It's a question you're not likely to ask even your most intimate friends: how often do you have sex? As we get older, it's even more embarrassing since some studies indicate that both women's and men's sex drives can lag with the years for a lot of reasons.
Yet all around us, media images appear to imply that we should all be getting lots of sex in order to be happy. What's the reality?
According to a study in current issue of the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, many heterosexual men and woman are not satisfied with the frequency with which they have sex. Australian researchers surveyed more than 6,000 people who were married or living with a partner and found that 54 percent of the men and 42 percent of the women were unhappy with the frequency of sex – though not necessarily for the same reason.
Men complained they weren't getting enough sex, as did two-thirds of the women who complained – but another third of the women said they were having more sex than they wanted.
The New York Times interviewed the authors of this study who said that sex problems generally come from a failure to communicate. Apparently, if we all talked more with our partners about our dissatisfaction with our sex lives, we would be happier.
One of the researchers, Anthony Smith, told the Times that couples should consider setting aside time for sex – in other words, making an appointment.
I'm not sure how that would work, although I do believe that better communication is always a worthy goal. What do you think?