Can a relationship survive without sex?

Do you remember growing up and watching those movies you weren’t exactly allowed to be watching, you know... those MA15+ ones with a raunchy sex scenes. Maybe your parents let you or maybe you took a peep around the corner. No matter how you caught an eyeful, these movies gave us all the same message... A relationship WILL NOT survive without sex.

Through my adolescence, this notion stayed at the forefront of my mind, as I weaved in and out of various romantic relationships. I took note of how often I had sex with the person and scheduled it in if it had been 'too long'. It felt as though it became a competition amongst friends on who had the most sex and how long they 'did it' for.

As the years went on, I made the assumption that this mindset about competing for the non-existent medal of who had the most sex would fade, but to my surprise, the bragging only got worse. I found myself in conversations with people in long term marriages telling me about how they would rail their wife on the daily and how good their sex life was. I've come to learn that if you're a male over 40 bragging about banging your wife during a float tank session, then I have questionable doubt.

More recently I've started to play with this narrative of a relationship needing sex to survive. Both internally and in open discussion. And I had been met with an interesting response. If I was the first to initiate conversation about how long it had been since I've had sex with my partner, or admitted that I felt no concern over my low sex drive, I felt a sort of relief from the other person. As though it was refreshing to hear my relatable honesty.

I found myself having more and more conversations about the lack of sex people were having yet their relationship wasn't affected by this. They stopped scheduling in sex for the sake of it and didn't feel as though it was a determining factor in the strength of their relationship.

They say if a couple are having satisfying sex regularly and are not having any other marital issues, then this only really accounts for 15-20% of relationship satisfaction. There are also many other things to consider when it comes to the topic of having regular sex, that being the definition of the words 'regular' and 'sex'. There is no 1 size fits all.

Now the benefits of having sex are endless but so are the reasons you may not be having it. I believe it's important to remember it's okay to continually redefine the definition of intimacy between you and your lover. That could look like passionate sex or it could look like conscious, connected embrace.

Just remember, how often you are having sex is not the defining factor in a relationship.