When Did The Sex Start Going Bad?

I’ve talked in the past about The Two Week Rule, namely…

The earlier post was mostly concerned about the possibity that an inappropriate relationship was starting, and focusing on catching it early rather than just sitting back and hoping it goes away… because it won’t.

Widening the scope of the Two Week Rule a little, there’s any number of reasons that sex could decline with a couple: Birth trauma, new kids, sick kids, sick wife, sick husband, work pressure, deployment, work travel, medications… and on and on and on. The Two Week Rule applies just the same to all those things.

Unless you both can point to a clear reason that the sex is starting to disappear, you both need to find out what that reason is. The trouble is that with the mundane pressures of life, illness and ill fortune, the sex doesn’t just stop dead over night, it sort of just ebbs away over a few months or even a year.

Say a couple has had sex twenty times a month on average over their ten year marriage, and their sex numbers look like this…

So 2009 is a typical year for this couple. Some months are up a bit, some months are down, but it averages out to about 20 times a month. All is well.

Lets inject a bit more reality into 2010 though…

So it still averages out to about 20 times a month, but four months have unusual highs or lows. But there’s some sort of clear explanation as to why those months are unusual.

Then 2011 is quite strange…

At first all seems normal, but then there’s this steady decline down to nealy nothing at all.

2012 is simply awful…

So here’s the thing. By the time our imaginary reader finds MMSL in November 2012, they are in a great deal of emotional pain from the changes, and totally fixated on “2012″ and will talk and ask questions about how to fix the sex life of ”2012.” However “2012″ is far more likely than not, a symptom of whatever happened back in May 2011.

So you have to think back long and hard as to what changed in your lives, when the sex started to go down hill.

What ever happened in May 2011 might be very clear in retrospect. Maybe that’s when your house started to get foreclosed on. Maybe that’s when she started on an anti-depressant. Maybe that’s when your mother moved into your house. Maybe that’s when she got the breast cancer diagnosis. Maybe that’s when the cutbacks at her work doubled her workload. Maybe that’s when you switched from condoms to a Mirena IUD. Maybe that’s when you lost your job. Maybe that’s when she started working the night shift.

Plus if you had followed the Two Week Rule, while you probably wouldn’t have asked the probing questions in May 2011, I think by July 2011 you very probably would have. Thus potentially, “2012″ may have be averted completely.