ABCnews reveals Primetime Live’s polling results on sex in America.
Gary Langer, Cheryl Arnedt and Dalia Sussman write (excerpt):
Satisfaction, in particular, matters: People who are satisfied with their sex lives are considerably more likely in turn to be satisfied with their overall relationship.
Specifically, among those who are very satisfied with the sex, 90 percent are also very satisfied with their marriage or committed relationship overall. Among those who are just somewhat satisfied with their sex lives, fewer, 71 percent, are very satisfied with their relationship. And among those who aren’t satisfied with the sex, fewer still — 53 percent — are very satisfied with their marriage or partnership.
Moreover, people who aren’t satisfied with their sexual relationship are by far the most likely to cheat on their spouse or partner. Thirty-six percent have done so.
So which came first, sex or happiness? Seems to beg the question. Maybe happy people have sex instead of people who have sex being happy. Hmmm…
A good question, and one addressed by the authors:
“While directionality is hard to establish, it seems more plausible that satisfaction with sex fuels satisfaction with marriage than the reverse. That’s because more people are very satisfied with their marriages than are very satisfied with their sex lives. If satisfaction with marriage drove satisfaction with sex, this gap would not exist.”
I have always said (in relation to my family law practice) that adultery is not the cause of a breakdown in the marriage, it is a symptom of the breakdown of the marriage. Other than those individuals who are compelled to seek out new sexual encounters throughout their lives for the excitement of the unknown, if the marriage were fulfilling the spouse’s needs (emotional, sexual, etc.), then the temptation to “cheat” would be overcome.