It always starts the same, in more or less the same order:
Boy and girl meet
They become friends
They have great sex, often and loudly
They fall in love and get married
They make a baby
Such a cute baby
Coo
Girl is tired
Sex is less
But enough to make another baby
This baby is cute too, and very active
Girl worships the Sleep Gods
She wonders where the time goes
Boy sulks, rejected and frustrated
And really, really horny
Girl would be horny too, but she's too busy being exhausted...
Yet another friend of mine is separating from his wife. It's the fourth couple in as many years and the same sad story. Before we have cocktails he says things like "we grew apart." Scratch a little deeper, pour in a few margaritas and you uncover statements like "we never have any fun. We never have sex anymore."
He's not cheating on her, he's just done. Just like my other friend is done. Just like my other friend who would be done except he did cheat on the wife who didn't sleep with him for over 15 years and now she's figured it out and spending her waking hours making sure he's completely miserable.
What I think: anyone who tells you that sex isn't important to their marriage is lying through their teeth. Either that or they have never had good sex - in which case a trip to the book/video/sex shop is immediately in order. (Careful kiddies, only one of those links is safe for work...)
Human beings are by their very nature sexual. The rise of the porn industry is no accident. And when you try to turn off your sexuality, strange things happen. It goes against our human nature.
When sex is good in a marriage it's like 10% of the relationship. When sex is bad, or absent, it becomes the elephant in the room. Does chemistry fade over time? Yes, a little. But it's compensated by other things, like someone who really knows how to get you going, someone you can trust enough to try/wear/taste/tie up whatever/whoever you want. As long as everyone involved is a consenting adult, of course. Just because the chemistry lights dim somewhat doesn't mean the party is over. Far from it.
But you have to make an effort. It doesn't just happen.
There is an old expression "use it or lose it" that seems to apply. The slew of erectile dysfunction ads show us that men as a group seem committed to using it come hell or high water and my hope is that women will hold on similarly.
However, it seems to me that quite a few women have given up on the whole idea. How can they let it go like that, or more likely, let it slip away? Well, here's a clue: 30% of women report that they rarely have orgasms and as many as 12% have never had one. This is a terrible statistic.
Never to have had one at all speaks to a serious lack of two things: education (no, I'm not talking about the movie they showed in 6th grade) and experimentation. And while there are all kinds of bad things that could cause a person to shut off their self-discovery - some of them quite terrible - there are others, like ignorance that should be overcome.
Education and experimentation, things that the right wing Christian fundamentalists try so hard to curtail, are two of the keys to good sex. Good sex is one of the many keys that will maintain a good marriage. Good marriages are good for America. Therefore good sex is good for America (I should run for president).
Ok, let's try an animal analogy, just to drive the point all the way into the ground: horses need to be ridden. When horses aren't ridden, they get bored and frustrated. Sometimes they fight, biting and kicking each other in unpleasant ways. Sometimes they wander off into neighboring fields, not because there was anything wrong with the home field, but simply because nothing was happening there.
Don't let this happen to you.
Take the reigns into your own hands and go out for a ride right now.
Oh and ps. When I say "marriage," I mean relationship. But I'm old-fashioned and straight and my context is my context and so I use the word marriage rather than something more politically correct. But see, my subject matter is already not very PC and I'm just not going to worry about it. At the end of the day I don't give a hoot who the two people are having sex in any relationship, unless of course, one of them is me. ;-)
