because the nanny you fired was hotter and smarter than you? Loser, stupid fascist feminist hag. I would presume your husband is a weak loser.

Ms. Perel more or less states that marriage is about stability, friendship, and implicitly boredom, whereas eroticism is about mystery, imbalance, and fantasy. She says she's never called her husband her best friend. Sounds to me like she is over-romanticizing mystery; there's something to be said for a partner who knows you -- and your fantasies -- well and can play to them.

Reading between the lines, she suggests marriage is a bad idea because it is unsexy. All I can conclude is that she isn't doing it right!

It is hard to make sense of this interview. Mother's spend to much time hugging their child which drains them of the need to have wild sex with their husband so they should hug their children less? Sex needs mystery so you should communicate less with your partner about your life? Sorry, but these are truly odd assertions.

The love I feel for my child is completely different then the love I feel for my husband and they are not in competition with each other. If a mother doesn't feel like sex at the end of the day it is more likely due to the physical exhaustion of child rearing then because she has exceeded some mythical hug quota.

I also don't agree that emotional intimacy is antithetic to sexual passion. I don't think I am alone in feeling that as my husband have grown closer over the years the intensity of our lovemaking has grown as well.

Esther Perel may have some insights that will be of use to some, but she hardly speaks for the experience of all married couples.

I totally get Ms Perel, but I also agree with Steve. It's not all about this mystery thing. You want someone who actually listens to you and will share what turns you on. That's a form of loving someone in itself. You make the effort for eachother. If this isn't happening, then I guess it's time to *rethink those boundaries*. I don't want a mystery, I want a guy who'll let me have my fantasies, then take out the garbage in the morning.

After you've had sex with the same person a zillion times and know their every pore and smell with incredible intimacy, sex is really not that different from masturbation. It's nice, it's comforting, it's a good release...but it's hardly what I would call *hot*. I still like having sex with my husband, but it now takes 20 minutes of foreplay and fantasy before I'm really aroused. Compare that to the first few months we were dating, when my panties would be soaking wet if he so much as blew in my ear.

I'm sure that plenty of you enjoy committed, long-term sex, and even prefer it. It is comforting and cozy and familiar and all that. But anyone that says that their body responds, on a purely physical level, with anything even approximating the same level of arousal as it did in the beginning of their relationship is a flat-out liar.

I think some of you marrieds might simply be forgetting how incredibly mind-blowing, intense, and HOT sex with a new partner can be. And I think that's actually dangerous territory because if you ever get in a situation where the opportunity for adultery presents itself, you might be completely unprepared for how incredibly overwhelming the carnal drive and feelings of almost incontrollable desire are. It's just biology.

I remember back in the not too distant past when Salon used to have an article or two now and then about singles, about sex, and sometimes about both. Now all we get are articles about Moms, Working Moms, Stay at Home Moms, Mommy Wars, breastfeeding, breastfeeding at work, motherhood, the oh-so-important mother-child connection, the need for Moms to have time for themselves, blah, blah, and more friggin' blah.

At this point, I'm beginning to think that Salon is no different than the Christian right who think sex issues only pertain to married mommies. I'm finding less and less about this site that pertains to me, a heterosexual, single, childless, African-American woman. Unless, of course, I ever want to have an abortion.

Are letters being deleted? Because it seems like there are several snarling, bitter, hateful, angry "responses" to every Salon article having to do with men and women and relationships, but the "responses" very rarely have anything to do with the actual article or anything in it, or any of the previously published letters.

Wait -- random-text-generating bots. That's gotta be it.

When a wife knows she'll get the house, kids, car and a huge chunk of change if she decides to leave, what motivation does she have to make things work?

Only when marriage becomes an equitable exchange will things change.

Until then, men are getting wiser and avoiding marriage altogether. Why get married when you can have hot sex and keep the money that was earned from your own sweat and toil?

Marriage is a parasitic relationship whereby a woman leverages the inhumanity of family court to get whatever she wants from a man.

Sorry, ladies- you've priced yourselves out of the market.

A man needs a wife like a bicycle needs a fish.

To fight for equal rights and opportunity.

Giving wives more than they "deserve" in divorce, presuming that women are better mothers then men are fathers, allowing alimony only for wives -- that's all relics of pre-feminist laws, laws that viewed women with pity in family court, because they could never earn enogh money to live on, and laws and judges taht presumed that women are "nurturing" and will be better mothers. It has always been like this -- no one has "priced themselves out of the market" recently. It's just that you've only been around recently.

So, you should join the fight for equitable justice. And taht's with the feminists, not the anti-feminists.

It's the anti-feminists, like Dr. Laura and Kate O'Berine who believe that men are just overgrown child-oafs who need the wise and knowing women to take care of them like one of the children. It's the anti-feminists who celebrate women being "masters of the home," and use taht to discourage them from working outside of it, like Phylis Schalfy. It's not the feminists.