Why Men Stop Having Sex With Their Wives

Which brings us to the issue of erectile dysfunction, or as the author Tom Wolfe put it, "the disease that dares not speak its name." Men have a hard enough time admitting that they have ED to themselves, much less to anyone else -- including their wives.

Indeed, many men would rather shut down sexually than have to confront their inability to get or sustain an erection. While it's true that Viagra, Cialis and Levitra are big sellers, it's just as true that only about 20 percent of the men who could use those products ever get them.

Perhaps because of the shame men associate with impotence, relatively few of them report to us that ED is the reason they've stopped making love to their wives. On the other hand, when we poll women, they are far more likely to identify their husbands' erection difficulties as the culprit for his loss of desire.

About one in three men tell us they've had affairs after they stopped having sex with their wives. Four percent say they've realized they are gay, which incidentally is about the same as national population of gay men in America. Much of what we hear from the men who respond to our survey seems to suggest they have not lost interest in sex, just in being sexual with their wives.