Pepper Schwartz may have gotten a lot of publicity for her "study" but subsequent research has found no comparative difference between "bed death" among straight, gay, or lesbian couples; it simply has to do with comfort and length of time together, not sexual orientation.

(Also, I've read that Schwartz's initial study was flawed because of how she defined "sex", but without having the study at hand I can't argue this point.)

True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self, but the point is not only to get out, you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand. -Henry James

My immedate thought when I came across the theory was that hetero bed death should by far out number LBD, and that it is as much worth discussing as the sexual death of any marriage, and obvsly that it's origins and motives are just pure slacking.. but there is so much out there on the subject that I am thinking there might be more to it. Would love to know what the general opinion is.

"You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming. Life, for eternal us, is now and now is much to busy being a little more than everything to seem anything, catastrophic included.."

...to credibly certify the inevitability of LBD. Whether you think Pepper Schwartz's study is flawed or not (and let's keep in mind that it does support gay and lesbian marriage), a single study is never enough to go on. I'm pretty sure that if researchers start looking at this phenomenon more closely, they may find that it doesn't actually exist, or at least not to a greater extent than bed death exists for everyone.

I, personally, have heard more straight women complain about their sex lives than I have lesbians. Granted, usually the straight women are complaining because their husbands want more than they do or that they wish their husbands were better at giving them orgasms. It also says in that same study that lesbians, gays, and heteros are equally satisfied within committed relationships (thus, the support for gay marriage). I also have a married (to a man) female friend who has been having lesbian affairs recently and has said that this has been her best year of sex ever.

For me, emotional investment is critical to a healthy sex life. If I started to lose interest, I would have to examine pretty closely what was going on with me emotionally. I can't imagine not being interested in having sex--perhaps if I were on death's doorstep or in danger of vomiting on my gf, I might feel a little less frisky, but in good or at least marginal health, all she has to do is wiggle her hiking boots suggestively and I am right there.

Lest we forget also, Schwartz may have reason to foment a little panic because she does have a heck of a lot of books to sell.  I think that if you're paying enough attention to nurturing the relationship, then you may have some ups and downs, but overall, there's nothing inevitable about LBD.  And obviously, if the emotional connection wanes, and nothing you try seems to help, then the relationship is probably over and the sex isn't likely to be good anyway. 

not a sexuality issue. What you have to be careful of is the 'self fulfilling prophecy' angle. That allows a relationship problem to be assigned to LBD or sex in general. No study will ever give a definitive answer on this subject, because the study groups will always be 'skewed' (no pun intended because this is a serious subject matter).

Although I wanted the ground to open up and devour me whole at the time, I had a very insightful 'earful' from my mother and some of her friends while we were washing dishes one Sunday after a party (don't get me started on the cliches, some things you just have to live with). One woman said "when my mother said marriage wasn't easy, she wasn't friggin' kidding". Another agreed, and then they launched into a discussion about the sex cycles that a relationship goes through.

It's not abnormal to go through a fallow period. It's expected in some ways. If it stagnates completely, then there's a problem.

I'm no expert. I just wanted to tell you what I'd heard first hand from the 'other side'.

Would you all agree or disagree that women's sex drives are not as strong as men's? Sometimes the male compulsion for sex keeps BD from happening, (as long as the relationship issues are mild of course) and carries the relationship forward over the little bumps and plateaus caused by routine. I imagine that gay couples have extra "help" in getting over those bumps, and lesbians less so. So I'm open to the idea of BD as a phenomenon more relevant to lesbian couples.

I really don't know what's true and what's out of the ordinary. Although I do need emotions to feel sexual, I'm pretty much hypersexual and thrive on routine, so that doesn't fit my own stereotype above!

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"One does not see anything until one sees its beauty" - Oscar Wilde