.jpg)
One of my favorite questions to ask friends in committed relationships is how often they have sex with their partner. Part of it is because the answers are fascinatingly wide-ranging, going from a few times a week to once every few months, but part of it is because, somehow, people seem to stop discussing their sex lives, or asking about that of others, once they settle down. Whereas a candid chat between close single friends often produces at least a few sordid details, the type of everyday, ordinary—though often no less enjoyable—sexual activity is deemed not worth discussing.
That is, until Pink openly answered my favorite question in a recent interview with The Guardian. The singer has built a career around her candidness—most recently, she made the Internet airwaves when she used her VMA Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award acceptance speech to tell her daughter to buck the narrow standards of beauty set for women—and she has spoken about marital sex in characteristically open fashion. Talking frankly about her marriage to motocross racer Carey Hart, to whom she has been married for more than 10 years, Pink said, “There are moments where I look at [Hart] and he is the most thoughtful, logical, constant . . . he’s like a rock. And then I’ll look at him and go: I’ve never liked you.” Later, she continued, “Then two weeks later I’m like, things are going so good, you guys. Then you’ll go through times when you haven’t had sex in a year. Is this bed death? Is this the end of it?”
I breathed a sign of relief reading Pink’s testimony, primarily because, in my environment, once people enter long-term relationships, a blind is drawn over their sexual lives—myself included. I noticed a lot of decreasing interest among my friends to talk about my sex life after I entered a monogamous relationship, while at the same time, it becomes more difficult to share its details with others. “There’s a lot more privacy in monogamy,” a long-married friend told me. “I think you say a little less to your friends when you struggle or if it isn’t satisfying, because you know what you share with your friends isn’t forgotten.” Another friend, who is in a non-monogamous marriage, confirmed that sense: “I don’t talk a lot about the sex in our relationship—it’s a bit awkward, because my friends all know my partner.” I’m guilty of the same impulse: As a writer, I’ve always been careful in telling other people’s stories without their consent, and sharing intimate details of my partner feels in the same vein.
Yet our reluctance to talk honestly about sex in committed relationships can also reinforce problematic myths: There is a lot of information about dating, but there are fewer places where I can learn to be in a happy marriage, perhaps because of the false assumption that marriage indicates that every battle has been won already. “People often see a relationship as something that can be complicated at the beginning, but after sorting that out, people live happily ever after,” a single friend who has been in many long-term relationships told me. “Most media cover sex and health for the single, non-committed person,” my monogamously married friend agreed. “For monogamous sex, it comes down to the assumption that the struggle is to keep it fresh and exciting, like that’s the only focal point.”
Though I won’t spill my full sexual habits here, suffice to say that I have gone through periods of both increased and decreased sexual activity in my relationship. While I already believe that these ups and downs are part of any healthy partnership, I also believe that our liberated society feels more comfortable discussing the full range of kinks than what happens when people, after a long and exhausting day, just want to lie in bed and cuddle. I plead for more rounds of monogamy-myth busting. Pink already revealed one during the same interview: “Monogamy is work!” Though, whoever said work is a bad thing?