Are Sex-Free Marriages Always a Bad Thing?

Relationships lose the sex factor in a variety of ways. Both partners may have a very low sex drive and choose not to have sex very often. Sometimes, however, life gets in the way: A couple’s sexual satisfaction may be disrupted by pregnancy or a new baby, health problems, or aging in general.

Epstein remembers a psychology professor who said this: When sex is good, it’s 5 percent of the marriage, but when it’s bad, it’s 95 percent of the marriage. “The key is to understand what’s good and bad,” he says. Good means that each person’s sexual needs are being met. Bad means that at least one person’s needs are not being met.

If both members of the couple have a very low sex drive and their needs are being met, then they can have a perfectly happy, sexless marriage, he says.

When there’s a physical reason behind the lack of sex, such as a health problem, and both members of the couple have agreed that they’re okay with their rate of sexual activity as a result, they can also be happy. After all, couples can hug, cuddle, hold hands, give each other back rubs, spoon, and be intimate in other ways.

Problems occur when there’s an imbalance. This could happen if one partner has a low sex drive and the other has a high sex drive — even if they both started out with similar sex drives and then one’s sexual satisfaction needs changed, or if one partner develops a health issue, such as incontinence, that leads them to shy away from sex, and the other partner isn’t happy with the change.

Not very surprisingly, many people in sexless relationships aren’t happy. According to preliminary data that Epstein has collected from 3,000 people in the United States and Canada, 4.8 percent of men identify themselves as having a low sex drive, and more than twice as many — 10.8 percent — of women say they do.

“That’s a big difference,” Epstein says. “It suggests that females in general will be with males who have higher sex drives.”