Lee Suckling: Why a long-distance marriage is good for your sex life

"Not living with a partner brings back a certain level of excitement about each other's naked bodies." Photo / Getty Images

• Warning: This article contains explicit sexual content
Due to work circumstances, my husband and I are in a long-distance marriage again.

Our schedule for seeing each other has gone from nightly to every couple of weeks because of the distance. What's this doing to our sex life? Changing things up in the bedroom and making us less comfortable – no more – with each other. And that's a good thing.

The trend of living apart together, or LAT, is increasing in prevalence across the world as many couples are required to work in different cities from their partners and maintain a level of independence from the typical relationship model. In Western countries including New Zealand, around 10 per cent of couples are LAT.

When it comes to sex, LAT adds a different layer of negotiation to a couple's dynamic. If you do it right, it can spice your bedroom life up to resemble something like the early, butterfly-in-the-stomach stages of dating. If you do it wrong, you can end up not bothering with sex at all because you think your quality time together is better spent doing other things.

Not living with a partner brings back a certain level of excitement about each other's naked bodies. Somebody seeing you without your clothing on feels more appreciated; unlike when you'll run from the bathroom to the bedroom sans towel, being nude around another is something special.

This allows for anticipation, which can bring up a sense of arousal. The same is true in reverse: all of a sudden, my husband's body – which I must have seen thousands of times over the last decade – is somewhat unfamiliar to me. Seeing it feels like I'm being treated. This drums up my more primal urges.

As someone in a long-term relationship who is LAT, there's been new emphasis on quality sex over quantity. The frequency of sex we have has been seriously reduced, and when we're together we might only have sex one time.

So, it has become important to take our time with it and make it special. We discuss new ideas about sex from things we've learned or seen online, and seem to have a more open-minded, "let's give it a go!" stance when it comes to trying them.

Because our mutual desires and fetishes are changing, too, LAT allows space to explore these separately, discuss them when we come together, and see these chats become aphrodisiacs. Talking about what you've been wanting to do with or to each other often leads to actually doing it, after all.

For more geographically-close couples who are LAT, Australian research has found that frequency of contact between partners is very high. Around 75 per cent of these couples meet up with their partners more than three times a week, and many of them see each other daily. Naturally, a key factor of contact is how close they live to each other, which we unfortunately don't.

Interestingly, another study on LAT from the UK has found that commitment to one's partner (in terms of love, care, and intimacy) is expressed to a high degree in one of these arrangements. For most respondents, this is related to the increased freedom and autonomy that LAT offers them.

I find it interesting the UK study found most LAT relationships are exclusive and monogamous, regardless of the reasons a couple lives apart. I'm in a monogamish marriage but appreciate that this isn't for everyone. Those who are fond of more traditional structures (i.e. when it comes with sex and connections with others) are actually the majority of people who LAT.

Potentially, I think this is BECAUSE each partner theoretically has the option to have sex outside of their relationship. They COULD easily invite someone over for a casual night of fun without their primary partner, but because they don't feel trapped (physically or emotionally), there's no urge to do so.

While mutually-agreeable non-monogamy doesn't necessarily develop from a place of feeling stuck in a relationship (in my experience, it's quite the contrary), LAT relationships do help prevent (or alleviate) sexual monotony. This can mean many couples have no desire for sex outside of their main partner.

As I mentioned earlier, you can do LAT wrong, though. While typically research has found that long-distance couples tend to experience more sexual passion when they are together than couples who live together full-time, some LAT couples will find that time feels too stretched to have sex.

When you're only seeing your partner now and again, you can get caught up with conversation, social activities, and admin and then leave each other having never seen a bed. It's therefore important to be conscious of this happening, and make active time for sex rather than leaving it up to (passive) fate.