Pleasing your partner or responding to a marital ideal, but without desire or desire: this feeling, taboo in a large part of society, is increasingly highlighted by young French people. They tell.
While the notion of consent is at the heart of social issues in recent times, 40% of French people say they have already felt a “sexual debt” towards a partner, according to an Ipsos survey for Durex.* Men, women, in a relationship, single, of various sexual orientations… The phenomenon goes beyond ages and profiles. But this expression of “sexual debt”, which is still relatively little publicized, is indeed the young generation which brought it to the surface.
According to this study carried out on some 3,000 people aged 18 to 75, one in two women and one in three men say they have already felt obliged to perform sexual activity without wanting to. 43% of women and 22% of men did it to satisfy their partner’s pleasure. 6%, women and men equally, have done it to keep their partner in a relationship. But singles are not left out: 6% of women, and even 8% of men have already felt this “sex debt” on a date, feeling like they have to go further.
The pressure to perform
This is what Solène, 31 years old, felt for a long time. First in heterosexual relationships, then in lesbian relationships, she explains having grown up with “this idea that sexual activity was at the center” of the relationship. To the point of always having to perform: “The impression that you had to meet criteria, always have desire. When in fact, when I really listen to myself, that’s not the case.”
Looking back, she remembers, at times, forcing herself to have sex. “I told myself that I had to do it even when I didn’t necessarily want to, she says. I didn’t want it to be a problem in my relationship.” A behavior linked to the fear of creating tensions by not complying with the injunctions of society, by not responding to a pattern and a marital ideal widespread in the collective unconscious, which the young woman says she felt from her earliest days. sexual experiences. “You had to do it for the first time, more or less young, to show it to your friends,” remembers Solène.
“From the first boyfriend, there was this idea that you had to make love several times a week. That if the rhythm decreased over time, it would be problematic. While this is not indicative of a problem in the couple.”
For several years, Solène indicates that she has become aware of this pattern: “It comes close to the question of consent and ‘no’ which is not necessarily explicit. I have learned to listen to myself more, to question my partners and to communicate more. I am more attentive to that. There There are lots of factors that affect libido: stress, fatigue, work. We don’t always have the same desires at the same time and we have to tell ourselves that.”
This awareness is linked to the liberation of speech and the amplification of feminist movements, reports the young woman: “We learn to deconstruct all that. We have a lot of new representations of sexuality whether in the media, on TV or in films. Penetration and orgasm are not necessarily goals.” A journey made easier, she says, by her lesbian relationships: “Woman to woman, I feel like it’s easier.”
“I told myself he would look elsewhere”
Deconstructing is also what Gabrielle, 26 years old, did. In a heterosexual relationship for several years, she suffers from vaginismus, a disorder that manifested by an involuntary contraction of the pelvic floor muscles. Impossible for her to have penetrative sex without feeling pain. It was the appearance of this disorder that made him aware of this feeling of “sexual debt”. “I took a year before telling my partner because I was ashamed. I told myself that if I had problems at that level, he would look elsewhere because he would find a girl who sleeps often with him. It’s a horrible feeling.” says the young woman.
“I forced myself to have sex with him, even though I was in pain. As if it was necessary.”
She explains that she put this pressure on herself: “He didn’t know anything about it. It was me who imposed this on myself, because society tells you that you have to have sex regularly when you’re in a relationship.” VSIt was finally with her partner that she learned to free herself from injunctions: “He was extremely understanding, he was the one who told me: ‘No, if you’re in pain, we’re not going to continue like this’.” Together, the couple learned to reinvent their sexuality.
But the subject regularly comes up in conversations with friends or work colleagues who sometimes have difficulty considering their situation: “I think it’s changing in recent years. My generation is much more open to the idea of imagining other ways of loving each other. But if I talk about it with older people, like my parents’ generation, It’s absolutely not the same thing.”
“Now that we’re here, we’re going to the end”
This feeling is also seen outside the marital sphere. Paul, 25, experienced this, at the end of a “date”, a simple drink between singles, with a boy he had met on a dating application. After a first drink in a bar, “one thing led to another, he asked me to go home and I was quite tempted”, says the young man. Finally, the desire runs out of steam and once in bed, the young man realizes that he does not want sex: “I couldn’t imagine getting dressed again and telling him that I didn’t want to anymore. We were already naked, it wasn’t possible to tell him at that moment. I said to myself: now that we “That’s it, we’re going to the end. And then, I had been sending him positive signals all evening.”
Paul recounts a sexual encounter “absolutely consented” and adds that his partner could not have suspected his reluctance: “I knew he was caring and attentive. I knew he would understand. It was really me who felt guilty and who was unable to express my refusal.” The young man explains that he “learned to be quite categorical” but admits having found himself several times in comparable situations: “It’s a circumstance thing. When you meet someone on an app, the objective is quite explicit. There’s almost the idea that the contract is signed in advance.”
Sexual debt, a concept related to marital duty
“Sexual debt” affects women as much as men. This is what Capucine Moreau, sexologist and couples therapist, regularly observes: “We talk about it a little more for women than for men, especially in the current climate, and that’s normal. But it’s perhaps even less conscious on the male side because men were built with this idea that they’re always supposed to want sex.”
During her office consultations, the sexologist receives many men for whom the subject is particularly taboo: “They often say to themselves: ‘I’m supposed to always want it, so if I don’t want it, I’m not a man’.” Among women too, social constructions are particularly at issue: “We’ve heard a lot that to keep a man or to be attractive, you have to satisfy him in bed. D [” paragraph-wrapper=””>es deux côtés, ça vient beaucoup de la notion de devoir conjugal qui a longtemps été légale. Ça apparaît comme une construction hétéronormée ; mais ça se retrouve aussi chez les couples homosexuels.”
Il est toutefois essentiel de distinguer le sentiment de “dette sexuelle” d’une agression. “Cette impression d’être redevable d’une activité sexuelle, on se l’impose à soi-même. C’est toute la nuance à faire avec une agression à l’occasion de laquelle la pression, quelle qu’elle soit, est imposée par un tiers.”
“Écouter son corps et déculpabiliser”
Capucine Moreau souligne que l’essentiel est de réapprendre à écouter son corps : “J’accompagne beaucoup d’hommes qui disent qu’ils ont des troubles de l’érection. Souvent, je leur demande : mais vous aviez envie ? Et la réponse est non. Ils ne font pas le lien entre ne pas avoir de désir et ne pas avoir d’érection. Ce ne sont pas des troubles, c’est juste une non-envie corporelle. Il y a une déconnexion du corps.”
Essentiel aussi de se déculpabiliser malgré la prise de conscience de ce schéma : “On a le droit de voir qu’on est dedans. C’est le cas d’à peu près tout le monde, donc il peut y avoir du chemin et ce n’est pas forcément un drame. Il ne faut pas rajouter de la culpabilité en se disant qu’on s’est imposé tout ça à soi-même.”
“C’est tellement ancré et culturel que ça demande un gros travail individuel.”
Capucine Moreau, sexologueà franceinfo
Reste que la “dette sexuelle” n’est pas toujours perceptible, assure Capucine Moreau : “Il y a ceux et celles qui sont en capacité d’en être conscients ou conscientes, et d’autres pas forcément sur le moment” . Selon le sondage Ipsos pour Durex, 63% des 55-75 ans disent ne pas se sentir “concernés” par ce concept : “Parfois, j’ai des personnes de 40, 50, 60 ans qui réalisent des années après qu’elles étaient dans ce schéma-là inconsciemment”, souligne la sexologue.
Méthodologie : Étude réalisée par Ipsos du 16 au 18 janvier 2024 auprès d’un échantillon de 3 000 personnes, représentatif de la population française âgée de 18 ans à 75 ans constitué selon la méthode des quotas, au regard des critères de sexe, d’âge, de catégorie socioprofessionnelle et de région de résidence.