Sex every day of the year?

Let’s say you and your spouse haven’t had sex for so long that you can’t remember the last time you did. Not the day. Not the month. Maybe not even the season. Would you look for gratification elsewhere? Would you file for divorce? Or would you turn to your mate and say: “Honey, you know, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t we do it for the next 365 days in a row?”

That’s pretty much what happened to Charla and Brad Muller. Another example of an erotic adventure to increase intimacy, a second couple, Annie and Douglas Brown, embarked on a similar journey of 101 straight days with some sex every day.

Most committed couples have sex an average of twice a week so it’s a big thing for a couple to do it 365 days a year. The couples thought that this sex marathon they were living in would recharge their relationships. I guess if they really enjoyed it but I wonder if just once I’d wish, “not tonight!”

It is always possible that these two couples may also be on to something. I know I’m more in love just after having sex, so maybe they’re really really really in love with each other.

It started out when one of the women wanted to give her husband a spectacular 40th birthday present. It didn’t cost anything and it was something really special only she could give him. It’s got me thinking, I gotta tell you.

Her husband thought it was a good idea but apparently she’d had lots of good ideas that she never followed through on. Once he realized she was serious, he jumped on board in a jiffy.

Each couple has written a book about their experiences. “365 Nights” was written from the woman’s perspective and “Just Do It’ was written by the husband, although the idea came from his wife who said, “”I thought we don’t have anything else going on. It might kick-start our marriage.”

They changed venues frequently – a cabin on an ashram, a yurt in the Colorado Rockies, and in a hotel room in Las Vegas. “That’s why we scheduled all these little trips,” Annie said. “We knew it had the potential of getting monotonous.” And were it not for her competitive zeal, their streak might have died well short of 100 days. Annie even forced her husband to have sex during a bout of vertigo. “I’m not a quitter,” she said. “The night he had vertigo, I said, ‘I’m sorry, guy, but you’ve got to keep going.”‘

Once they reached their goal of 101 days, they didn’t have sex for a month. That tells me that I was right when I said I’d need a break in there on some days. Hell, she even made him have sex when he had vertigo. I’ve had vertigo and I swear I couldn’t have had sex with the world spinning around. It would have definitely have been called “barf sex.”

The women are regarded with admiration, if not always envy, by their girlfriends. “My first reaction was ‘please don’t tell my husband’,” said a friend of one of the women involved.

Can sex every day re-invigorate a relationship? If a lack of sex is the problem, maybe but I suspect there are a lot of things wrong when a relationship starts to fall apart. Addressing the problems and enjoying sex, even if it’s not every day is probably a better way to have a happy relationship. My sweetie told me early on that we’d always have just the right amount of sex and he’s still right.

Shoshana Bulow, a psychotherapist and sex therapist in Manhattan, points out that sex is a lot more complicated than frequency. “There’s all sorts of reasons people lose interest in sex with their partner – disappointments, life cycles, financial issues,” she said. “Just having it isn’t going to resolve those.”

Today, the Browns report they have sex approximately six times a month, or double their frequency before their adventure. The Mullers decline to discuss their habits, except to say that they fall well within the national average.

Would you want a relationship where sex was a requirement every day?