Touchy subject #458  is definitely sex and marriage. Everybody knows the old joke about the penny jar. If you put a penny in the jar for every time you have sex the first year of marriage, and take a penny out for every time you have sex after that, you will never empty out the jar. I doubt this, but it definitely is difficult to keep the “juices flowing” after a few years.

The secret worry that approximately 68% of adults have (again, this is my own approximation and is not based on any Kinsey study) is that everyone else is having more sex than they are. How much is enough? How much is too much? And how do you balance sex with kids or a low sex drive?

I was talking to a friend the other night- she claims that Fridays are their “sex night”. Every Friday, come sleet, snow, rain, and maybe menstruation (I didn’t ask), she and her husband of ten years get lucky, presumably with each other. This is ironic because I was at their Vegas wedding when a mutual friend advised her to set aside one night a week specifically for sex.

The reality is that the average adult reports having sex (with a partner) 61 times a year and surprise, surprise, married people have more sex than their single counterparts, which makes perfect sense to me because if you’re sleeping in the same bed with someone every night, you’re bound to get lucky sometimes, right?

Then, there is the “sexless marriage” which can last anywhere from a short time to a lifetime. While some of the causes are related to time constraints of a family and stress, there are many physical complications that can help lead to this. If a woman has a bladder or UTI infection, sex becomes more painful, which will definitely lead to less desire for sex. In the same way, a yeast infection makes sex uncomfortable.

In my own relationship, I had a “sexless time” that I later found out was due to a yeast infection that was transmitted back and forth between my partner and I. Sex became uncomfortable and for a time and I was totally freaked out that I’d lost my desire forever.Thankfully, the situation was resolved and we got back on track, so if you have a similar experience, don’t worry, you can “rekindle” the flame.