When it comes to marital sex, most of us wonder if we're normal. Are we having enough orgasms? Are we fantasizing too much, too little? Are we too small, too big, too fat, too saggy, too old? And the big one, are we having enough sex with our spouse?
This week Dear Abby fielded a question from a wife who calls herself "Pressured."
Pressured says she's been happily married to a wonderful man for 30 years, but she confesses:
My dilemma is this: My husband keeps track of every time we have sex and has a personal goal of 100 times a year. In 2013, he informed me that we'd had sex only 76 times, and that was not adequate for him. He was quite upset about it.
Do you think tracking your sex life is normal, and what do you think about a couple married for 30-plus years having sex 76 times in a year? Is that normal?
Just reading Pressured's question made me feel pressured. I instantly started to tabulate how many times my husband and I have had sex over the last 16 years.
Okay three times a week times 52 weeks in a year times 16 years = 2,496 times we've had sex!
Except for when the two times I was pregnant for a total of 18 months, which breaks down to 72 weeks at maybe one time every two weeks which means we only had sex 36 times during my pregnancies.
Then there was my whole irritable bowel phase, which lasted 10 years, and Henry's Restless Leg Syndrome, which is perpetual. Oh, and all the times our daughters didn't sleep through the night and then the time when the cats were flatulent and, of course, the era where we both got very fat and then too skinny and then one of us had a bout of Halitosis and then... calculating... tabulating... formatting and collating... carry the nine, multiply this square root... I've got it!
Henry and I have had sex 25 times in the last 16 years! (give or take 100?) Should we feel inadequate!
Dear Abby had some advice for Pressured:
Your husband sounds like a college student who is striving to get 100 notches on his belt. Rather than obsess about the number of times you have had sex, the quality of the experience should be more important. Fifty GREAT times a year would be better than 100 so-so times, one would think.
Abs confirmed that Pressured's hubby's expectations were not normal. "Whatever normal is these days."