You’re exhausted. It’s been a long week at work, the laundry is piling up, and you feel about as sexy as the cloth you just used to clean the bathroom. Now that you’re finally in bed, all you want is to sink under the covers and drift off to sleep.

Then you feel your partner’s hand, placed lightly but expectantly, on your thigh. Their breathing shifts, and the invitation hangs in the air. Silently, you do the maths: it’s been a few weeks, and turning them down again will only become a problem. It would be easier to just get it over with than face a bigger conversation later. With a heavy internal sigh, you turn around, thinking, “Let’s get this over with.”

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Speak to friends in long-term relationships, and at least one will describe a similar experience: not being in the mood, but consenting to sex anyway to meet a partner’s expectations. A recent study in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy found that partnered women experiencing a chronic lack of sexual desire were still having sex two to three times a month. Researchers call this “mercy sex” — having sex for the sake of the relationship, whether to maintain a partner’s monogamy or to avoid conflict.

But why is it so common? And is there another way? Sex and relationship experts weigh in below.

What Is “Mercy Sex”?

Smile Makers’ in-house sex and relationships coach, Mariàn Martínez, explains: “In research, [mercy sex] is often called sexual compliance — consensual sex in the absence of personal desire; or, in other words, having sex you don’t really want, but just do it to please your partner or avoid rejection or conflict. And it’s more common than we tend to admit: a recent study found that 34% of people in committed relationships reported having sex to please their partner, while 14% reported doing it out of fear of negative consequences.”

While the conversation can feel mired in shame, it’s important to start the dialogue. So how does having unwanted sex affect us internally?

According to therapist Lucy Frank, it’s worth watching the patterns around sex and desire in a relationship. “Having sex occasionally when you’re not particularly in the mood isn’t inherently harmful,” she says. “Relationships involve giving and receiving, and sometimes we might choose intimacy because we know it will feel connecting or pleasurable even though we weren’t initially feeling spontaneous desire. The concern is when sex becomes something someone regularly does to manage their partner’s emotions, avoid conflict, prevent rejection, or keep the relationship intact.”

When sex starts to feel like a sacrifice, it can erode the connective power of physical intimacy. “Someone may begin to associate sex with duty rather than pleasure, become increasingly disconnected from their own sexual responses, or start anticipating sex with anxiety,” Frank adds. “It can also create a difficult cycle: one partner feels rejected when sex doesn’t happen, the other feels pressured, so they have sex to reduce the pressure, but then experience sex as something they had to do. That can ultimately reduce desire even further.”

The Role of “Sexpectations”

Part of why we have mercy sex comes down to sexpectation: the sense that there’s a sexual obligation or requirement within a relationship. Often it goes unsaid, but we can still feel the assumption that we’ll have sex at certain times or a certain frequency.

Amy*, 28, experienced this first-hand. In her early 20s, she was struggling with her mental health and using alcohol as a crutch to get in the mood with her boyfriend. “In hindsight, [sex with my boyfriend] was simply a ‘duty’ that I didn’t even think about: I saw myself as someone who liked sex, and therefore needed to find a way to have sex with my boyfriend,” she says.

Even now that Amy is sober, she still tracks the frequency of sex in relationships, trying to keep her partner “satisfied.” “I’m so aware of how important it is to a relationship to have sex, and so aware of the awful way long-term relationships are portrayed as sexless… that I can’t help but keep a tally,” she explains. “Now, if there is a day I’m feeling spontaneously turned on, I’m definitely going to take advantage of the fact that I’m up for it, because it’s like every time counts; I’m having sex now in case I don’t want to later.”

So how does this affect us long-term? “Sexpectation can creep into relationships when sex becomes something that is assumed to happen at a particular frequency, or is seen as an obligation of being a couple. The problem is that expectation can very quickly become pressure, and pressure is rarely conducive to genuine desire,” Frank explains.

Ironically, giving in to mercy sex can leave us feeling more disconnected and unsexy than ever. So what’s the alternative?

Reframing the Conversation

Frank advises couples to move away from “How often should we be having sex?” and towards “What helps each of us feel open to intimacy and desire?”

Understanding different ways of experiencing desire can also help. “It is important to understand that desire doesn’t always come first. For many people, particularly in long-term relationships, desire can be responsive rather than spontaneous — it may emerge once there is relaxation, affection, touch, and pleasurable connection,” Frank says. “Not feeling immediately horny doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t want intimacy.”

And while it isn’t exclusively women who have sex for the sake of a relationship, it’s worth noting the role women tend to play as “peacekeepers” in heterosexual couples, and how they are socialised. “Anyone can find themselves having unwanted or obligatory sex. Although women can be particularly socialised to prioritise a partner’s needs, and to see being sexually available as part of being a ‘good’ partner,” Frank explains.

Managing Differing Libidos

Mercy sex can occur when there are differing levels of sexual appetite in a relationship. While this can feel like a major strain, some kind of libido mismatch is common — how you manage it matters.

According to Frank, these differences should be managed through collaboration, acceptance, and emotional safety, rather than compromise or obligation. It’s not me vs you; it’s about being a team. “The aim isn’t to find a compromise where one person reluctantly has sex and the other reluctantly goes without. It’s about creating a sexual relationship where both people have agency: where ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘not right now’ are all genuinely safe answers.”

Frank offers some thought-starters:

• No wrong answers: “Couples need to stop treating libido differences as though one person is right and the other is wrong… There is no objectively correct amount of sex that a couple should be having.”
• Ask questions: “Get curious about the difference. What does sex mean to each person? What does it provide — pleasure, reassurance, connection, stress relief, validation, excitement? And what gets in the way of desire?”
• Know what turns your partner on (and off): “It is also useful to understand each person’s accelerators and brakes… One person’s desire might be stimulated by affection and feeling emotionally connected, while another might need novelty, eroticism, relaxation, or feeling desired. Equally, stress, exhaustion, body image, resentment, medication, hormones, or relationship difficulties can all act as brakes.”

Mercy Sex vs. Maintenance Sex

When we talk about mercy sex — feeling obligated to maintain a certain frequency of intimacy — it’s easy to confuse it with maintenance sex, a related but different term.

The key difference is intentional reciprocity. Maintenance sex is when a couple schedules regular intimate time to keep the spark alive, agreeing on a specific time to explore sex together. It often includes routines to set a mood and acknowledges that desire isn’t always spontaneous.

Mercy sex, however, involves one partner consenting to sex they aren’t excited about as a way of minimising disagreements or smoothing over lapses in intimacy. There’s no mutual agreement or conversation about arousal.

Coming Out the Other Side

While it can be hard to sit with the discomfort of going a long time without sex — and sensitive to turn down a partner — owning your desire (and lack thereof) can be life-changing.

For Amy, it took work to reach a place where she no longer had unwanted sex for her partners’ sake. “Therapy, addiction recovery, my own writing, and getting older are all massive factors,” she explains. “Now, I’ve worked so hard to be present that the feeling of having sex as a duty or obligation is incredibly triggering.”

Ditching mercy sex isn’t always a linear process. With each new partner, once the honeymoon phase fades, it can be easy to revert to seeing sex as something you owe your partner. But as we get older, many of us learn the difference between simply consenting to sex we don’t want and being fully present with a partner.

Good sex can’t be pressured or treated as another chore on your to-do list. It’s a give and take with a partner who truly cares — not just about their own pleasure, but about yours.