimacy seems to have become another pending item on the agenda. What once came from a spark now requires planning.
The sexual recession. Desire, experts say, has less and less space to appear. The sexologist and couples therapist Nayara Malnero He details it for eldiario.es with a phrase that condenses the feelings of many: “We have lives in which there is no time for intimacy, for ourselves or for our partner.”
Working too much, sleeping too little, taking care of children or caring for the elderly, checking social networks before going to sleep… All of this leaves little room for contact. The consequence, according to various studies cited by Atlantic and British Medical Journalis part of a global trend: the so-called “sexual recession”, a sustained decrease in the frequency of intimate relationships in both young people and adults.
And given this lack of space, many couples opt for what was unthinkable a few years ago: scheduling sex. According to The Knot’s Relationship & Intimacy 2024 study14% of married couples admit to doing it, and they report a much higher level of sexual satisfaction than those who do not do it. In another more recent survey, quoted by Dazed41% of those surveyed say they schedule their meetings several times a week, especially the youngest ones.
And why do they do it? For some couples, scheduling sex is not an imposition, but a way to reserve space that would otherwise disappear. A 28 year old woman he told Dazed magazine who and her husband began writing their “intimacy schedule” on a white board. Not as an obligation, but as a way to reserve real time for each other: “It wasn’t ‘it’s Tuesday, it’s time to do it,’ but to make sure that that week we had a screen-free moment, just for us.” another couple reported something similar in Glamor: After months of routine, they decided to schedule intimate dates. “Desire begins in the morning: we send provocative messages, we flirt at dinner… And anticipation does the rest,” both pointed out that planning does not kill passion; wakes her up.
Therapist Heather McPherson details it in a simple way: “Scheduling sex is adding intention and emotion to the relationship. It’s making sure you prioritize the bond with your partner.” For her part, Dr. Kelly Casperon compares it to something as everyday as sport: “It’s like exercising. We could do it at any time, but if you don’t schedule it, it doesn’t happen.” However, not all experiences are positive. Some people, interviewed by eldiario.esconfessed that trying to fit intimacy into the agenda became another source of pressure: “It became an obligation. Desire cannot arise where there is control or anxiety,” said one of them.
Between therapy and cheating. Most specialists agree: planning can be useful, but only if it does not become a requirement. “It’s one thing to plan a date with enthusiasm—a dinner, a getaway—and another very different thing is ‘we have to do it because we have to’. Desire doesn’t work with pressure,” warns Malnero. Along the same lines, sexologist María Victoria Ramírez points towards this vision: scheduling “purely genital” encounters can be counterproductive, but scheduling intimacy without expectations can strengthen the bond. “You can schedule time free of obligations to chat, enjoy together and give space to physical contact,” he suggests.
At Laurel Therapycouples therapists put it this way: “The key is to understand that intimacy is not always sex. It can be a deep conversation, a massage, or just laughing together. It’s not an obligation, it’s a protected space to connect.” And science supports this view. A study from York University in Canada has shown that planned sex is no less satisfying than spontaneous sex. In fact, for those who understand planning as a show of care and not as a task, sexual satisfaction even increases.
Are we fading? Perhaps the problem is not a lack of desire, but a lack of time. We live in a culture that idealizes spontaneity: movie sex, passionate and improvised. However, reality, with its schedules and responsibilities, leaves little room for instant magic. The therapist Inma Ríos explains it like this: “Pretending that everything will arrive by magic is a way of condemning sexual life. The anticipation of the moment is already pleasurable: it activates our fantasies and feeds the libido.”
For the sexologist Núria Canodesire does not disappear: it transforms. “When the infatuation wears off, desire works in a different way. Waiting for it to arise can be the real problem,” he points out. And he adds: “Thinking about the encounter in advance can fuel fantasy, even creativity. If we organize parties, why not plan sex?”
The frenetic pace of modern society—work, screens, multitasking—seems to push couples toward organization. In that context, scheduling sex would not be so much an anomaly as a cultural adaptation.
How to maintain balance? Therapists agree on one key point: the success or failure of planning depends on the approach. If done with pressure, it becomes a burden. But if done with humor, play and consensus, it can rekindle the relationship.
From specialized portals They recommend taking care of the details: planning romantic dates, creating atmosphere, using anticipation as part of the pleasure or changes of scenery to maintain excitement even within a planned schedule. A British couple who have been together for 40 years tells The Guardian who has sex “every three days, always to the rhythm of Madonna.” And they assure that this routine, far from extinguishing desire, has kept them connected for decades. “Counting the days until the next meeting is exciting to me,” he confesses. “Scheduling avoids conflicts due to differences in desire and gives us something to look forward to.”
A symptom… And an opportunity. The rise of “scheduled sex” says a lot about the world we inhabit: a place where productivity and lack of time have even invaded intimacy. But it also reveals that couples look for creative solutions to survive the noise.
Planning can be a show of intention rather than rigidity: a way of taking care of what chance no longer guarantees. Maybe it’s not about turning sex into a Google Calendar appointment, but about reserving a space—with or without an alarm—for presence, play, and desire. Because, in the end, romanticism does not die for lack of spontaneity. He dies due to lack of time. And perhaps programming it is, paradoxically, the most humane way to recover it.
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