No one wants a sexless relationship. But most couples hit a point, usually a few months in, where sex becomes more and more infrequent. While this can happen for numerous reasons, the college environment often drives people to this place sooner, and more irrevocably.
At Hopkins, all 5,000 undergraduate students are crammed into a few square blocks in Charles Village. This has its advantages: You can walk to all of your friends' dorms and apartments in under 15 minutes. But this proximity can also hurt your sex life.
In the real world, if you want to visit your significant other, you have to grab a cab, take public transportation or maybe drive an hour in traffic to get to his house. Because it takes longer, you have to plan your visits, and you probably won't see each other every day.
At Hopkins, couples often live in the same building, maybe even on the same floor, and they can see each other as much as they want. It's easy to fall into the habit of constantly calling your boyfriend to come over and do homework, watch TV or entertain you when you're bored. But when you spend too much time hanging out in one of your rooms, you cultivate a very platonic relationship that leaves little room for sex.
When you and your boyfriend are together in public, you're usually putting some effort into your appearance (hair, clothes, makeup, etc.). You also have to keep physical contact to a minimum, because anything much past making out will get you thrown out of most business establishments. This creates sexual tension. You and your boyfriend are both looking good, and you want to touch each other, but you can't.
When you two are back at your apartment watching TV, there's not much tension at all. You're not putting any effort into your physical appearance, and you don't have to worry about keeping your hands off each other. The element of desire is gone: Neither of you are looking as attractive as you could be, and you're both completely sexually available to each other. That's why you're not feeling the spontaneous urge to tear each other's clothes off, like you were at the library.
Your apartment/dorm room is also not the best place to hang out with your boyfriend. Most of our living spaces are tiny, and we tend to spend a lot of time there. It can be boring and irritating to go so long without a change of scenery, and if your boyfriend becomes part of that scenery, there's a good chance you'll start thinking he's as dull and annoying as the poster of James Dean that's been hanging on your wall since freshman year. It's like how your boyfriend's random habits, like excessively clicking his pen, bother you a lot when you're studying together in your 10 x 12 bedroom, but don't seem as aggravating on A level.
When you spend too much time in your room, you also run the risk of de-sexualizing your bed. The human brain likes to form associations. When you limit the activities that take place on your bed to sex and sleeping, you unconsciously associate your bed with these two things. So when you see your bed, your mind thinks, Time for sex, and it's easier to get in the mood. But if you and your boyfriend spend a lot of time doing other things on your bed, you lose this association. This means when your boyfriend tries to initiate sex while you're lying in bed, you might suddenly realize you don't feel like it. You're not mentally prepared for sex; your brain is getting ready to do homework, or watch TV or do whatever else you and your boyfriend normally do in bed.
This is also why it might not be the best idea to have sleepovers with your boyfriend every night. It can be nice to fall asleep with the same person every night, but your brain starts associating your bed plus your boyfriend with sleep, not sex.
When you're bored or cooped up in your apartment, you often feel like you can lighten the mood by inviting your boyfriend to come over.
But if you're spending the majority of your time together in boring, annoying, nonsexual environments, your relationship is going to take on some of these elements.
When you're together in public, you create sexual tension, and you escape the stress, clutter and monotony that builds up in your apartment. This doesn't mean you should only meet up with your boyfriend at restaurants and movie theaters. But there's a reason that dating in the real world usually involves actually going on dates.
In my first column, I talked about how sex is a game that revolves around wanting something you're not sure you can get.
When you're in a stable relationship, you lose some of this.
When you know you can have sex whenever you want, it's easy to start wanting it less.
If you want to have as much sex as you did when you first started dating, you have to make it seem less available, like it was in the beginning.
