I also printed out reader Marty’s comment. Back on the message board of “The Myth of Safe Sex.” Because I found it consoling. Oh my god! There’s hope for me!?!

You used the phrase “debunks the assumption that good sex follows intimacy”, yet I believe that that assumption is exactly correct. I am a 51-year-old man, married for almost 27 years, with 4 (nearly) adult children. My wife and I have sex twice a week on the average, I think (I don’t track it), but it is sometimes more, sometimes less. It is less often than it used to be, because I’m not as young as I was – but it is still great; we talk about how we feel about what we do together, what we like, what we don’t (she’s a little more open than me, but I try).

We don’t do everything together, but that’s just a consequence of life. I’d rather have her with me than anything else. We talk together easily, about anything, sometimes for hours. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and the better I know her, the richer my life is.