TODAY'S POLL

After 11 years together, Kathleen* and Scott are, in many ways, the envy of their friends. “We can still spend 24 hours a day with each other and never get bored,” says Kathleen, a 34-year-old teacher in New York City. “We’re entirely 100 percent supportive of each other.” But behind the scenes, they share a secret that most of those friends would never suspect. Sometime during their second year together, Kathleen realized they hadn’t had sex in a month. She was shocked. “Then it became three months,” she says. “By year seven, it was, Whoa, we haven’t had sex this year.”

There’s no RDA for sex; no prescribed “supposed to” frequency. But most of us assume that, barring significant health or emotional issues, a good relationship has to have at least a little of it. When sex slumps, it’s supposed to be a red flag, a sign that other things—intimacy, connectedness, romance—are on the way out, if they’re not gone already. Right?

According to Kathleen, no. She insists that while her marriage isn’t perfect, it’s happy, stable, loving, and fun—without sex. It’s not that she thinks sex is somehow wrong or even unimportant; she just doesn’t happen to want it. And she’s sick of hearing from society at large (see Drs. Oz, Phil, and Berman) that if her marriage isn’t steamy, it must be somehow illegitimate. The few people she’s told have reacted with incredulity—“I think people would be less shocked if I told them I had one of those sex swings in my bedroom”—followed by unwelcome advice based on assumptions that range from false to insulting: He’s gay, she’s gay, they’re asexual…. “The worst is when people say, ‘Oh, so he’s like your brother?’ ” she says. “Ew. He’s my husband.”

Despite what Kathleen’s friends might believe, low- and no-sex couples are not all that rare. In one survey, 14.1 percent of married men and 14.9 percent of married women experienced little or no sexual activity in the past year—and not necessarily as a side effect of menopause or because a relationship had cooled over decades. The woman I talked to for this story is dynamic, intelligent, attractive, childless, financially independent. And she's young.

So please we would love to hear from you, both men and women by answering the question below.

Poll: Sexless Relationship

Have you ever found yourself in a sexless relationship?