My conclusion is this poor man has had some very bad sexual experiences. Why else would someone write this: "We might be so much better off if we didn’t have a sex drive; for most of our lives it causes nothing but trouble and distress. In its name, we do revolting things with people we don’t really like, only to feel disgusting and sinful afterwards." How sad. But how horrible that he feels he has the ability to write a "sexual self-help" book for other people!The book is also blandly conventional; the people he imagines for his examples are heterosexual. The married couple, in their 30s, have had sex 9 times in the last year. De Botton seems to think this is normal. He says explicitly that if you have a handful of great sexual experiences in a lifetime you're doing well.I enjoyed another of the books in this "School of Life" series, "How to Stay Sane," and looked forward to the same bare-bones, no-nonsense approach to life. But, unfortunately, there's no concept of a "saner" sexuality here. He starts the book with “For most of our lives, sex seems fated to remain steeped in longing and awkwardness. Whatever the manuals promise, there are really no solutions to the majorities of the dilemmas sex creates for us. A useful self-help book on this subject ought hence to focus on the management of pain rather than its outright elimination." What an ugly warped view of the possibilities of human sexuality. I think the only proper response is to feel sorry for him.

Hmmmm....