Taken from Fridae.com

THE BIG LIE - LESBIAN BED DEATH
Is “lesbian bed death” a myth? In the first place, is there anything wrong with lesbians not having sex, or having it infrequently? Is it time to change our expectations?

If you ask most lesbians what they believe is the number one problem of long-term lesbian couples, they would say, "Lesbian bed death." The notorious drop off in sexual activity, whether real or simply feared, has become the subject of jokes in the lesbian community, but it has also led lesbians to worry about when the endemic lesbian syndrome will strike their relationships. Some clients come in diagnosing themselves as victims of lesbian bed death. Some want their therapists to reassure them that long-term lesbian couples really can have great sex. I have heard lesbian therapists and clients theorise that bed death strikes lesbians because the patriarchy intrudes on woman-to-woman sex and makes women too self-conscious to sustain sexual relationships. Others have suggested that there's nothing wrong with lesbians not having sex, or having it infrequently; maybe this is the nature of women's sexuality, and we just need to get used to it, change our expectations.

As a sex researcher and sex therapist, I'm alarmed at how ubiquitous the lesbian bed death myth has become. What is the myth? It says that the experience of diminished sexual activity in lesbian couples is particular only to -- or especially to -- lesbians, is somehow related to lesbianism and is even a natural condition of being lesbian. Where did these self-destructive ideas come from, and why do we believe them?

The major research study that has fueled the lesbian bed death myth was published in 1983, in a book called American Couples by Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz. Their empirical research reported that lesbian couples had less sex than any other couple -- heterosexual married, heterosexual co-habitating or gay male. Since the 1980s, many books and articles by lesbian practitioners have been written about lesbian sexuality by well known clinicians such as Marny Hall, JoAnn Loulan and Marge Nichols that dealt with inhibited sexual desire, lack of sexual initiation and low sexual self-esteem.

Despite the above-mentioned data and seemingly confirming clinical experience that shows that lesbian bed death is, indeed, a widespread phenomenon, I don't believe it exists as a clinical entity. In fact, I think it's time we exposed lesbian bed death as being a fraud. Lesbian couples are not any different from gay or heterosexual couples when it comes to experiencing the inevitable shifts in sexual passion in longterm relationships. Read heterosexual sex therapist David Schnarch's work if you don't believe heterosexual couples grapple with similar issues. In the 1995 Advocate Survey of Lesbian Sexuality and Relationships, results showed that lesbian women had more enjoyable sex than most American women. Somehow, this data has not received the same attention as the 1983 report from Blumstein and Schwartz. Why is that? Are we too quick to ignore data that flies in the face of a pathologised view of lesbian sexuality?

Many of my lesbian colleagues fight me on this one, believing that lesbian couples have it more or have it worse or have special reasons for having it more or worse. My view is that my lesbian clients who come in complaining of reduced sexual interaction are experiencing real life. I continue to see the same pattern in these clients: not unlike their heterosexual brothers and sisters, and gay brothers, the women met, fell in love and created a life together. Their work and family lives developed and demanded attention and energy, sometimes at the cost of quality intimate time together. They experienced the blissful merging that only new love (and lust) offers, the honeymoon receded, revealing sexual differences and incompatibilities and life's demands made themselves known. Simply put, I believe there is no such thing as lesbian bed death, unless we also want to coin the terms "gay bed death" and "straight bed death." This is not a lesbian phenomenon. It's time to move on to a more realistic and less negative view of lesbian sex.

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