For Better or Worse: Sex & Marriage
By Eric Payne
I hosted a poll on my blog last week that asked readers to finish the following sentence:
“Marriage has made my sex life…”
The choices were:
• Better
• Worse
• The Same
• Don’t Know – I Abstained Before Marriage
41% of people who responded answered, Better; 37% answered, Worse; 11% answered, The Same; and 11% answered, Don’t Know – I Abstained.
God Bless the women and/or one man who chose to abstain prior to marriage. In answering this way, I hope they knew the question was asking whether or not they were celibate, period versus simply abstaining prior to marriage with their fiancé.
I was happy to see that the Betters won the poll, but I was also surprised. Like any tight election a single vote made the difference, providing a very slim 4% margin of victory.
Not accounting for gender, why were the results so close? Isn’t marriage the place where sex is supposed to flourish? The children we love are supposed to be the product of marital intimacy. With love and happiness, inhibitions should fall away. Outside of working around the kids schedules, if you have kids, it’s 100% safe and free of complications. And the angst that comes being judged by the opposite sex should be completely non-existent. Familiarity (not a bad word when teamed with love) should be a spark for intimacy, rather than its downfall. But is it? Or in each of these cases is the exact opposite true and then some?
What do you think? Take the same survey here at BMWK then let’s see what happens.
[poll id="26"]
Eric Payne lives with his wife and kids just outside of New York City and writes about married life and fatherhood at MakesMeWannaHoller.com. He also writes a fatherhood column at MochaManual.com. He is the author of I See Through Eyes, a book of poetry and short stories. His short fiction has appeared in Spindle Magazine and DiddleDog Magazine.
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