Within a marriage no other aspect of your lives together is as sacred as your sexual expression. If sexual relations diminish or disappear in a marriage, without an understanding and mutual agreement among the spouses, this is a major danger sign for the marriage.

However, sexuality as a dimension of marriage can never be isolated from other aspects of the relationship, especially mutual respect and communication.

The Latin root of the word “intimate” is intus, which means within. To let your partner into the most private parts within your being — those thoughts, deepest feelings, and erotic desires you share with no one else — requires trust, gentle communication, and time. When problems show up in this area, the solution must also take in many parts of the relationship. Again, because of its unique power to restore you individually and as a couple, dealing with sexual danger signs must be a high priority.

Sexual Healing

Within your sexual relationship there is emotional healing to be found for both of you. Healthy sexual expression heals, restores, and energizes. The healing comes when the two of you permit each other to become the most vulnerable and emotionally expressive that each can be. Loving sexual expression is the place where you come together in joy, pleasure, gratitude, humor, and dancing bodies. The smart couple does not allow this sacred space to be assaulted. The partners in a healthy marriage protect this place above all because of its power and healing quality. Sexuality is the glue that holds the couple together when you would prefer to just walk away. Once sexuality is disturbed, emotional healing must occur if the marriage is to continue in an intimate manner.

Frequency Matters

After asking thousands of couples in his marriage therapy practice of twenty-five years how often each partner would prefer to have sex if the other would go along with that wish, Stephen Martin reports the vast majority of men say once a day or more while most women say once a week or less. This large difference in male and female levels of sexual desire may not be the case in your marriage, but it is a frequent enough dynamic to be aware of its potential as a sign of marital trouble particularly at times of high stress, for instance, after the birth of a baby or when overtime is required of one of you at work. If the frequency of your sex has become an area of contention, the frustration and potential alienation that results for both partners can sow seeds of major trouble now or later in the marriage. Chapters 8 and 9 offer problems and solutions for this common area of marital breakdown.