If you&39;ve ever been worried about the amount of sex you and your partner are (or aren&39;t) having, you wouldn&39;t be alone. It&39;s common for sexual desire to ebb and flow throughout the course of a relationship, and it&39;s also common for partners to havedifferent levels of sexual desire. The question is: How do you know when things are getting a littletoostagnant?
How much sex couples should be having, according to sex therapists.
There is no "right" or "healthy" amount of sex that every couple needs to be having, according to licensed couples&39; therapist and sex therapistJessa Zimmerman, M.A., CST.
That is, having "enough" sex is not about striving to do it a certain number of times per month. Instead, "it&39;s all based on what those two particular people want and how they collaborate together to create a sex life that works for both," she previously told mbg.
Her measure of whether a couple is having enough sex? Simple: "If both people are happy, they are having enough."
Contrary to the neverending flow of internet sex advice telling couples how to get in the sack more often, couples don&39;t need to be constantly trying to up the amount of sex they&39;re having. And it&39;s not necessarily a problem if a couplestarts having less sexthan they have had in the past or if they generally have little to no sex—as long as they&39;re both content with that.
As licensed sex and relationship therapistShadeen Francis, LMFT, puts it, "If folks do not want to have more sex than they are having, that is to be celebrated."
How to know when there&39;s a problem.
How often a couple has sexwon&39;t tell you whether or not there are issues in their sex life or in their relationship. As Francis points out, there are legitimate reasons couples might have less, little, or no sex, whether for a period of time or as an intentionally sustained part of their relationship. It&39;snot always a crisis, she adds, and it can, in fact, even be agoodthing for the relationship.
"If both partners are in agreement to not have sex, then not having sex is not a problem and can bring people closer as they create the kind of relationship that honors their desires," she says.
So, whenisit a problem to be having less sex?
According to Francis, alack of sex in a relationshipis only a problem "when folks are not in agreement about the sex they do or do not have; this can make sex a source of conflict and contention." And that&39;s exactly what you don&39;t want—for sex to feel bad or feel like a source of tension in the relationship.
If at least one person isn&39;t happy with the state of their shared sex life, Zimmerman says, that&39;s when there need to be some conversations about how to get to a place that feels good for both people.
But, she emphasizes, the way to assess the issue isn&39;t to start counting how often the couple is having sex or setting benchmarks for how often they ought to be having it. "I believe that talking about frequency, at least talking solely about frequency, is the wrong conversation," she says.
One partner might want to have more sex, but making it simply about frequency ignores the very thing that&39;s most likely tomake the other person genuinely interested in more sex—that is, how pleasurable it actually is to have it. "We need to be talking about the quality of pleasure and connection, and we need to understand any barriers someone may have to wanting and enjoying sex," says Zimmerman.
