How Important Is Sex To A Marriage?

For starters, we all know that good sex can be fun, romantic, exciting, and something that makes most consenting adults feel warm and fuzzy all over.  Over the years we have interviewed thousands of successfully married couples, and most report a reasonable degree of satisfaction with their sex life.  But here is our most important research finding concerning this issue – no marriage was ever saved or made successful because the couple had a great sex life!

And more importantly, when we ask successfully married couples how important sex is to the success of their marriage – to rank on a scale of 1-10 with 10 high – the average rank was only 6!   This finding has held true over the nearly 27 years of our research.  The results are hardly a resounding endorsement for the importance of sex in a successful marriage.

You see, marriage is a multi-faceted and highly complex relationship, and in the best marriages no one aspect stands out as the make or break part of it.  The truth is, and as we report in our new book Building a Love that Lasts:  The Seven Surprising Secrets of Successful Marriage (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, Ó2010), there are seven pervasive characteristics present in all successful marriages.  And guess what, sex is not one of them!  Sex is only part of one of the seven characteristics of a successful marriage.

As you know from our many published writings, we believe that the overemphasis on sex in books about love and marriage cause people to believe that if they don’t have stupendous sex everyday there is something wrong with their marriage.  Trust us on this – marriages that fail do so for a variety of reasons and not for a single reason.  Simply put, no marriage was ever saved or made successful because the couple had a great sex life!

**Building a Love that Lasts is now available wherever books are sold.

Read the entire article: How Important Is Sex To A Marriage?
By America’s #1 Love and Marriage Experts
Dr. Charles D. Schmitz and Dr. Elizabeth A. Schmitz
For more marriage advice visit their website Simple Things Matter