Silk pyjamas? Check. Porn? Check. Sex 365 times a year? It worked for two married couples in the United States. But just because goal-oriented sex cured their mid-marriage fatigue doesn't mean it will spice up yours. Siri Agrell reports
If you want to get in shape, it goes without saying you should exercise regularly.
To become a proficient musician or golfer, practise makes perfect.
But when it comes to sex, is repetition really the path to success?
Two new books chronicle the efforts of two very different married couples living in the United States who decided to step up their sex lives, and then some.
Earning comparisons to Super Size Me, the documentary that saw Morgan Spurlock eat nothing but McDonald's for a month, each pair decided to indulge their carnal appetites on a daily basis in an attempt to reinvigorate their relationships.
In Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses), Douglas Brown and his wife, Annie, go on a "sexpedition" that sees them incorporating not just a new sexual schedule, but silk pyjamas, porn and other adventurous accessories.
And in 365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy by Charla Muller and co-author Betsy Thorpe, Ms. Muller gives a year of regular and unlimited sex to her husband, Brad, as a 40th birthday present.
Both couples saw the experiment as a necessary infusion of passion into their increasingly staid sex lives.
The Browns had been together for 14 years when they began their jiggy journey, married for 11 and parents for almost seven.
And it's not that they didn't have sex. Mr. Brown writes that they got it on about once a week, their occasional dry spells lasting no more than six weeks.
The sex hadn't disappeared, but the spontaneity, fun and intimacy of their physical relationship had evaporated.
"We talked endlessly about where to live. We held confab after confab about how to raise our daughters. We routinely engaged in long discussions about our jobs and our dreams," wrote Mr. Brown, a journalist with The Denver Post.
"But sex? We did not spend time mutually examining this activity that propelled our union beyond the realm of friendship."
The Mullers, too, were happily married parents of two, living in Charlotte, N.C., when Ms. Muller decided she needed to take matters into her own hands.
They had sex between 26 and 28 times a month throughout the year, although some months were harder than others (pun intended).
According to the 2005 Global Sex Survey by condom maker Durex, Canadians have sex on average 108 times a year. Whether this is enough is a matter for debate. The same survey found 46 per cent of Canadians were happy with their sex lives and 45 per cent said they wished they had sex more frequently.
But is an extreme sex marathon a good idea for couples struggling with mid-marriage blahs?
Guy Grenier, a couples counsellor, author and sex therapist in London, Ont., said novelty does breed interest and scheduling sex is not a bad idea for those who worry about fizzling passion.
"One of the rules of keeping sex interesting is to keep having sex," he said. "It's a use-it-or-lose-it kind of behaviour."
When couples stop having sex, Dr. Grenier says, stigma builds around getting started again. He believes it is better to have sex regularly, even if it "isn't great sex," than to stop altogether.
But at the same time, he cautions against going too far.
Good sex is rarely formulaic, Dr. Grenier said, and just because one couple (or two) benefited from a calendar year of coitus doesn't mean it will work for you.
Any kind of goal-oriented sex, whether you are hoping to reach orgasm in unison or to have sex every day, sets dangerous expectations that can breed anxiety, distraction and sexual dysfunction.
"Having sex 365 days in a row, that's the epitome of goal-oriented sex," Dr. Grenier said. "Sex is supposed to be recreation, fun, intimate."
Novelty, too, is a stimulus, especially for couples who have been together for years, he said.
One of the most common roadblocks to regular sex is a discrepancy of desire, Dr. Grenier said, but he added it is also one of the easiest problems to solve.
Usually, a lack of desire is a product of outside influences that have little to do with the compatibility of the couple.
With one couple Dr. Grenier treated, it was revealed that the wife's conflict with her mother was affecting her sex drive. In another case, a man's unresolved emotions concerning the death of his father had put a damper on his desire.
"It can be as simple as not knowing how to talk about it or somebody has a body odour issue, or bad technique," Dr. Grenier said. "I had one couple where all we had to do was put a lock on their door."
In that case, the wife was terrified of being caught in the act by the kids and was embarrassed about admitting her hang-up to her liberal-minded husband.
Although neither the Browns nor the Mullers maintained their lay-a-day schedule after the experiment was over, the project seems to have been successful in bringing excitement and eroticism back into their bedrooms.
Like everything in the human condition, desire operates on a continuum and there is no standard number of times a couple should be having sex, as long as everyone's satisfied, Dr. Grenier said.
"Wanting to have sex once a month is not a problem; wanting to have sex once a day is not a problem," he said. "But if someone wants it once a day and the other wants it once a year, the middle ground is never going to work for either one of them."
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