How Important Is Sex to a Relationship? Find Out Here!

At the Bad Girls Bible, we spend a lot of time giving advice on how to improve your relationship and have better sex with your man by finding your naughty side. Plenty of our readers have expressed gratitude for this resource, and we obviously think there are tons of benefits to a healthy sex life. We often get questions such as “How important is sex to a relationship?”

Although sex can be quite important to a relationship, we try to avoid telling you how important it should be to you because every couple needs to find the right balance between sex and other elements of a relationship. For some people, sex is more important while others view it at less important.

How Important Is Sex To a Relationship?

The truth is, it depends. It depends on who you’re with. Sex might be more important to a relationship if there’s not much else going for it. You might find you’re more sexually compatible with some partners. Sex might be more important at the beginning of your relationship but take a back seat if you’ve got kids or health issues to deal with. As you become older, you might find that sex becomes less important than it once was – or not!

Some factors determine why sex is important and how important it should be. Keep reading to find out more.

Why Sex Is Important to Your Relationship

Sex helps you bond. Whether you want to have sex because your emotional connection feels strong or to boost that connection, physical intimacy often goes hand in hand with emotional intimacy. There’s a reason why sex is touted as the way to show your partner that you love him, even though there are tons of different ways to show your love.

More: 27 intimacy ideas for a better relationship and sex.

Sex has other benefits. Sex relieves stress, lowers blood pressure, helps you sleep better, releases feel-good hormones such as oxytocin and can be a source of exercise. These are just a few reasons why sex is important, of course. You can get some of these benefits from masturbation and even cuddling, but why not enjoy those benefits with your partner by having sex?

Women want sex, too. Although the media often portrays man as sex-starved and women as prudes, this isn’t usually the case. One study shows that over half of men in relationships would change how much sex they have and, you guess it, they want more[1]! More women are happy with how much sex they’re currently having, but of the group that would change sexual frequency, one-third of the women would actually like to have less! This still means that many women want more sex than they’re getting, however.

You might be a woman with the higher sex drive in your relationship. But cultural norms still dictate that men initiate sex more often than women, and you may not have as much sex as you want because of this. One study shows that men are far less skilled at picking up on sexual cues than women are [2], so it might be time to start initiating sex. And if you do happen to have the lower sex drive, you might be the reason your man is having less sex than he would like.

We recently ran an in-depth study to examine if women enjoy receiving oral sex. They overwhelmingly do. Over 90% of women enjoy it.

Be Careful When You Place Too Much Emphasis On Sex

Keep these thoughts in mind when determining what value to place on sex.

Sex isn’t everything. There are benefits to sex, both to yourself and to your relationship, but relationships involve a lot of other things. You might share a home and finances. Who does which chore? Are there pets? How do you juggle your in-laws? Kids only add more drama to the mix while reducing the free time you have. Aging parents, heavy workloads and injuries or illness all come before sex. If sex is important to you, you’ll need to make time for it. If one of you doesn’t think sex is important, it might fall to the wayside.

But this can lead to issues in your relationship, and that’s already assuming you don’t have other issues that cause a low sex drive. There’s a balance between prioritizing other things that must come before sex and getting to the point where you don’t have any sex. That balance varies, of course, and there’s no set amount of sex you should be having.

Focus on quality over quantity. Sex can be incredibly important to you even if you don’t have it all the time. Having really good sex less frequently is usually better than having mediocre sex a lot. Make sure you’re both getting what you need out of sex, even if you don’t both orgasm. Take time to slow things down, at least every once in a while. Don’t just fall into a sexual routine that becomes boring.

Treating sex as a goal can be unhealthy. Some people want a lot of sex because of their high sex drive. But some people have sex because they think they “should,” to feel any sort of human connection or affection or even to keep up with the Joneses. As you can guess, these aren’t particularly good reasons to have sex. Do it because it’s fun or for any of the benefits mentioned above. Have sex because your relationship is better when you do. But don’t get so caught up in contemplating how important is sex to a relationship that you stop enjoying it.

It’s Not Just About Frequency. It’s obvious that not only is sex important in many ways, but it may not be enough for both you and your man to want to have sex at the same frequency. It’s also important that you’re sexually compatible regarding the type of sex you want to have. Sexual incompatibility can mean a miserable relationship, a failed marriage or even cheating.

While it’s okay to wait until marriage to have sex, it’s not a requirement. In fact, having and communicating about sex before you decide to move to the next level can save a lot of heartache later on. It sets the stage for talking about sex in a productive way, along with preventing resentment or guilt from building and ensures you’re with the right person. For people who find sexual compatibility less important in their relationship, incompatibility might not be a deal-breaker, which leads us to our next point.

You need more than sexual compatibility. You might have amazing sex, but you could be a terrible couple. Perhaps you don’t have the same morals, only one of you wants kids, or you don’t want the same things out of this relationship. There comes a time in every woman’s life when she has to let go of a man who gives her amazing orgasms because he can never be the one.

Sex might not be possible. Injuries and medical conditions might mean you can’t have traditional penetrative sex with your man. If you’re in love, you can find ways to make it work, either by focusing on your partnership and emotional commitment or by looking into alternatives to sex such as phone sex, dry humping or oral sex. You might also need to consider alternatives if you’re in a long-distance relationship. After all, sex drive is often independent of sexual ability or your current limitations.

You can still masturbate. Some people think that the only way to have an orgasm and achieve some of the other benefits of sex is through intercourse, but that’s not the case.Women like to masturbate as much as men, but some of them get started later. A little solo time can help you reap all those benefits, and you don’t have to worry about whether your partner has time to have sex or if he’s in the mood. Another perk of masturbation? When you know your body, you can tell your man what you need to have better sex! And if you’re looking for some tips on masturbation for maximum satisfaction, then check out these tips.

Hopefully, these points have given you some food for thought, and you’ll consider why sex is important.

So how important is sex to a relationship and marriage? It’s important enough that increasing sex from once monthly to once weekly has the same effect as increasing your annual salary by $50,000, according to one survey[3], and increasing sex from once monthly to any other frequency also increases happiness[4]. But sex can remain important to you and your man even if you’re not constantly humping like bunnies, and it’s natural for the frequency of and desire for sex to shift. The key is to find the right balance of sex in your relationship, which means you need to talk about it even if you’re not always doing it!