Not all the time. If it were, there would be even more divorces then there are.
A flood of marital guides and popular articles seem to suggest that sex is the be-all and end-all of a successful marriage. But according to studies of married men and women, sex is sometimes far less important than other factors.
The Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine conducted a study of one hundred couples who considered their marriages successful. Over 90 percent said that if they had to do it over, they would marry the same person and 80 percent viewed their sexual relations as satisfying. Yet, satisfying obviously took in a lot of territory, because more than half the women and four in ten men reported serious sexual dysfunction. And nearly a third of the couples had sexual intercourse only two or three times a month or less far below average. As the researchers observed, It is not the quality of sexual performance but the affective tone of the marriage that determines how most couples perceive the quality of their sexual relations.
Sol Gordon, a psychologist who directed the Institute for Family Research and Education at the Syracuse University and studied hundreds of marriages, placed sex behind trust, loyalty, laughter, tolerance, and adaptability as a factor in keeping marriages happy and working. Its clear love means more than romance and passion. It means really liking each other and being friends.
