It's commonly believed that a long marriage leads to lovemaking losing its appeal. Sex with a person you know inside and out, whose body you've explored, becomes a daily (and then weekly, monthly, quarterly) chore that brings no pleasure. For example, Germans, while young and sexually adept, are already far superior to anyone, by the age of 40 they become indifferent to what so recently so excited them.
Experts estimate that in this country of 80 million, millions of couples suffer from boredom in their bedrooms because they've lost all desire for sex and have no idea how to rekindle it. Paradoxically, despite their unbridled fantasies, many married Germans don't even have traditional sex in real life and worry that they'll never feel good in bed again.
“It will!” confidently declares Arnold Retzer, a Heidelberg psychotherapist who developed a theory capable of saving the nation from bedridden boredom. To help him solve such serious problems, he invoked the Bible: “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does,” Retzer quotes from the Epistle to the Corinthians in his book. “Do not deprive one another, except by mutual consent for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to fasting and prayer; and then come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
Seeing abstinence as the work of the devil, the 52-year-old German doctor urges couples to fight this scourge with all their might. Sex should be a duty that must be fulfilled. And no excuses like “I had a hard day, I'm tired” or accusations like “you weren't affectionate enough” should hinder regular lovemaking.
The central idea of Retzer's theory is that sex is overemphasized, while it's nothing more than a trip to the movies, and that's exactly how it should be treated. “Flip a coin: if it comes up heads, you should sleep together; if it comes up tails, you shouldn't,” the psychotherapist writes. He believes a night of lovemaking should be agreed upon in advance and should never be rushed into bed spontaneously, as anticipation increases impatience and, consequently, pleasure. Furthermore, the doctor strongly advises planning positions, techniques, and, in general, every single detail in advance.
You can't use sex as proof of love, or assume that if your spouse has been sleeping in pajamas for six months, it means love has faded. And talking to your spouse about such topics is downright fatal. However, waiting for him to remember who's lying next to him is also wrong. “No passively waiting for something to spontaneously happen,” Retzer asserts. “Because then nothing will happen, and you can finally write off your sex life.” But most interestingly, the doctor believes that having sex isn't necessarily about experiencing pleasure. “It's about fulfilling your marital duty. It's like paying taxes,” the author concludes. Whether Herr Retzer's teachings have attracted followers or whether they have succeeded in the difficult labor of lovemaking is unknown. One can only hope that what the German specialist offers will help poor spouses experience long-forgotten sensations.