To begin with, and most innocently, the paucity of sex within established relationships typically has to do with the difficulty of shifting registers between the everyday and the erotic.

has nothing to do with the physical dimension of the act: it stems from the simple realization that someone else likes us quite a lot, a message that would enchant us even if it were delivered via another medium.

with a long-term partner who has forgotten to guard his or her nakedness against the ever-present dangers of our predatory ingratitude.

The more horrifying we believe our behaviour would seem to the larger, judgemental society we normally live in, the more we feel as if we are building a paradise of mutual acceptance.

‘Where they love, they have no desire, and where they desire, they cannot love.’

The task of understanding our own preferences in this regard should be recognized as an integral part of any project of self-knowledge or biography. What Freud said of dreams can likewise be said of sexual fetishes: they are a royal road into the unconscious.

The taboo preventing him from announcing to her, ‘I want to love you and look after you tenderly for the rest of my life,’ is just as strong as the one that stops her saying to him, ‘I’d like to fuck you in my motel room and then say goodbye to you for ever.’

Moments when sex overwhelms our rational selves have a well-known habit of being erotic.

Suffering sexual rejection by the person with whom we have pledged to share our life is a much odder and more humiliating experience.