Sex: How To Refuse Your Partner -- And Not Ruin Your Relationship

Women do it. Men do it. It's even the name of a band: Turning Down Sex.

While women love sex -- if recent stereotype-busting studies are to be believed, often as much, if not more, than men, and with some creativity when we're in the mood -- we don't always want it.

Nor, apparently, do men -- to the point that a French court fined one man $14,000 for not having sex with his wife.

While some experts, like the authors of "Spousonomics" Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson, advocate having sex even when you aren't in the mood -- "HAVE SEX. Even when you don't feel like it. Even when you have fifty-seven emails you haven't replied to. Even if you've been up since five working on your pilot slash ticket out of area sales management. Even when the season premiere of Ice Road Truckers is on," they advise GQ readers -- there are also good reasons not to have sex when you don't want it. For one thing, who wants to have sex with someone who isn't into it? But there may be a better reason: What if refusing makes for better sex later on? Sex expert and author Debby Herbenick, Ph.D., M.P.H. wrote in Psychology Today that "the occasional, well-delivered 'no' can make for more loving, pleasurable, mindful sex" the next time.

So if both men and women have moments when they don't want sex -- and there's good reason not to have it when you don't want it -- the next logical question is how to turn it down when you really don't want it without causing problems in the relationship (or, if you are that French man, incurring large fines). Our friends over at Glamour recently asked their readers exactly that question, and we thought we'd do the same.