For those who are regular readers of my column, you know that I usually begin with an anecdote in some way related to my theme. But as much as I'd like to share a secret or two with you this week, my topic is marital sex, so I dare not. The first and most pressing reason for this is that my husband would absolutely die if he read about his sex life on Newsweek.com. Honestly, we're not the kind of couple who chitchats with friends about our love life. If I so much as revealed an iota of detail, I'd have to give him CPR, call 911, change my identity, learn Spanish, and move to Mexico before he got out of the hospital. The second reason I won't share a personal story is because nobody wants to hear about married people having sex. It's just about the least erotic topic you can think of, next to Mackenzie Phillips’s recent revelations of an ongoing affair with her father. I'm just an armchair Freudian, but I suspect that the reason for our aversion to married-people sex is that it always, always, always makes us think of our parents, and that grosses us out. I don't care if your parents divorced when you were 6 months old and you're totally open-minded about all things sexual from the missionary positions to Furries and Plushies. Imagining—or rather, not wanting to imagine—our moms and dads procreating is what keeps us from thinking realistically about married people and sex, which is why myths about sex and marriage still exist. Here are a few just to show you I'm right.

Myth 1: Married people never have sex.
This is my favorite and the most-enduring myth. Just because we firmly believe that our own folks never had sex (other than your conception, of course, which was quick and holy), doesn't mean all marriages are sexless. Is there any other reason why we cling so stubbornly to this belief? If the exchanging of wedding vows automatically guaranteed celibacy, the institution would wither away and die and, well, there wouldn't be so many children. If the sheer number of double-strollers in my Brooklyn neighborhood can be taken as any indication, married people have sex.

Because most people like sex and like to have it even if they are married. Maybe couples don't have sex as often as they did when they were dating, but so what? Married people don't wait three days before they call each other back either. And it's probably also a myth that premarital sex is so plentiful. Most of the single and very adorable men I know now rarely have the kind of sex they're always bemoaning they'll miss when they tie the knot.

Myth 2: Marriage means sex with the same person for the rest of your life.
Let's be clear: I'm not saying that post married-sex is a blur of wife swapping and polyamory. But the idea that you'll be having the same sex with the exact same man you married in the exact same way over and over again is also a myth. People change: they grow, widen their perspectives, and narrow their interests all through their lives. As their circumstances and tastes and opinions adjust to different realities, so too do their sexual predilections. When I was a teenager, I lived on Big Gulps and tater tots. As a grown woman, my tastes run more to pinot grigio and coal-oven pizza. Get my drift?

We tend to see our own parents as unchanging and immutable, so maybe that's why we think that as soon as a couple exchanges vows, they're trapped in a life of monotony. In actually, you marry one person, then get to meet and appreciate him all over again as time passes and he grows and changes. You get to sleep with that new person, too.

If you can honestly sit there and tell me that you're only going to want to experience one type of erotic activity for the course of your sex life, then you are either a virgin or terminally immature. Harsh, I know, but I'm trying to make a point—nobody stays the same and as you change and your spouse does as well, your sex life will change too. Note: if you're part of the 0.000000000000000001 percent of people whose sex life is a blur of Playboy bunnies and former high-class call girls, then you may repeat this myth as truth.

Myth 3: Things change after you have children.
OK, this is not a myth. Things definitely change after you have kids. But so what? And why does everyone think they change for the worse? Because we automatically think our parents couldn't possibly have had any "close" time once we were born, because we were the center of their universe. Talk about self-fulfilling nonsense. Yes, things change. If you're like my husband and me, you suddenly have a 15-month-old boy sleeping in the middle of the bed. And spend every waking hour half dead because the small person in between you spends his nights blissfully asleep and either kicking you in the kidneys or pulling your hair very, very hard. I don't think it's too indiscreet to say that these circumstances can have a damper on your desire to possibly have more children. But, what did you expect would happen? A nanny dressed like a French maid would whisk away the child whenever you're in the mood? Nope, all that crying and the lack of privacy and the newfound ability to sleep standing up while brushing your teeth is simply nature's own birth control. Or at least that's what I'm really hoping.

Wait, perhaps I'm underselling the "things change for the better" aspect. But let me tell you, once you have kids, sex becomes like a game. You use James Bond skills you didn't even know you had to work in some alone time without your precious offspring ruining everything. It's like being a teenager again, full of furtive, sweaty, hasty romps, and the delicious feeling that you're getting away with something.

So can we lay off how lame the sex life of married people is? It's not (all) true, and it's not like most people's sex lives were so perfect before they met the love of their life. Besides, there are so many other things that are actually true and discomforting about wedded bliss to pick on. Like, that creepy thing where some married folk call themselves "Mommy" and "Daddy." Even if those names somehow spice up your sex life, don't use them in public. Ever.

© 2009