Robbie Williams’s sex confession has just done women a massive favour

I don’t think it will come as much of a surprise to anyone who has been married or partnered for a while, especially with young children, that Robbie Williams and his wife Ayda Field hardly ever have sex.

The former Take That star said his libido dropped since he stopped taking testosterone to treat his depression, but said in an interview that “really, everyone knows there is no sex after marriage. That’s just the way it is”.

And though he admitted that while he was on testosterone, he and his wife “couldn’t take our hands off each other”, he also revealed that since coming off it they were “both content” with having sex less regularly.

I can’t help wanting to congratulate Williams for his candour – for it is immensely refreshing for a man to openly admit that he does not expect his wife to have “maintenance sex” with him, as some unfortunately do. What Williams is doing is refusing to conform to the outdated stereotypical ideas that still abound that men have a higher sex drive – and that the only way to have a successful marriage is for women to “try and keep up”.

These ideas are common, but they’re also dangerous. They trap women into believing that they should always have a lower sex drive than men – and men into believing that sex for them is only ever down to biological drive; that it is devoid of intimacy.

I am a scientist, and I blame biology textbooks and the way we are taught about reproduction and intimacy – as well as the ideas that are so embedded in our society about masculinity and femininity – for these archaic views.

They have made us all believe that there is a specific way for heterosexual relationships to work; that there is a specific idea of how much sex is “normal”. You can Google a huge number of articles online that will tell you how many times a month you “should” be having sex and find yourself failing.

And if your sex life has taken a nose dive in the past three years, you’re not alone: research has shown that the pandemic has affected sexual activity and sexual desire around the world. This has been due to increased levels of stress, fatigue and the increased load of childcare.

The Institute of Family Studies revealed that couples, especially those with children, were facing increasing stress in their marriage, due to financial and workload stressors, living and working together in close proximity day after day, 24 hours a day – and this affected their sex lives. One in five couples experienced “complete relationship breakdown”. (However, there were also reports of more appreciation for each other and increased commitment, with more than 58 per cent of the surveyed couples saying that their marriage came out of lockdown stronger.)

Motherhood and mothering can be a hugely transformational experience – and it can also affect sex and desire for closeness. Recently, I saw one of those articles on the internet with a man writing about how since having their third child, his wife seems “too busy for sex” and doesn’t think about sex and intimacy as much as he does. It evoked an angry reaction from women, and rightly so!

As I discuss in my books, (M)otherhood and Hysterical, mothers tend to carry more of the emotional and mental load. Even in the most gender-equitable households, women on the whole carry the greater burden when it comes to parenting and housework.

They are juggling it all, exhausted, often carrying it all alone, due to the gendered expectations placed on women in our society. No wonder we see stories such as the woman who secretly filmed her husband’s inattentive parenting – and then announced she was going to leave him.

Research studies also show that women encounter body image issues after motherhood, and this can affect their libido as well as their experiences of sex and intimacy. If women are doing the bulk of the parenting, particularly in the early years, they may be completely fed up with being touched and simply want to be left alone by the evening.

Women are not only expected to “do it all” – but they also internalise expectations and norms of what a good marriage looks like (as do men). This can lead to guilt and feelings of failure, which creates a vicious cycle. We shouldn’t be shocked when this in turn affects their ability to stay connected to their partners – especially when there is a potential mismatch in expectations around what intimacy looks like.

So what is “intimacy”? It is hard to define, because emotions are also gendered. Many men in western societies are raised to believe that emotional expression is a sign of weakness, that women need emotional intimacy more than men. Men can learn to bottle up their emotions, and do not have the opportunity to learn that open emotional communication and vulnerability is of crucial value in a marriage.

“Intimacy” can mean many things: sex, closeness, desire– or simply sitting together in quiet companionship. The ingredients to a stable and happy marriage might not lie in the bedroom, but anywhere where there is a willingness to partner and parent equally; to empathise and provide emotional support. The way we have sex changes over time, too. It may wax and wane depending on physical and mental health, emotional wellbeing, parenting demands, finances, feelings of security and/or job satisfaction.

Reading Robbie Williams and Ayda Field’s account of what is normal for them might help some of us to normalise these conversations. Because what’s intimate for some of us, may not be intimate for others. And we should all remember that.

Dr Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural and data scientist, author, speaker and founder of research think tank The 50 Percent Project