A brief theory of sex and time

Personally, in my life, that is rubbish about the 10% and 90% stuff. I have crap sex, but that fact certainly does not occupy 90% of the relationship neither does it consume my marriage! lol If you allow it to, I think it could, and Hubs and I'd have been LONG ago divorced by now if that was the case.

[Good point, Dewdrop. But to be honest, though, I was thinking "sex life" not just sex. Also it's important to survey both parties in a relationship... --fl]

....I'm suggesting that it depends on how HIGH a libido one or both partners has, and how much emphasis and importance is placed on good sex regarding the percentages (and the word 'exceptions to the rule' echo in my mind).

[There are exceptions to anything you can say about relationships. Thank you, Dewdrop. --fl]

Gotta disagree with you on your math. I think that good sex can--and should--consume way more than 10% of your time. Sex, and its corresponding intimate acts like snuggling and pillow talk, is the one thing I do with my man that I don't do with any other human. Therefore, my sex with him occupies way more than 10% of our relationship.

10%? Fuck that. Give me 30-50%, depending on the week. Otherwise, what you have is a friend, not a lover.

[I was thinking 10% of one's waking hours, not 10% of the time you spend together! On the other hand, on the 90% side, when things are going poorly it's often the case that one can spend an awful lot of time pining, negotiating, arguing, avoiding, and wishing one could do this, that or the other thing together. So I'm going to stand by the principle if not the actual elapsed time. Thanks for putting your reservations so well, Chelsea Girl. --fl]

I disagree too. I find that the good sex occupies far more than 10% of my relationship. I don't think the bad sex occupies more of my relationship, it just is temporarily given more focus. But the good sex - or at least the good intimacies - are a good half of the relationship for my boyfriend and I on average. We can love each other with or without sex, but as long as we're having it, we're going to celebrate the fact.

[Hmm. Maybe I've just been in the wrong relationships. I've been in several where there were severe differences in libido, activity preferences, or (in one instance) orientation and in those we tended to spend a lot more time dealing with the ramifications of our sex life -- certainly more than we spent having sex. Conversely in highly compatible relationships we might not have averaged an hour and a half every day having sex (which would be about 10% of our waking hours) but the time we did spend having sex felt totally integrated into the rest of our days together. I hope that makes sense. I'm totally prepared for it not to though since I recognize I'm mixing subjective and objective times, time together and time in bed... which, on the other hand, sort of cements the relativity of the proposition. Thanks RS. --fl]

I dropped out of a 20+ year marriage where the the sex was crappy to non-existent, into a relationship where the sex is frequent and glorious. I can't tell you what the percentage is (who calculates percentages anyway?), but I'm here to tell you that something sure is hell is better than nothing.

That said, fl, I agree with your take on the thrust (so to speak) of what Bakerina said: sex's overall share of a relationship may/could be small, but if it's good, boy, it sure put's a positive glow on the rest of the relationship!

Finally, you've got an interesting and provacative blog and I always enjoy reading it. Keep doing it!

Thank you, Tambopaxi. And you're right that they're not at all hard and fast numbers (I'm more partial to 80/20 when doing off-the-cuff estimates like that) but yeah, it suggests a difference in types of relationships that resonated with me. --fl]

You're welcome. And yeah, that made sense =)

My boyfriend and I divide our relationship into three categories - familiar, emotional, and intimate. The familiar part deals with our family life, with living together, with being good friends to one another. That overlaps into the emotional part, which deals with loving one another, doing romantic things for one another, and showing our appreciation. And both of those overlap into the intimate part, which deals with showing our love for one another. A peck goodbye? Intimate. A sexual discussion? Intimate. An "I love you" note on the mirror? Both emotional and intimate.

So that's probably why I view sex as composing a greater percentage of my relationship than merely 10%. We have very few differences in preference and libido as well, which probably makes it smoother. We do have issues regarding the actual act of sex at times. I have a severe intestinal disorder that strikes at random, for instance, and he's been dealing with erectile dysfunction for years. But those aren't really problems for us anymore, we've been together long enough to just wrap them into the good parts of our sex lives. So it all just falls into a greater intimacy, and even when we do have difficulties...we're still having great sex.

Does that make sense too?

[Yes, you're making sense. Intestines and erections not withstanding you've got a good sex *life* that's part of the fabric of your intimate, emotional, and familiar lives. Imagine if instead you had instead decided his dysfunction as subliminal disinterest or he resented the obstacle your intestinal disorder poses. Then frustration could intrude with the result that your sex life and the problems thereof would begin to displace intimacy and familiarity with alienation and distance. And while you'd still have an emotional component the emotions might involve a lot of acrimony, defensiveness, and, perhaps, suspicion. I'm so glad this isn't happening to you, RS. Thanks! (By the way, I firmly believe the ability to cope with the infirmities that sooner or later affect all of us -- by our 90's if not sooner -- is a hallmark of *real* adult sex.) --fl]

I was thinking sex life and not just sex too!

[Ok then. Thanks, Dewdrop. --fl]

I think it's more that anything that you really hate and find intolerable in a relationship winds up consuming 90% of it.

Have crappy sex and a low libido? The crappiness of the sex may not be anywhere near 90%.

Have super huge differences about how you handle debt, or in-laws that are actually living in your house (so you can't avoid them), or whether to have kids? Any one of those things could feel as if it's taking up 90% of your time and energy (and so could sex), if the two of you are unhappy enough about it and enough at odds.

[Yes, that's certainly true as well. I wasn't excluding other possibilities. (Teach me to pop off with a quickie post. If I'd spent more time on it I'd have covered more of these possibilities. My apologies to all.) --fl]

I feel very fortunate to be on the same sexual wavelength as Sweetpea. Reading about some of the "unbalanced" relationships out there makes me feel lucky (especially since my college girlfriend was a total cold fish -- it's like I dodged a bullet). Our "10%" usually consists of figuring out how to get the youngins all in bed asleep early enough to have any shenanigans....

Of course, the whole rest of the family is away for the next few days on a trip, leaving me alone in the house. With fig's post about batteries and laps... and AAG's audio post. Ay caramba. I can feel *my* mindshare creeping up past 10% in the absence of any real sex....

Can't wait for the "oh how I've missed you" sex, though!

-birdman

[That's so nice, Birdman. Thank you. --fl]

I agree with the 10/90 split. A few years ago, when my libido was non-existant we didn't have sex but he spent a lot of the time feeling guilty about his feelings for me, feeling that he couldn't talk about it, so instead all his thoughts and his actions towards me were all to do with not upsetting me or pressuring me into doing something I didn't want to do. Now that I'm off the pill, my libido is back up to match his and he can spend more of his thoughts and actions on more productive things like college work. Our sex life probably takes up about 10% of our time (an hour or two a day), but it is the best we've ever had it.

[Thanks, Mel. I think that's the idea behind the original quote. It was certainly how I read it. --fl]