Acokoinonia is sex which occurs without any passion or desire. It comes from the Greek words akon, meaning unwilling, and koinonia, meaning community, which in turn comes from the Greek word koinos, which translates to “shared in common.”
While it’s unclear how the term originated, J.E. Schmidt was one of the first people to define acokoinonia in his 1967 sexual dictionary, “Lecher’s Lexicon.”
Acokoinonia might occur between long-time couples who have sex because they feel they should, rather than because they want to be physically intimate. It might occur if the couple are motivated to have a baby, for example, or if they simply feel sex is an obligation. People who aren’t in long-term relationships might also have acokoinonia if they are having sex because of peer pressure or because they feel their partner expects sex.
Women are most likely to have acokoinonia. Aside from men usually requiring feelings of desire to achieve an erection, anecdotal evidence suggests women more commonly have passive attitudes to sex that mean intercourse doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with desire.
