There’s a strange, common misconception that all gay people do is have sex – girls get together and you can’t move for clothes flying off, then they come up for air a few months later and decide to split.

Actually, it does happen, but there is a flip side. Low sex drive also occur quite frequently among lesbians, but it usually only becomes a problem when the couple are hugely mismatched. The term ‘lesbian bed death’ has been knocking around since the early eighties and is often thrown around as a reason for things going wrong in lesbian relationships.

It’s something that is all too easy to attribute a ‘bad’ relationship to, but can actually be worked on. It’s important to remember that comparing relationships with friends and colleagues is never constructive – particularly straight counterparts. Physiologically speaking, men are supposed to have higher sex drives, whereas women do have a tendency to desire ‘nesting’. Having male and female in a relationship should, in theory, mean that the impetus to have sex is stronger with one driving force.

However, two women together who do not have sex as top priority on their agenda are more than likely to slip into a quieter, if not non-existent, sex life. There is nothing wrong with this if both partners are happy with this situation.

Obviously, it’s harder to define how often lesbians have sex because it is difficult to define the sex act itself. Is it based on how many orgasms you have? If that’s the case, then there are many girls who sadly, have never had sex. They keep trying, but somehow it evades them.

It is statistically proven that lesbians spend much more time on foreplay when in a long term relationship – women have a tendency to want intimacy and closeness more than just the sex act itself, therefore kissing, cuddling, caressing and simply holding each other are often enough for some women. This is compacted by the fact that there is usually a stronger mental and emotional bond, where talking is quite often foreplay in itself.

The key to dealing with it is not to panic when you realise you haven’t had sex for a while. It’s not the end of the world and sex should never be the main reason to have a relationship. If you want to be with someone, the reasoning behind that should be a combination of factors that don’t begin and end in the bedroom.

As with all relationship advice, the most important thing is to talk about it. If you are both happy with the way things are then that’s great. If you aren’t then you need to be honest about how you feel and come to some form of compromise – this may seem contrived, but if the love and respect is there, then the rest should follow.

You may find that both of you want to start having sex more, so use some age old methods to get back into the swing of things and start spending less time together and go on dates – try to recapture what it was about each other that first led you into bed together. You may think that you can’t get it back, but you’d be surprised at what a change in habits can do – before you know it, everything will be as it once was – or should be.