Are We Making Love Enough?

While researching and writing He’s Just Not Up For It Anymore. Why Men Stop Having Sex and What You Can Do About It (HarperCollins/William Morrow, 2008) we began to be amazed that any couples were still having sex. Consider the tens of millions of prescriptions written yearly in America for depression, diabetes, high blood pressure, and weight-loss, and the fact that a lot of those medications have libido-lowering side affects. Realize that a depressed person probably won’t feel like making love without medication, either. More than 30% of American men are classified as obese, and obesity in men is strongly linked to erectile dysfunction, yet another passion killer. Even birth control pills eliminates sex drive in some women. And then there is the anger, disappointment, and Internet pornography, problems at work, kids, aging parents, much too much to do, and unrealistic expectations.

This gets us to your question, which is really about those unrealistic expectations. After all, you seem happy in your marriage and with the frequency of your love life, and here’s a couple that throws down the sexual gauntlet. “Let’s make love every night,” they say, “no exceptions, no excuses, for 101 nights in a row.” It’s an intriguing idea. We are a nation where 40 million people in committed relationships are having partnered sex less than 10 times a year, so this couple intends to have more sex in three months than those 40 million will have in the next 10 years.

Let’s start with our answer: You have absolutely nothing to be concerned about as long as you are both satisfied with the frequency of your lovemaking.

It’s probably never possible for most couples to recapture the early stages of a relationship, when making love every day is the norm, rather than something extraordinary enough to write a book about. However, few couples could survive the intensity of those early days forever, with kids, careers, and everything else life tosses their way. Those days were bonding and sublime, and then, in a good and evolving relationship, lust turns into a committed, contented Sunday kind of love. There is still a sexual relationship, but it may well be no more frequent than once every week or two. Passion gets revived on vacation, or a surprise weekend away to a B&B, or a night when the kids stay at their grandparents.

However, there can be something very healing, and even seductive, about this type of “every day for 101 days” challenge. If a couple connects physically everyday, they may discover that being loving is the best thing about making love, and orgasms may lose their importance. Indeed, many couples don’t make love more often because they have forgotten that sex is about being profoundly intimate, and not, necessarily, about orgasm. Orgasms are wonderful of course, but it would be nice if they weren’t considered to be the only reason to make love. If there’s no pressure on the woman (or man) to orgasm, and no pressure on the man to have an erection, two people may rediscover the romance and thrill of simply being close and connected. It can be a spiritual experience as well as a physical one. So many couples leave the beauty and spirituality of lovemaking behind them after a few years, and then the experience itself becomes repetitive and routine. And so, to connect in any physical, emotional, and different way as often as possible seems to us to be very positive.

However, this isn’t always realistic, and it doesn’t really matter if you make love every day or every month as long as you love and respect one another, are faithful and supportive of one another, and both agree on the level of frequency.
But, why not try connecting more frequently? You may end up even more loving to one another, and happier in your marriage, if you broaden your definition of lovemaking to include just holding each other close on a regular basis and expressing gratitude for your relationship and your love.