Sex and the Happy Vs. Unhappy Couple

The classic stereotype of married sex is that husbands want it a lot more than their wives. In previous posts, however, I've discussed the fact that there are many marriages in which its the wife who is frustrated by a sexually disinterested spouse. There are more men out there with low desire than most people would suspect.

I found it interesting that in Catherine Johnson's research on happy marriages, she found that in happy couples the most common sexual problem tended to be too little sex for the husband. In the unhappy couple, the sexual problem was often too little sex for the wife. She concluded that "...the 'best' sexual problem for a married couple to have..was for the husband to be actively interested in making love to a wife who was sometimes distracted by the demands of daily life."

It may be that more unhappiness results from a disinterested husband because it flies in the face of the stereotype. It's not that men don't feel any rejection when their overtures are rebuffed, but they may accept it more easily because of the assumption that men are just more 'highly sexed" than women. When women are rebuffed, they are more likely to assume that it's because their partner no longer finds them desirable.

You don't necessarily get to pick your marital problems, but in light of this research, it would be wise to question your assumptions about differences in desire. Differences are always more easily resolved from a place of understanding rather than from assumptions.