More Sex Improves Marriages

More sex more of the time is a great thing for a marriage. At least it was for two couples who had been married for a number of years, who did it as an experiment, and wrote books about it.

Sounds like something that those of us in the over-50 set might give some though to. It is simply too easy as the years pass to add habit upon habit, assumption upon assumption, until we look in the mirror and wonder how we became who we appear to be now. When you think about the stages of relationships, you can see that while most of us find some comfortable level at which to settle, it is always possible to set the movement back in motion with some change.

Often this is one that happens to us. We have no choice. It is exciting to see someone who has made a choice and reaped rewards.

Their books are: Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!) by Doug Brown and 365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy by Charla Muller with Betsy Thorpe.

In an excellent recent article, WEB MD looks into just how more sex improves marriages.

Well, they quoted the authors of the books about how it had affected their lives and they talked to some experts about what might have been going on. Which is cool.

Just because it isn't the outcome of a study including 10,000 couples doesn't make it any less potentially valuable for you and me. I mean, what if 98% of couples got nothing out of it and I and you and I are in the 2%? Do we care?

I do wonder about how the general tendencies of male psychology and female psychology relative to sex.

As usual for me, I just don't know. On the surface of it I find myself thinking "great! let's go." When I stop for about 10 seconds I realize that there are a lot of things that I would have to do to really make that happen and I wonder how I would really deal with them. It is very unlikely that life just goes on as ever and you add in more sex.

Divorce Is A Tough Deal At Best

No matter how you slice it or dice it, divorce is hard on everyone involved. Maybe it is the best that you can do, but don't get the idea that it is easy or a positive step forward as some divorce lawyers' webites would have you believe.

Before you talk to divorce lawyers or mediators, get yourself a course in the realities of getting divorced

• financial
  
• emotional
  
• children
  
• odds of getting right the second time.
  

Remember that they are in the business of getting you divorced, not saving marriages. Don't expect them to be able to answer questions that are rightly only answered by you. Should you divorce? Yours/What will it cost? Theirs/How will it affect your children? Yours/ etc.

It is a lot cheaper financially and emotionally to do everything you can to
save your marriage before you head for the lawyer's office.

And, let's not forget both the spiritual costs and opportunities afforded by this intensely personally challenging situation. There are excellent resources available to save your Christian marriage.

In one of my favorite quotes that is usually misquoted, Grantland Rice (a great sports writer from the 1930's) said: "When you meet that great scorekeeper in the sky, he will ask you not if you won or lost, but how you played the game."

Also, for those of you in the AARP age range, I have a growing website that talks about these kinds of things too www.Better-Relationships-Over-50.com/divorce.html. I don't purport to have all the answers (or even all the questions), but it is an honest attempt to put out some good stuff.

Senior Dating

Senior dating may just be the stealth topic of the new century, what with all the fluidity in relationships and increasing life expectancies we're seeing here.

Most of us move too quickly in this regard. Probably because the whole endeavor is full of nervousmaking parts, we tend to want to get through it and on to the "real thing."

The flaw in that approach of course is that everything we do is the real thing and the only point at which we are alive is right here right now.

So, dating as an art and an experience in and of itself is under-appreciated. If you're over-50 and single, you might want to consider giving it a new look.

David Burns wrote a charming book on the topic a number of years ago called Intimate Connections.

There are some opening comments about what not to do if you do decide to datehere.

Money & Power in Relationships Over-50

It has been opined that sex really isn't the hardest subject for people to talk about and that what really is hardest for the most people to talk about is money. Afterall, money and power go hand in hand and the subject of power makes lots of people squirm when it is too out in the open.

Since talking is our main conflict management tool in relationships and money is so often involved in how we interact whether we are conscious of it or not, this is an important topic.


The NY Times had an eye-opening article on the state of money and relationships in the younger set in big cities where women are doing very well for themselves in terms of making money and finding it is not necessarily helpful in making friends.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/fashion/23whopays.html?ex=1348200000&en=6e7e1ec5c4d2a26d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink


Once we enter into the senior-years zone, whatever that is, it can get even trickier. It's not just "what I earn/what you earn", "my beliefs about spending and saving/your beliefs about spending and saving". Now you can add in "what I have inherited/what you have inherited", "what my kids are afraid I am going to blow/what your kids are afraid you are going to blow", etc. etc.

And the old one size fits all advice that you have to talk about it is right, but how the heck do you really do that?

Twenty or more years ago a psychologist named Richard Stuart applied cognitive social learning theory to the problem and came up with some very specific suggestions, steps, forms to fill out, etc. that can still be very helpful when it comes to actually talking about money in the relationship (and lots of other issues too).

A description of Stuart's work in this area and some specific ideas for applying it to typical "over-50's" issues can be found at: http://www.better-relationships-over-50.com/power-in-relationships.html