A team studying the affects of relationships on sex, say that women's interest in regular sex goes down once they have been in a settled relationship for some time.
Having interviewed 530 men and women about their relationships and sex lives, the team found that 60 per cent of 30-year-old females wanted sex 'often' when they first started a relationship but this tailed off to be less than half the women questioned, when a relationship had been going for four years (and just 20 per cent of women once they had bene in a steady relationship for 20 years).
Conversely, the men questioned said their interest in regular sex did not go down, with as many as 80 per cent of the males saying they still wanted sex no matter how long they had been in a relationship.
The research holds up the sitcom cliches about love and romance: nine out of ten women still want tenderness from their relationship no matter how long it has been going, whereas only a quarter of the men asked feel this is important in a long-term partnership.