The Secret to Maintaining Sexual Desire?

How many pennies are in your jar?

Soon after I got engaged, a married friend told me about the Penny Game. In this game, a newlywed couple puts a penny in a jar each time they have sex during the first year of marriage. Then, starting the second year, the couple takes out a penny each time they have sex. Supposedly, the couple will never again have enough sex to empty the jar. This old wives' tale represents a commonly held belief that sexual desire declines over the course of a relationship. But is this true? And does it happen to everyone?

Sexual desire and sexual frequency do tend to decline over the course of a relationship. Several large-scale surveys have found evidence for this, and one study even found that the link between sexual frequency and relationship duration was stronger than the link between sexual frequency and age (Johnson et al., 1994). So young or old, sexual desire is likely to peak at the beginning of a new relationship and steadily decline from there.

But is that the end of the story? Once we enter into a long-term relationship, do we have to sit back and accept that our hottest days are behind us? According to recent research, not necessarily.

Read More->