‘Sexlessness’ is on the rise. Can the Church use this moment to promote marriage?

 

CNA Staff, Feb 13, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Increasing numbers of young adults in the United States are reporting a lack of sexual activity — dubbed “sexlessness” — a trend experts say presents “a huge opportunity for evangelization” for advocates of marriage.

The most recent data from the National Survey of Family Growth, which has been periodically administered since 1973 by the National Center for Health Statistics, shows that, between 2013 and 2023, “all measures of sexlessness rose for both young adult males and females,” according to an analysis from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS).

For young adult males, “sexlessness has roughly doubled across all measures over the last 10 years or so,” while for young adult females, “it has risen by roughly 50%.”

Though the data could in theory be construed as encouraging, at least for those who oppose extramarital sex, IFS fellow Lyman Stone noted that one of the biggest drivers in the collapse of sex is “the decline in marriage.”

“Married people have more sex, and for most young adults, marriage is occurring later or not at all,” he wrote. “As a result, sex is declining.”

Society is ‘starved’ for real relationships

Experts say these trends, though dispiriting for marriage advocates, represent an opportunity for Catholics to evangelize on the truths around marriage and sexuality.

J.P. De Gance, the founder and president of the marriage and relationship ministry Communio, told CNA that the data represent “a huge opportunity for evangelization.”

Part of the crisis, he argued, lies in the fact that, increasingly, “few [people] form healthy dating relationships and few form any meaningful friendships ‘in real life.’”

“In 1990, 70% of men had five or more close friends. By 2021, just 40% had that many,” he said. “This is all part of the epidemic of loneliness.”

“The age of smartphones and other high-tech distractions has worsened this cultural moment where few meet, fewer marry, and even fewer have kids,” he said.

Communio, De Gance said, helps parishes develop ways to facilitate “in-real-life” relationships. Those relationships, he said, have “always been the necessary ingredient to make disciples, and society is starved for it.”

Catechesis, he argued, can only occur if you first form a relationship with someone.

Mary Rose and Ryan Verret, a husband-and-wife team who founded the marriage renewal and preparation initiative Witness to Love, echoed De Gance’s assessment. Ryan Verret told CNA that Witness to Love “is meant to renew the Church for relationships, recognizing that human beings only grow first and foremost through relationships.”

“For young people in general today, there’s a deprivation of authentic friendships and relationships,” he said, which leads to a shakier foundation and hesitancy in forming intimate relationships and ultimately marriage.

High rates of divorce and unmarried cohabitation, Mary Rose Verret argued, have led many young people to hold a distorted vision of marriage.

“If you haven’t lived in an intimate, intact, thriving family, where you have the ability to bond and communicate, and you get to see your parents and how marriage is lived out — if you don’t have that experience, then No. 1, marriage is not attractive. So you don’t get married,” she said.

Marriage is “about more than sex,” Mary Rose acknowledged, and a comprehensive marriage ministry will talk to young people about all aspects of the vocation.

“What we need to be able to do is talk about marriage with the majority of kids in Catholic schools — and even in public schools,” she said. “We need to talk about the gift it is to society, and talk about sexuality in that context.”

Both Ryan and Mary Rose pointed to contraception and pornography as significant drivers in the crisis. “Because of birth control and contraception, in people’s minds, kids are separated from sex,” Mary Rose said. “And now sex is separated from marriage. And now [with pornography] it’s gotten so that sex is separated from people.”

“When a person leaves God and the natural order, you think you’re becoming free,” Ryan argued, “but the first thing that goes when you leave God is your freedom.”

The Verrets noted that one thing Catholic families can do is model successful marriages for young people.

“Invite young people to be around you,” Mary Rose said. “Get them in a place where they can see marriage lived out. If they don’t know what it looks like, they won’t desire it.”

De Gance, meanwhile, pointed to parish efforts to “build fun platforms to form real relationships.”

One parish partner in Florida, he said, held an annual dance that was originally for older members of the church, but young adults began attending it, finding it “a safe and fun spot where members of the opposite sex can meet.”

The dance now occurs monthly, he said, and is run by the parish marriage ministry and feeds into the church’s singles’ and couples’ ministries.

“My parents met in 1964 at a parish dance at St. Coleman’s in Fort Lauderdale,” he pointed out. “Believe it or not, that dance was held weekly during the school year.”

“We need to find ways to bring this sort of parish life — combined with sound relationship skills formation — back into existence,” he said.