I read
a really interesting NYTimes article a while ago that made never want to get married - it's a quick read and has some points I hadn't thought of. Here's a selection:
Married men and women, on average, have sex with their spouse 58 times a year, a little more than once a week, according to data collected from the General Social Survey, which has tracked the social behaviors of Americans since 1972. But there are wide variations in that number. Married people under 30 have sex about 111 times a year. And it’s estimated that about 15 percent of married couples have not had sex with their spouse in the last six months to one year, according to Denise A. Donnelly, associate professor of sociology at Georgia State University, who has studied sexless marriage.
There are 52 weeks in a year, so that means once a week plus his/her birthday, plus your birthday, plus Valentine's Day, plus...three other days (Arbor Day?). And that's it.
Granted, this is a sampling, so a bunch of people have far more and far less sex than this indicates. But still...the idea of only having sex once a week is a little scary for me.
I know priorities change and when you grow up, you're more interested in your kids than yourself, but I think it's really important to spend, uh, quality time with your spouse.
Why do you think people's sex lives drop off after they get married? Is it being busy, having new priorities or something else?
Also, for your time, here's Flight of The Conchords with a relevant ditty:
Recommend
Comments (26)
I love them. FotC rock my biznus socks.
Maybe the novelty wears off? Also, there's jobs & kids & people are just more busy. It sucks, but that's how it is for some people.
I like that show.
i dont think thats that bad? i mean. idk. right now we have sex all the time but we dont usually see each other more than once or twice a week, cause of long distance. i mean we do a bunch when we see each other, but yeah i'd imagine with it being readily available all the time - i'd maybe want a few days of space to ensure that the spark is always still there.
besides, it seems like the younger people are still going at it like crazy.
good show & good voice .
haha!
58 times a year hardly sounds so terrible. As you say, that's once a week, plus both birthdays, anniversary, v-day, and some three other occasions.
Which seems like quite a lot to me.
so you're saying ... if I want more business, I should keep my gf forever, or just stay engaged for the rest of my life :D
Once a week is not bad. Not bad at all when you really think about it.
After a long day at work, you just wanna come home and rest.
Once a week... not nearly enough.
The sex decreases after couples have kids. Most married couples under 30 don't have kids, or not as many as couples over 30. Plus, well, problems arise later on. ;]
...I don't see what would make once a week so horrible, myself. Plus, health-wise, isn't the benificial 'cap' 3 times a week? (More than that, and your immunities to illness go down or something like that).
Seriously, in my experience, I've been in some extremes (...twenty times in a night...vs. abstinence for over a year now [long story, but anyhow]), and it's always seemed to be better with a few nights in between. So, once a week sounds fine. (Ok, I'd probably go for 2-3 times a week, but still...)
i don't think once a week is that bad either...technically it's a bit more than once a week too...
once a week is pretty bad.. i mean, you have a workaholic husband and equally busy wife who might have at least one kid... damn, this makes me not want to have kids... but yeah, you find time when you can and make time if you can't. lol.
with my last ex, i think we only saw eachother once a week but we made up for our quality time during the WHOLE day and it definitely outnumbers the married couples of that survey. i hope to never lose that "passion" with my husband even if we hit our late 40s and 50s as gross it may be for my future children. it's not healthy!!! O_o
lol not surprised with the statistics
wow I love how you randomly put fotc in there I fucking love you <3
Once a week is better than once a year.
Anyway, it's not the marriage that causes that. I don't see why that should put anyone off from getting married. It's the people in the relationship that allow that to happen. They have a million reasons not to do it, therefore they rarely do. A lot of people even seem to think that rare sexual encounters with their spouses is normal for married people. Meh. It depends. Some people who've been married 20+ years have sex more than 4 times a week on average.
I don't think once a week is bad. In fact I think it's great for an older couple to still be having sex that often. And quality time with the spouse doesn't always have to mean having sex. I always thought having too much sex would make the couple bored, in some cases.
i don't think once a week is bad but i'm just a person that wants it at least once a day. i'm not married so i can't speak on behalf of the married people why their sex life has gone down. but i did date a guy that after a long day at work, he didn't want to have sex unless he was in the mood for it. may be some people just have different sex drives.
I'd say it's after they have kids. Before we had our son, we did it all the time, now, about once a week. We have to wait until he's sleeping, or we just don't feel like it
pretty notebooks!
It's the kids. They suck the joy/life out of everything you once knew and loved. Then you become your parents.
Bills can kill the mood dramatically.
I think that number is tragically low. I start to get all antsy after a twenty-four hour period without sex.
if my SO was dtf as much as i was, we wouldnt get out of bed FOR DAYS