17 May, 2010

Make love not dinner

For many women exhausted by today’s doing-it-all pace of life, a night on the sofa with a Sex and the City box set is a more tempting option than a night of passion with their partner. But saying yes to sex (whether or not you’re in the mood) will increase your desire – and do wonders for your relationship.

Sarah is always full of good intentions when it comes to having sex with Paul, her husband of 12 years. It’s just that the 42-year-old mother of two never quite seems to get round to living up to them.

‘I’m acutely aware that we haven’t made love for several weeks now and each morning I wake up thinking ‘I’m going to make an effort tonight,’ she admits. ‘Then when the evening does come round I’m so exhausted from working and looking after the children that it’s as much as I can do to sit upright and watch a BBC drama, never mind find the energy to make love.’

It’s not an unfamiliar story, of course – so much so that the weary doing-it-all modern woman for whom sex is at the bottom of the to-do list has become something of a modern cliché. Certainly the statistics back it up: numerous studies have shown that women’s desire diminishes after a few years of sharing a bed. While 60 per cent of 30-year-old women wanted sex often at the beginning of a relationship, within four years this figure had fallen to 50 per cent and after 20 years it dropped to 20 per cent. Meanwhile, the proportion of men wanting regular sex stayed constant at between 60 and 80 per cent. Read more >>

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