I touched briefly on this last week when talking about sex after 50 and thought this might be a good topic for a blog. Thus, here we are! As I sit at the Writers Retreat in Top Sail, North Carolina, I asked the group how many have heard of Lesbian Bed Death and everyone raised their hands. Then I asked how many believed it was a real thing and many hands went down. So…of course, I had to do more research on the topic. I found a great article that revealed the origin of the concept, which of course was not developed by lesbians and also did not include a very large sample. As a result, there is a lot of justifiable skepticism about whether this is truly a thing or not. Ultimately, I agree with those who believe the term is a questionable one for something that probably occurs to a lot of couples in mature monogamous relationships. Many couples experience an evolution in their sex life as their relationships mature.

There has not been a ton of research about lesbian sex, but we can all celebrate the 2016 study that revealed while lesbian couples may have sex less often, we have it for much longer. And, not that having an orgasm is the be all end all of intimacy, but lesbians also had more orgasms than straight couples. I don’t know about y’all, but I’ll take quality over quantity any day of the week! Although there were problems with the original coining of the phrase because of the small sample, the term has persisted and many have noted how problematic and possibly misogynist it can be. A sort of internalized misogyny exists when we believe that what we are doing isn’t necessarily sex if it doesn’t include penetration. Because of this, we may be reluctant to admit we aren’t having as much sex as we used to, thinking we are reinforcing this misogynistic view of lesbian sex. Plus, Lesbian Bed Death is such a horrible descriptor. Especially since this is something that actually happens to all couples, not just lesbians.

Unfortunately, not talking about it can lead to shame and guilt around how much sex we are having. The bottom line is that this is a universal issue for all couples. There is no magic number regarding the amount of sex we should be having at any point in our relationship. The issue generally becomes problematic when one partner’s sex drive is higher than the other’s and that has nothing to do with a false notion that lesbian bed death exists, but hetero bed death does not. Like any other relationship issue, the only way to deal with this is through communication. None of us should just accept that as lesbians we’re going to stop having sex at some point in our mature relationships. That’s just not true. My own research suggests that is full-on bull crap and all I had to do was ask a bunch of lesbians at the writer’s retreat!

Okay, time for the tie-in to my books. Thankfully, I have not shied away from including sex scenes between mature couples who have been together for some time, because as I said before that isn’t just fiction, it is real life. No magic number means no magic number and every couple is different. If you want to read about this, I suggest checking out The Others and while I don’t explicitly include a sex scene between my mature couple in Georgetown Glen that comes out in May, I certainly infer that the couple has a healthy sex life. You know the drill…just click the links below.

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Also available in audible: https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Disconnected/dp/B09Y5JSQT9/