Having bad sex? Trying to fix it through Google? Then you know the usual set of instructions: Wear lingerie, try role-play, prioritize communication, schedule sex. (Get hotter, get more therapy, get more pragmatic.) Scheduling sex, in particular, sounds soul sucking and unnatural. Isn’t sex supposed to be spontaneous, urgent, and passionate?
Sure, but it can also be more rote. Contemporary experts stand by scheduling sex. (You can pick whatever reason for the increasing popularity of this mind-set you like: We’re reportedly having less sex, social unrest has taken a toll on our stress levels, and TikTok sex therapyspeak has infiltrated our every waking thought.) As far as what pop clinicians say: Emily Nagoski, Ph.D., the author of Come As You Are, a ubiquitous modern guide to putting sexual desire into healthy action, has been writing about the magic of planned sex for over a decade. She recommends it especially to people who experience what she calls “responsive” desire, or when you get turned on after you start fooling around, rather than “spontaneous” desire, or when you get turned on more easily and, as the name suggests, spontaneously. Nagoski says adding sex to a schedule could benefit those who experience responsive desire because it gets them more intimate time — if someone’s only turned on after sexual stimulation begins, then they might not initiate it as often.
Esther Perel, a psychotherapist, advice columnist, and two-time New York Times best-selling author, has called a sex schedule a “ritual,” as opposed to a monotonous routine. Emily Morse, a sex therapist and the host of Sex With Emily, has posted Instagram infographics and chatted on podcasts, calling it a “hack.”
We also have other shit to do. “When we’re busy with work, friendships, relationships, and parenting, sex can fall further down the line of priorities,” Lauren Fogel Mersy, PsyD, AASECT-certified sex therapist, and co-author of Desire: An Inclusive Guide to Navigating Libido Differences in Relationships, says. “Without creating intentional time for intimate connection, a lot of people might find that days, weeks, or months go by where it’s not happening.”
The process of setting up a sex schedule is what you’d expect: You sit down with your partner and discuss a regular time of the week to fuck, then put it on your calendars. (In terms of timing, Fogel Mersy suggests following the wants of the lower-libido person.) It seems easy. It sounds like a conversation I’ve had with my partner about figuring out the laundry schedule.
That’s why Fogel Mersy doesn’t recommend planning to out-and-out bone, but committing to spending intimate time together instead. “When people think about scheduling sex, they think about a particular script that they’re going to follow,” she says. That script often includes stimulation, then penetration, then orgasms. “There are a lot of partners for whom an expectation of what that’s going to be creates negative anticipation,” she adds. Approaching it in a let’s-see-what-can-happen way lightens the mood — and makes room for improvisation.
Fogel Mersy says she raises the idea of scheduling sex to people who have mismatched libidos, too. In 2019, Hannah Johnson, a 32-year-old living in Texas, was in a relationship where desire discrepancies were a “major issue.” She and her ex dated for three years, but Johnson says she stopped being interested in sex after three months together. “My partner wanted a lot more sex than I did, and I struggled with that to the point where I ended our relationship,” she says. “We didn’t argue, we just had looping conversations that didn’t make it better.”
Johnson decided her next relationship would be different. After her breakup, she “spent basically all of my time learning about sex and reading all the sex books,” she says. “When I got into my current relationship [with my husband], I knew that I needed a system for us to be able to sustain the passion that happens at the beginning of a relationship, because my tendency in relationships is to lose excitement and interest in sex.”
They decided to be proactive and pencil it in. That was not necessarily a solution to a problem. Instead, they wanted to take initiative and prioritize pleasure in the long run. “Both of us live and die by our Google calendars,” she says. “The conversation was, ‘Hey, let’s set aside intentional time for the sexual aspect of our relationship so that it can continue to be exploratory and fun, rather than what you see in pop culture, where married couples don’t have sex with each other anymore.’”
A sex schedule isn’t a binding legal document — you don’t have to have sex because it’s been put on the calendar, which is part of the reason Fogel Mersy recommends not planning the specifics ahead of time. “We want context to be part of the decision-making” about sex, she says. If you decide that you aren’t up for penetration — or whatever — during your scheduled time, then you can pivot to other intimate activities that don’t necessarily involve genital stimulation at all. That can look like taking a shower together, massaging each other, looking into each other’s eyes and talking, or just lying naked together.
Johnson and her husband have been booking Saturday afternoons for intimacy since 2021. Their standing meeting is labeled as “Sexy Time,” but they add extra invitations — “King Worship,” “Let’s Do It” — when they’re horny, Johnson says. “I’ll send him [an invite] for tomorrow at 7 p.m.: ‘Blowjob Time.’”
Danielle Sinay, a 33-year-old writer living in Brooklyn, says that after she and her husband started scheduling sex in 2021, they’ve planned for once a week or once every two weeks, depending on their calendars. “We still have sex regardless of whether there’s scheduled sex that week,” Sinay says.
They’ve been together for 11 years, and planning intimacy has helped them have sex more often and made their bond stronger. “I noticed that when we schedule sex, let’s say on Thursday, we end up having more sex spontaneously after that. It opens the door.” If they’re not in the mood to get physical during their proposed time, Sinay says it’s no big deal. “We just hang out in bed and watch TV,” she says. “It’s really about intentionally spending one-on-one time, so I don’t consider it a failure if we don’t actually do anything stereotypically intimate.”
Others are turned off by the thought of being tied down to a sex schedule and losing out on spontaneity. “Scheduling makes it seem more of a chore and an item on my to-do checklist. I’d hate for one of us to be looking forward to our appointment, and then be disappointed when the other isn’t in the mood for whatever reason,” one Redditor wrote. In 2021, a writer, Anna Good, wrote, “We had ‘Sexy Time’ on our calendars, which already is kind of depressing, but almost unbearably so when it keeps getting canceled or changed” in a blog. This echoes one of the biggest gripes of anti-sex schedulers on Reddit.
Laura Federico, LCSW, CST, AASECT-certified sex therapist, and author of The Cycle Book, says that some people find the idea of a schedule constricting, which isn’t useful if they’re already feeling a lack of excitement with their partner. “People are talking about a desire to feel free, and, for some people, sex is a huge pathway to that,” she says. That’s why this advice can feel like all or nothing. You either schedule your time and lose the spontaneity — or don’t, and the issues between you and your partner continue. If you’re unable to communicate, Federico says, your issues may go beyond sex, and you should bring in a therapist to help you figure out what’s going on.
Otherwise: Anticipation can be really hot. “Things that make it sexy for us are when one person is fully responsible for the experience,” Johnson says. “We’ll have what we call ‘King and Queen Nights,’ where one person will set up the entire experience for the other person, and it’s just about one person receiving, rather than sexual experiences that are, like, We both need to get something out of this.” They take turns making “want lists,” which can mean oral sex, foot rubs, or even hairbrushing. Nothing is off the table.
“We both feel really taken care of by the other person. We both make this commitment to show up at this time and this day for our relationship, and we make it a priority,” Johnson says. “We’re both actively choosing to make this a priority, and we both end up feeling really loved and cared for.” Okay — put it on the books.
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