Wow, this is a new one. You are used to scheduling dinner dates. Probably accustomed to scheduling vacations and definitely able to schedule other important events in your life. But scheduling sex with your spouse? Is that really necessary? And even more important, is it okay?
The answers to these questions are pretty clear when you look at the sexual dynamic in most marriages. According to The New York Times, married couples have sex with their partners an average of 58 times per year. This equates to a little more than once a week. By some estimates, this number is said to be on the high end, as couples surveyed lied in order to save face with society. The most sexually active married couples are those under 30, who are studied to have sex around 111 times per year. However, there are plenty of couples who although happily married, admit to’ not having sex with their partners in months or even years. In fact, in 15% of marriage, couples admit to going 6 months or more without any sexual encounters. Obviously, for married folks this news is not new at all. You know that sex has declined after the I do’s. What you might not know is that new research seems to indicate that when sex leaves the marriage, trouble is on the horizon.
For most couples, sex just fades. This seems to indicate that scheduling sex with your spouse, may be one way to keep it at the forefront of marriage. The bottom line is that when your parents were preparing you for marriage they weren’t disclosing their own sexual habits. As we have become more forthright in society however it is clear that sex definitely takes a toll on intimacy. There are plenty of valid reasons why yet the end result is a disconnect between couples that can make it hard to reconnect under the sheets. The longer you go without sex, the harder it is to bridge the gap.
A University of Georgia research study also found that couples in sexless marriage aren’t as happy as their romping counterparts. The study showed that most people in sexless marriage thought about both’ infidelity and divorce more often. Even more troubling is that the hump of not having sex, even if caused by natural things like childbirth or illness is very difficult (if not impossible) for many couples to move past. In order to do so, couples must literally cut to the chase and take a highly ambitious and proactive measure to make changes. Score another one for scheduling sex with your partner.
When couples quit being intimate with one another for whatever reason both men and women feel an unspoken rejection. The individuals may translate this into a lack of desire or begin thinking that their spouse doesn’t feel they are sexy. For many couples, the sex declines either after an act of infidelity or when the pitter-patter of little feet hit the hardwood floors. The reasons here are obvious. Yet when a couple goes up to 6 months without intimacy, the floodgates of resentment and rejection are bound to open. Because couples feel so insecure about the lack of sex, it can be difficult for them to talk about it with the other. Then they get involved in a competition of wills that has them waiting for the other person to initiate sex.
Scheduling sex with your partner can put an abrupt stop to all of this. The bottom line is that couples need to be honest and forthright when it comes to how much sex they want. If the husband wants to have sex 3 times a week, then he needs to tell his wife that. She on the other hand, should take this interest as a healthy sign of the marriage and give her opinion as well. If the couple can take this idea of 3 times a week and run with it, then they will more than likely make time for sex. While it isn’t so romantic to actually put an x on the calendar on the days that you will have sex it is at least a positive and upfront way to deal with a problem that often lurks in the closets of most marriages. Plus, it multiplies into an increase of intimacy that will begin allowing the couple to enjoy sex again, without the schedule.
Two couples who have suffered this same problem decided to enlist in a challenge by CBS news designed to reveal whether 365 nights of sex could actually improve a marriage. The results, featured in a book called The Sexperiment found that overwhelming the answer was yes. When they decided they would have sex 365 days in a row, these two long-term couples reconnected both physically and emotionally. IN order for this to work both partners had to take an open approach to how they felt about sex and marriage. They also needed to lose their inhibitions and literally jump in feet first to a pool that had long gone cold. This isn’t to say that it was easy at first. It was awkward, forced, and eventually humorous. Yet the end result was clear, scheduling sex with your partner is definitely an easy, efficient and plausible way to bolster the marriage.
Undeniably, both couples in this experiment learned that the psychological connectivity of having sex is not just about the sex act itself. It is planted deeply in the desire elements of the relationship and affects the way couples feel about each other and themselves. Respect, kindness, happiness all increased and stress decreased. One reason in particular is that when couples decide to take a proactive and common sense approach to sex and specifically to having more sex, they are better able to communicate and lose the anxiety that not having sex causes.
If you are in a slump, then resist the worries about being seen as simple or shallow and start scheduling sex. Just tell your sex, we are going to have sex tonight. Then do it. Sex is important to a marriage and represents many of the feelings that brought the two of you together in the first place. Not having sex spells trouble, no matter what the reasons are. Scheduling sex with your partner can be the perfect way to keep your marriage alive.
