Sex Every Day For a Year, Lessons Learned

By Howard Earl

In 2006 Charla Muller decided to give her husband, Brad, a very unusual 40th birthday present. Was it a set of gold plated golf clubs?

No, it was the offer of sex every day for a year.

What happened next offers some insights into their relationship and what happens when couples become more intimate. There are lessons for everyone in a long term intimate relationship here.

Sex as a chore?

Charla thought Brad would be really pleased with her birthday suggestion but what actually happened is that Brad turned her down because he "didn't want her to feel that she had to have sex with him". Charla was stunned that she actually had to talk him into it.

Lesson Learned : Has your sexual relationship deteriorated so much that one or both of you now think of sex as a chore? Has one of you become the "sex gatekeeper" who always decides when you will make love?

Finding time for intimacy

One of the hardest things about making love every day for a year was finding the time. With a young family, business trips and family visits to work around finding the time to make love wasn't easy. It required planning and a schedule. At first Brad was against this, he felt that lovemaking should be spontaneous.

What Charla and Brad discovered is that you have to make time for sexual intimacy. When they thought that they were too tired for sex it was really because they chose to watch TV until late. They hadn't been making time in their schedule for lovemaking, it was a low priority for them.

Lessons Learned: Not making love like you used to? Have you made it one of your priorities?

Less than perfect sex

Making love every day for a year meant giving up on the idea of making love as it is shown in the movies with candlelight and soft music. There were days when neither of them wanted to have sex but they did anyway. As Charla says in an interview with a UK newspaper "I can't say that it was easy making all the effort. Sometimes it was awful. But I reasoned with myself that it was important."

Lessons Learned: Sex doesn't always have to be perfume-scented and perfectly staged.

End Results

Charla and Brad didn't manage a perfect 365 days of lovemaking but they say they averaged about 28 days a month over the year. They discovered a lot about each other and their relationship was changed as a result.

Some months into their experiment Brad admitted that he had been hurt by her rejections. Charla had thought that she was turning down sex not rejecting Brad but Brad had come to feel that he was the one begging for sex.

Charla became more self confident as a result of the experiment, coming to understand that her husband really loved and desired her for who she was and how she was. They became closer as a couple, being so intimate every day made them more attentive to each other in the small things that make for a happy relationship.

Lessons Learned: Being more intimate made Charla and Brad feel closer to each other and with the whole concept of "earning sex" taken out of their relationship they were able to see the things they did for each other as acts of love and affection rather than point scoring.

Planning your own journey

365 nights of love takes a lot of commitment and effort. Why not start with a pledge to have sex 7 days straight. Don't expect the sex to be fantastic but do expect some positive changes in your relationship.

Howard Earl is a writer for http://AutomaticRomantic.com A website dedicated to the science, practice and improvement of your romantic relationship. Schedule your own Romantic Reminders for free at http://AutomaticRomantic.com and browse the collection of Romantic ideas and articles.