I believe that intimacy is critical to a great and lasting marriage. I have yet to meet a couple who was having marriage problems and thinking about divorce who told me that they still had phenomenal intimacy.

Can sex kill a marriage? Absolutely. Problems in the bedroom can lead to deep dissatisfaction. A marital sex problem is like a canary in a coal mine -- a warning alarm that danger lies ahead.

My friend Bethany kept falling in lust with men at her office, which would've been fine except that she was in a 17-year marriage and had two teenage daughters. She was never physically unfaithful to her husband Doug, but the cost in integrity was devastating.

If this basic need isn't being met, then the impoverished spouse may enter into some type of self-defense mode and either dry up and withdraw, become angry and hurtful via words or actions, or go elsewhere to have those basic needs met.

I think that some couples make the mistake of thinking that the true sign of a happy couple is wanting to do every last thing together.

Let's talk sex -- sex as marital glue, sex as physical necessity, sex as a reminder that we are alive, no matter how complicated our daily struggles may seem.

Marriage is in trouble. Oh, I don't mean because about 4 out of every 10 of us think it's becoming obsolete, although that certainly doesn't bode well...