Does Getting Married Have To Kill Your Sex Life?

You know that no-nooky slump that plagues long-term couples after they trade in those early days of rip-your-clothes-off-right-here passion for, say, sweatpants? 

- Jo Piazza

It was the night before my wedding, and I was alone in my bridal suite, too wired to sleep and contemplating the future of my orgasms.

Out of tradition, I didn’t sleep with my husband-to-be that night, but I was wishing that I had. What if it was my last chance for mind-blowing sex?

In the 20 years of dating I did before my wedding, which took place on my 35th birthday, the sex was never as good as sex during the early days of a relationship. Between my first, fumbling, over-the-bra feel-up at 14 and when I met my husband at 34, I had five serious relationships that each lasted more than a year. Inevitably, at the six-month mark, we would transition from the kind of couple who would have sex in the back of a New York City taxi to siblings who fell asleep with our clothes on and sometimes switched who played the big spoon.

But those relationships were disposable. Once the ennui and disinterest set in, I could discard them. Maintaining good sex didn’t really matter until I met the man who would become my husband while on a work trip (I was a travel editor) on an eco-cruise of the Galápagos. It was the fairy-tale ending to the rom-com that had been my life for the past two decades, and we were engaged in just three months. Of course we still wanted to rip off each other’s clothes at that point. We maintained that intensity and fervor as we prepared to walk down the aisle nine months after the day we met, a new hot-and-heavy record for me.

But how long could that go on? A married-sex rut would be even worse than a dating-sex rut. Married-sex ruts can last forever.