Does Getting Married Have To Kill Your Sex Life?

You know that no-nooky slump that plagues long-term couples after they trade in the early days of rip-your clothes-off-right-here passion for, say, SWEATPANTS? JO PIAZZA wasn’t taking it lying down. So she travelled around the globe TO FIND A CURE

It was the night before my wedding, and I was alone in my bridal suite, too wired to sleep, and contemplating the future of my orgasms. Out of tradition, I didn’t sleep with my husband-to-be that night, but I was wishing that I had. What if it was my last chance for mind-blowing sex?

In the 20 years of dating I did before my wedding, which took place on my 35th birthday, the sex was never as good as it initially was during the early days of a relationship. Between my first, fumbling, over the-bra feel-up at 14 and when I met my husband at 34, I had five serious relationships that each lasted more than a year. Inevitably, at the six month mark, we would transition from the kind of couple who would have sex in the back of an Uber, to friends who fell asleep with our clothes on and alternated who played the big spoon.

But those relationships were disposable. Once the ennui and disinterest set in, I could easily discard them. Maintaining good sex didn’t really matter to me until I met the man who would become my husband, while on an eco-cruise of the Galápagos. It was the fairy-tale ending to the romcom that had been my life for the past two decades, and we were engaged in a matter of three months. Of course, at that point we still wanted to rip off each other’s clothes. We managed to maintain that intensity and fervour as we prepared to walk down the aisle nine months after the day we met, a new hot-and-heavy record for me.

But for how long could that go on? A married-sex rut would be even worse than a dating-sex rut. Married-sex ruts can last forever.