What turns you off?

For some, it might be arrogance or swearing, for others it could be tattoos and unconventional piercings.

For women, it’s time, apparently, as a new study has found that women lose interest in having sex with their partner after just 12 months of being together.

Published in the British Medical Journal Open, the survey collected data from 4,839 men and 6,669 women aged 16-74 and revealed that while both genders tire of sex with age, women claim to get bored of sex in relationships far quicker than men.

More turn-offs for women were having children under five and having given birth in the last year, the study found.

“This may be due to fatigue associated with a primary caring role, the fact that daily stress appears to affect sexual functioning in women more than men or possibly a shift in focus of attention attendant on bringing up small children,” explained the study’s authors.

Conducted by researchers at Southampton University, factors such as lack of emotional closeness, communication issues and poor health were cited as reasons for having a lower sex drive in both men and women.

Other factors included having STIs and past experiences of forced intercourse.

For women, the lack of interest in sex was most common between the ages of 55 and 64, whereas for men it was younger, at 35-44.

However, the researchers explained that there was no evidence to suggest that this had anything to do with menopause, despite occurring around those ages in women.

Whilst both men and women included in the study reported lacklustre libidos, the women were twice as likely to suffer from a low sex drive.

Overall, 34 per cent of the women surveyed reported a lacking interest in sex, compared to just 15 per cent of men.