An answer to poor sex life: more sex
With apologies to a certain athletic footwear company, Michele Weiner-Davis has three words of advice for married couples with an unsatisfying sex life: Just do it.
That’s not exactly conventional wisdom. Therapists usually like to talk about feelings, relationship issues, lines of communication and that sort of touchy-feely stuff before they urge couples to concentrate on the physical.
But Weiner-Davis, author of “The Sex-Starved Marriage,” thinks mismatched sexual desire is probably the leading cause of marital strife and not merely a symptom of a troubled relationship. And her solution -- to encourage couples to get a little more intimate, so to speak -- has put her at the vanguard of a popular new approach to couples therapy.
“Sometimes it’s better to get couples to address their physical needs first. Just try being mad after great lovemaking,” says Weiner-Davis, a marriage therapist in suburban Chicago. “People ask me, ‘Michele, are you saying that people should have sex if they are not in the mood?’ My definitive answer is -- yes.”
The “Sex-Starved Marriage” is just one of a slew of recent books addressing the apparent satisfaction gap in the marital bed. Studies suggest that between one-quarter to one-third of married people find their sex life unsatisfying. The sudden interest in the topic seems to reflect a new willingness to explore sex more freely -- a kind of post-Oprah lack of inhibition in the culture. And Weiner-Davis’ central theme -- that sex gets better the more you do it -- may have struck a chord.
“The way I think about it is that women often don’t have that built-in desire they think they need to have for the sexual cycle to start,” says Shirley Glass, a Baltimore psychologist and author. “For women, desire isn’t necessarily the place to start. Desire can follow arousal.”
Advocates of the more-sex theory realize their message could be misinterpreted. They are not suggesting that a wife submit to her husband whenever he gets a twinkle in his eye.
But they also don’t want the decision to have sex to be entirely in the hands of the person with the lowest sex drive. “Some women believe there’s something wrong with having sex simply because your partner wants it, and that’s a problem,” says Valerie Davis Raskin, a Chicago pyschiatrist and author.
Glass, author of “Not Just Friends,” which explores marital infidelity, says it would be a mistake “to see Michele’s work as going back to the days when women had a ‘wifely duty.’ ” Women still have to have the option of saying no, she says.
“Sometimes women are reluctant to begin any kind of sexual intimacy because their partner will take it as a commitment to go all the way,” says Glass. “We need to get couples to agree to get affectionate, to snuggle, touch and fondle. Sometimes that will lead to a full sexual experience and sometimes it won’t.”
There is no ideal amount of sex in a marriage, she adds. There’s only too little when one or both partners are dissatisfied with its frequency.
