Unfortunately too many people believe that marital sex will be boring sex, or infrequent sex, or just unsatisfying sex.
That’s not really the way you want to view intimacy with your lifelong partner!
Sex is a vital part of your relationship. Science is clear about that. To forgo the psychological, emotional, and physical benefit of sexual connection in your marriage is to lose too much of the chemistry that helps solidify your mutual connection.
A marriage without sex, most sex therapists would agree, may even cause the relationship to fail.
There are several research-based reasons that sex should always be a vital part of marriage.
Here’s why your sex therapist and national researchers agree that the more sex you have together the better:
There is a wealth of scientific data to support claims that sexually vibrant marriages are beneficial to both partners. Consider some of the known physical benefits:
Stress relief and improved sleep. After sex, bodies relax, tensions dissolve, and sleep comes more easily.
Improved immune system. Certain antibodies occur in higher numbers among couples who have sex often. These couples are more able to defend against illness and disease.
A healthy form of exercise. Sex as a regular activity encourages circulation and firms and stretches the muscles. In fact, active sex can help you burn off around 200 calories each time.
Lowered mortality rate. Having sex twice a week, due to an assorted number of benefits to your heart and nervous system, may help add up to two years to your chronological age.
Improved efficiency of the heart, respiratory, and musculoskeletal systems. Improved heart health, lowered systolic blood pressure, reduced risk of stroke and heart attack, better posture, and joint lubrication are attributed to frequent sex.
Improves overall pelvic health. Bladder control and pelvic floor muscles are benefited in women. Frequent ejaculation for men appears to lessen the risk of prostate cancer.
Boosts the libido. More sex tends to improve desire, longevity, and the likelihood of orgasm. Regular activity increases blood flow, vaginal lubrication, and physical compatibility, improving the odds that you’ll enjoy sex more and have it more often.
Reduces pain. Studies show that the endorphins elevated by sex help reduce pain, even pain associated with migraines, the lower back, and menstrual cramps.
Enhanced memory. Frequent sexual activity produces brain chemicals that stimulate new nerve cell dendrites, helping to improve brain function.
Contrary to cultural perception, scientists have discovered that marital sex, on the whole, was not unsatisfying, confining, or undesirable for most couples. In fact, the more sex couples had the more they wanted. And, consequently, the happier they were.
A research team at Dartmouth studying 16.000 people determined that increasing sex from once a month to once a week generates the same amount of happiness as earning an extra $50,000 per year!
Sex is such a definitive and positive aspect of marital happiness that it is linked to the following mental, emotional and relational benefits:
Deeper levels of intimacy and commitment
Higher self-esteem
Decreased sense of relationship insecurity
A higher level of emotional connection
Improved attitude and outlook
Reduces anxiety and inspires more calm
Less irritability
Lowers depression/ depressive thinking
Decreases mental/ emotional stress relief
Researchers put it this way: a committed relationship is an investment. Investments, properly cared for, yield a return.
Basically, studies of long-term, committed relationships find that if you put in the sexual work you actually don’t feel bored, you feel bonded.
Why? You become more connected and satisfied by the accumulated and specific knowledge of each other’s sexual preferences, needs, and desires. You gain what the scientists describe as “partner-specific capital.”
The more sex you have, the more you become sexual experts in each other’s needs and wants. While novelty is important to incorporate, the accumulated knowledge of what turns each of you on is deeply intimate and immensely satisfying.
Why suffer when sex offers you, your spouse, and your relationship so much?
Deterioration in this area of your lives together is not natural or inevitable. Whatever it is that keeps you from enjoying such a pleasurable and fulfilling part of your relationship is worth correcting.
Working with a sex therapist to break through your sexual difficulties can do wonders for your individual health and the health of your relationship. Are you ready to feel healthier, happier, and connected again?
Other articles of interest:
Can A No Sex Marriage Survive The Long Haul?
Do You Desire More Or Less Sex Than Your Partner?
Click here to learn more about creating a better sex life.
About the Author
Dr. Stan Hyman is a licensed psychotherapist, life coach and Board Certified Clinical Sexologist in private practice in Miami, Florida. He works with couples struggling with powerful issues such as infidelity, careers, intimacy and other sexual issues addressing them in a safe, non-judgmental environment. He also specializes in treating addictions, anger, anxiety, stress, depression and work life balance.
Call or email for a cost-free telephone consultation. Services are rendered either the office located at 2999 NE 191 St. Suite 703, Miami, Florida 33180 or through video conference via Skype or Face Time. Serving all of the greater Miami, Florida area or, through video conference, anywhere that there is a broadband internet connection.
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