The joke I’ve heard is:
During the first year of your sexual relationship, drop a penny in a jar every time you have sex. After that first year, take a penny *out *of the jar every time you have sex. You’ll never empty the jar.
Bravo for the Grandparents From Hell! My grandparent’s are very similar and are approaching their 70th in a few years. My half-sister used to get squicked out at the concept of them still having sex and she went nearly apoplectic when she found Grandpa’s viagara. Me? I think that it is fantastic and I hope someday to be in my 90’s and tappin’ some ass. :eek:
Way to go, Grandpa! 
And I agree, the cherishing and cuddling is at least as important. Somewhere around here recently I posted my experience of how human touch saved my life when I was an infant; why should this change when we are grown up? People need to be held and supported, and it feels so damn good to hold and support.
That’s quite true. Many people, though, don’t know how to ask for or give that holding and support without sex. But that’s fine if it’s fine with them.
There have been studies that say a women’s sex drive decreases when she’s in a secure relationship (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/health/4790313.stm).
Anecdotes all, and five data points does not a survey make, but for what it’s worth:
Friend 1: sex was great until the Child showed up, at which point his wife turned into the classic “Not tonight, dear, I have a headache”. For the next eight years. shudder They’re still married but he’s taken to visiting “Oriental Health Spas” with his wife’s blessing. Whatever works for them I guess.
Friend 2: He’s been married more times than I like to think about, always goes after women who are depressive (clinically), and can’t seem to grasp that riding in on his white steed isn’t going to magically fix the depression. According to him, women use sex to get the ring on your finger so they can bleed you dry. I don’t hang out with him much any more.
Friend 3: claims that his wife was a prude until they got married, at which point the raging nympho came out of the closet. They’re going on six years married if I remember correctly. If he’s not bragging (and judging by the way she, er, tries to distract him while we’re gaming), they get it on about every two hours. Okay, I exaggerate, but still. I’ve seen new teen couples who paw each other less. (I’m sorta jealous.)
Friend 4: had great, wonderful, mind-blowing sex (he claims) until his wife got pregnant. The baby is not quite a year old and he’s got a permanent frustrated look on his face. I haven’t asked, but I’m guessing he’s not getting any yet.
Myself: not as often as I’d like, but nowhere near as rare as when I was single. I’d say it’s about as often as when we were dating. I’m married three years this year.
My theory goes something like this: I think that the only married guys who complain are the ones who aren’t getting any. The rest of us are too content to bother voicing an opinion. It makes it sound worse than it actually is, since all you ever hear about is the bad ones.
I would say the frequency of sex has gone down sinceour marriage lo these ten years but that is easily attributed to kids, work, In-laws etc…
The quality of the sex we do have has gone up exponentially though.
This certainly isn’t true in my experience, but my wife’s best friend got married just over a year ago and she and her husband can count on two hands the number of times they’ve had sex since then. And it’s not her problem, either - he’s the one who’s not interested. They don’t have kids, they don’t have jobs, they’re both college students living off of trust funds and the money they got for their wedding. But he’s from Brooklyn and now they’re living in Alabama, and he stays up every night until 3 or 4 in the morning playing Dungeons and Dragons online with all his New York friends. And get this: When she confronted him about the fact that my wife and I manage to, uh, “maintain our relationship” even with two kids and two full-time jobs, he said, “Well, it’s just that you’ve gained weight since you got married.”
She weighs maybe 20 pounds more now than she did then, and she still weighs less than she did in high school, when they met.
I give the marriage another six months.
So, your first statement is based on the experience you gained from. . .???
The problem when you’re single (or when I was single) is that you’re either getting great romping sex in crazy three month bursts, or you’re mired in an 8 month dry spell and you just KNOW you’re giving off the stink.
It’s the second part of that that’s the problem.
If getting married means you have the opportunity to deepen your love and share your life with the one person you most want to share it with, then sex will be a satisfying, exclusive, and intimate expression of that love. It will be the one thing you can share only with each other and no one else, and it will become a bond that makes you an unbeatable team.
If getting married means you don’t really get to live your own life because you always have to keep the other person’s needs in mind, sex will go the way of everything else in the marriage – mostly down the crapper.
Nothing will ever match the white-hot heat of young love passion. As you settle into a marriage, frequency will diminish some (how much depends on the other demands on each of you) but quality should improve. Yes, sex can be boring, but if it is, you need to talk about why. It’s hard to talk about sex, but you’ll have to.
I use woodworking as a metaphor for a lot of things in life, including sex/marriage. At first, it was just so much damn fun to tear into the lumber, and glue and clamp and drill and screw and nail and all those other euphemism we use. The results weren’t very good, but it was lots of fun and I just couldn’t wait to do it again. Over time I learned new techniques, got better wood, bought finer tools and just got experience. Now my projects, while not yet perfect, are things of real beauty, and the making of them is immensely satisfying. I don’t get into the shop as often as I used to but when I do, it’s really, really good. If ya’ know what I mean.
Pre-Marriage: My psycho ex promised me the Moon and Stars. She would never turn me down, so she said, even if I woke her at 3am. Never mind that this promise was broken 3 days later in the middle of the day.
Post-Marriage: She didn’t feel like it (depression), she was mad at me (psycho), she wasn’t feeling good (depression), she had a headache, blah, blah, blah. We were down to about twice a month at the end.
So from my perspective, all the promises about sex (just like every other promise she ever made) were bullshit, false pretenses to lure me in.
But then, my ex-wife is certifiably insane, so YMMV.
Jesus. . .and even after you made her promise she would never turn you down. . .
Does marriage make more of a difference to a couple’s sex life than moving in together or a long-term relationship? I can’t see how a ceremony and a piece of paper could fundamentally alter a relationship more than a total lifestyle change (e.g. buying a house or having kids).
And don’t forget, guys aren’t the only ones who play ‘friend, f*ck or marry.’
Wait a second; he didn’t say he made her promise; she might have volunteered that.
Cat Fight, I’d be tempted to say that the biggest changes to sex lives would come from moving in together and having children. If you live together before you marry, I don’t think the sex frequency would change all that much after the ceremony, but living together provides all kinds of opportunities you didn’t have before. Well, and buying that hanging swing for the bedroom, too, but that goes without saying.
After at least 3,000 times, all I can say is speak for yourself.
I dated someone that was very inexperienced when he and his first wife married. He had heard the tale that sex slowed down once you marry and thought it was normal. When I asked how much it slowed down, he said it went from about once a month when they first married to about once every three to four months after they married. Finally he confided in a friend who assured him that that was not normal.
:smack:
Point taken.
It’s still kind of beside the point, though. If a promise that “I’ll always have sex” has to be made going in, that marriage is doomed already. Like it’s starting out with bargaining.
It’s like saying the idea of sex is, “I have needs and you’re going to meet them”.
I think sunrazor said it well. . .
I think that kids do more to slow things down than marriage per se. I will submit that, after marriage, things tend to become more vanilla and, as the years grind on, less frequent, but it’s not necessarily less satisfying. It’s more routine – it can get mechanical – but there’s a comfort level there too. You don’t need to swing from the ceilings any more to be gratified.
Aging plays a role too. I’m not as horny in my 40’s as I was in my 20’s.
It all depends who you marry. Choose wisely, Grasshopper.
I guess I’ll be the little ray of darkness in this otherwise sunny thread -
It’s a cruel joke indeed, but not necessarily untrue.