Church Supports Marriage ‘Retreat’ : Finnish Stress Remedy: Sex Holiday

A top church official today welcomed government plans for sex holidays to help people relieve the stress of everyday life.

“People’s sex lives can be really troubled by the fact they can’t get time off from their jobs, as there is too much going on,” said Liisa Tuovinen, secretary of the Lutheran Church’s board of family affairs.

“We know how much it means for people to get a chance to retreat from their everyday lives and to get the time to be together.

“I think it is good they recognize that people’s difficulties in marriage are due to the stresses in their lives and not because they are married to the wrong person or because there is something wrong with them,” she said.

A Health Ministry report this week said people suffering from stress should be able to go on sex holidays to help them recuperate and put their worries behind them.

Despite liberal sexual attitudes, the Finnish government is worried that the country’s population could fall in the future.

Riitta Auvinen, research director at the Population Research Center, said the current population of 4.9 million could rise to 5 million by 2000 but was likely to fall to 3.7 million 50 years later because of the country’s age profile.

Prime Minister Harri Holkeri joked in a speech last year that experts had calculated there would be just two Finns left in the year 3000 and raised the possibility that both of them could be of the same sex.