No sex please, we’re credit-crunched bankers

For testosterone-driven City high-fliers, the world has fallen apart, says psychotherapist Lucy Beresford — and one result is a dramatic rise in sexually disturbed behaviour

There’s no doubting the trauma in today’s City: redundancy is rife and those who still have jobs are struggling to cope with an utterly changed financial world. No wonder a spate of banking suicides has made headlines. But stress is also showing itself in a more private way: in the bedroom.

In the past six months, clinicians have seen a dramatic rise in sexually disturbed behaviour, ranging from a 20 per cent rise in sexually transmitted diseases among over-35s, to sex addiction and its flipside, sexual anorexia. Sex addiction refers to those who cannot control their sexual activity, and crave the highs associated with the next sexual encounter. They may have serial affairs, binge on prostitutes, or compulsively surf the net for porn. Sexual anorexia, though not yet an official psychiatric term, refers to people who obsessively avoid (consciously or unconsciously) sexual activity — even if they are in a relationship. Both patterns of behaviour are rooted in a need to control and suppress unwelcome emotions.

City high-fliers often repress emotion. They can be subconsciously driven to succeed in life by childhood hurts. These frequently stem from early attachment difficulties, such as being sent away to boarding school too young. Some endure their childhood as social outsiders, and seek the status and sexual allure that comes with being an ‘alpha male’ in an industry which until recently carried great kudos. For others, the spur to achieve comes from feeling misunderstood, an ‘I’ll show them’ mentality, which derives from a wound to the narcissistic belief that they are omnipotent, or perfect.

But alpha males are also long on testosterone, a hormone linked to high libido, risk-taking, competitiveness and aggression.