RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
| Subject: No sex please, we're married Mon Dec 02, 2013 11:52 pm | |
| Almost as soon as couples sit side by side on the sofa in my therapy room, they start to pour out the details of their latest rows, each other's bad habits, miserable childhoods and mutual recriminations. It's easy to get caught up in the drama acted out in front of me and to forget to ask about the one subject that they almost never volunteer: sex. And when I do bring up the state of their love life, they exchange embarrassed glances, as if asking each other's permission to speak.
"When we do, it's very nice," said Sarah, a 30-year-old management consultant and one of my patients. "We're very close and we enjoy cuddling and Sunday morning lie-ins," added Jake, her lawyer husband. "That's something you'd miss if we had children."
If I'd given them half a chance, they would have reverted to their arguments about when was the right time to start a family and fertility issues.
However, when I probed deeper, neither Sarah nor Jake could remember the last time they had had sex. It soon became clear they were in what sex therapists call a "sex-starved relationship" - which means less than 10 times a year. (Low sex is defined as only every other week.) Worse still, their love life had been dwindling over a long period - "probably since after we got married," admitted Sarah - and, although they had sought advice from a fertility clinic, they had waited five years before seeking help from me.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/no-sex-please-were-married-20131203-2ynar.html#ixzz2mNtWxeGE |
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