If you’ve had sex you didn’t really want — not because anyone forced you, but because saying no felt like it would cost you something — you’re not broken, and you’re not alone. A new study just put a number on it.
Researchers reviewing nearly a decade of clinical trial data found that women diagnosed with a near-total loss of sexual desire were still having sex an average of two to three times a month before any treatment even started. Not because they wanted to. Because they felt they should.
Researchers call it “mercy sex.” I call it something I see in my office almost every week.
What Is Mercy Sex?
Mercy sex is consensual sexual activity that happens for reasons other than desire — usually to keep a relationship stable, avoid conflict, or prevent a partner from feeling rejected. It’s not coercion. It’s accommodation. And the new research, published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy by Nikita Guptan and James Simon, found it’s baked into the data of major drug trials for low desire, including testosterone patch, flibanserin, and bremelanotide studies covering thousands of women.
Across those trials, obligatory sex clustered around 2 to 3 events per month, regardless of age, menopausal status, or country — women in their 30s reported slightly more than women in their 50s, but the underlying pattern held everywhere the researchers looked.
The Pain Points I Hear in Session
If any of this sounds familiar, you’re describing a documented, common pattern — not a personal or marital failure.
“I say yes because I’m afraid of what happens if I say no.” This is the most common version I hear. Not fear of anger or punishment, usually — fear of distance. Fear that a partner will feel rejected, pull away, or eventually look elsewhere. The study frames this as a long-standing survival strategy: accommodating sex as a way to keep a partner close and invested.
“I don’t feel desire, but I go along with it to feel connected.” This one confuses people, including therapists who don’t specialize in this. Desire and the need for emotional closeness are not the same drive. Sex researcher Rosemary Basson’s model — cited in the study — describes female arousal as something that often follows emotional intimacy rather than announcing itself beforehand. Some women are chasing the closeness, and sex is just the vehicle.
“My partner thinks I don’t love him because I don’t want sex.” Many men are conditioned to read physical intimacy as the primary evidence of emotional connection. When that’s the only channel a partner trusts, a woman with low desire can end up having sex not for herself, but to reassure someone else that the relationship is fine.
“I feel guilty for not wanting it, so I just do it.” Cultural and religious messaging about marital “duty” runs deeper than most people realize, even in couples who don’t consider themselves religious. The study found real country-to-country variation in obligatory sex rates, which the researchers connect partly to lingering cultural norms about what partners “owe” each other.
Why This Matters Beyond the Bedroom
Here’s the part that should change how we think about “fixing” low desire: if a woman is already having sex two or three times a month for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting it, then simply counting sexual events — which is how the FDA has required these drugs to be evaluated — doesn’t actually measure whether her desire improved. It measures whether the obligation continued. Those are not the same thing, and conflating them means both patients and clinicians can be fooled into thinking something worked when the actual problem was never touched.
Can Therapy Help With Mercy Sex?
Yes. Not by eliminating all accommodation — some give-and-take is normal in any long relationship — but by making sure it’s a conscious choice instead of a fear-driven default. In practice, that usually looks like:
- Naming the unspoken rule. Most couples have never said out loud, “I do this because I’m scared of what happens if I don’t.” Once it’s named, it can be negotiated instead of silently repeated.
- Untangling “not now” from “not you.” Partners often hear a lack of desire as personal rejection. Learning to separate the two lowers the stakes of an honest no.
- Building other ways to feel loved. If sex has become someone’s only reliable signal of connection, that’s a solvable problem — not by more obligatory sex, but by developing other channels that carry the same emotional weight.
- Treating low desire as a relationship pattern, not one partner’s diagnosis. Desire discrepancy is shaped by the relational context it lives in, and it tends to shift when that context does.
Mercy sex isn’t proof that a relationship is failing. It’s usually proof that someone is trying — without quite the right tools yet — to protect a connection they care about. That’s exactly the kind of thing couples therapy is built to work through.
FAQ
Is mercy sex the same as sexual coercion? No. Coercion involves pressure, manipulation, or force. Mercy sex is self-initiated accommodation — a woman choosing to participate for relational reasons even without personal desire.
Is it normal to have sex without wanting it? Occasional accommodation is common in long-term relationships and isn’t automatically a red flag. It becomes a concern when it’s the default response driven by fear, guilt, or obligation rather than an occasional choice.
Does low sexual desire mean something is wrong with the relationship? Not necessarily. Desire naturally fluctuates and is shaped by stress, health, life stage, and relational dynamics. But a consistent pattern of obligatory sex is worth exploring in therapy, since it often signals an unspoken imbalance worth addressing directly.
Reach out today to schedule an appointment with one of our clinicians.
