Sex and Marriage: How Much is Normal

Marriage and Sex

This article provides a revealing tell-all tale of a woman who pretends to be drunk or in pain in order to avoid sleeping with her husband- the writer paints the portrait of the woman (Lynn) avoiding sex at all costs because facing up to sex with her husband is such a “chore”. Lynn claims she is still sexually attracted to her husband, but that she is not interested in doing the deed. She admits that the couple has not had sex for five months and blames her lack of interest (and a lowered sex drive) on giving birth.

Statistics show that 15% of married couples haven’t had sex in a year, so she is not alone. As this woman writes, viewing sex as a duty can happen all too easily when the circumstances in your relationship change.

How much sex are married couples having? Does marriage really ruin sex in a relationship?  According to the study found HERE , single men and women actually have less sex than married men and women (The exception to this may be couples who are living together)  and married couples who are in their 30’s have significantly less sex than those who are in their 20’s.

I don’t believe that getting married is the major factor in causing a couple’s sex life to dwindle or that marriage automatically fates you to have bad sex. Judging by the numbers, I would guess that having children is a much bigger reason for less sex in a marriage than exchanging wedding vows. New parents are often too physically exhausted to have sex and infrequent sex can become a pattern. The possibility of interruptions from little kids at any hour of the night does not help matters much either, nor does the fact that many women find sex painful after first giving birth.

Another factor to consider is age; while womens’ sex drives increase in their 30’s, their sex drives can ebb in later life due to hormonal changes. As of yet, there isn’t a female Viagra cure-all on the market, so women have to look for other ways to increase their libido. (For more medical information on Zestra and other ways to increase libido, check HERE). When they are not using Viagra and other so-called “performance-enhancing drugs”, men’s sex drives also lower as with age.

I think it’s also important to recognize that it’s not always the women who have lower sex drives than their husbands, which is something that the media and the public at large seem to forget. For an example of this, read this letter written to Savage Love from a woman upset by her husband’s lack of interest in sex. 

This is the first segment in a three-part series of articles on marriage and sex. In the second article, I’ll discuss the topic of infidelity and whether the low sex drive of one partner gives the other spouse a license to cheat and in the final installment, I’ll discuss the issue of sex and marriage further.