There's a lot of things a couple has to deal with in family life! Here it is important to preserve friendship, and to find a fine line between intimacy and invasion of personal space, and to raise children, and to organize life ... But that's not all. There are two other very important functions in marriage...
Sexually erotic function. The tasks of this function are not only to satisfy the partners sexually, but also to have bodily contact (it is also so important that you are simply stroked on), to have a sense of attraction and... a sense of belonging to your own sex. That is, it is important for ladies to feel like a woman, and for their spouses it is equally important to feel like a man. She needs to feel fragile, cared for, cared for, beautiful, and he needs to know that he can do something himself, that he is obeyed, that he is strong and successful.
If we talk about sex, then, of course, there are many subtleties in this area as well. And a whole ton of concepts. For example, sexual compatibility or incompatibility. From a biological point of view, it is about the fact that the need for sex is different for everyone. People with a strong sexual constitution cannot live without sex, they are physically ill, and they are in great need of sexual release. And people with a different type of constitution have little or no need for sex. Can you imagine what happens if there is such incompatibility?
There is also such a concept as the range of acceptability. This is about who and what they think is acceptable in the intimate sphere. It is not difficult to guess that if she is an avid BDSM woman, and he adheres to extremely traditional views, it is unlikely that they will be able to work together easily...
Sexologists say that one of the difficulties of a couple's intimate life is that there are no compromises here. After all, either you offend/ humiliate/ravish your partner with your unacceptable desires, or you are chronically dissatisfied with your marriage (it seems to me personally that this is about each of the marriage objectives). In addition, there are other features of this sphere of life: we know little about our own body, and we are afraid to learn about it in detail, and it is awkward to say to many people - because this is a very sensitive area. However, the good thing about sex is that if a couple is morally ready to work with it, it is always possible to improve their intimate life. It would be a desire.
However, it is possible to talk about sex much, long and fascinatingly, but let's return to the tasks of marriage.
It happens that the sexual and erotic function for a couple becomes leading. In this case, the union is based on the attractiveness of each of the partners in the eyes of the other. As a rule, these marriages are not the strongest: as soon as someone from the participants of the process loses their attractiveness or stops admiring the partner (hello to the narcissists), the couple will disintegrate. Or turn into a threesome.
Spiritual-intellectual and leisure functions. This includes self-fulfillment of partners, spiritual growth, ways to spend free time, and intellectual intimacy, and general hobbies. This function, of course, is very binding to the couple.
And some cunning people, understanding this, beforehand create the same "common" that helps to be together - for example, family traditions. Such partners try to find common interests, closely follow each other's development. It happens (and often) that one "outgrown" the other, and the latter did not have time, could not or did not want to. It is especially unfortunate when it turns out that after many years of life together...
But it also happens that the pair makes a "bet" on this function. And then they are very similar to friends-colleagues who develop together, learn the world and go in one direction. True, and there are risks here: you can forget about other tasks behind friendship. For example, there are cases when there is nothing to eat, but it is cool to talk to each other. Or when you see an interesting person in your partner, but not a creature of the opposite sex.
In marriage, of course, the tasks of the couple and the tasks of each of the partners are closely intertwined. As we age, our needs and views may change, and with a new stage in the development of the family, we will easily need to solve the same problems anew. It may happen that some tasks will take more time and effort, while others will take less, and there is a possibility that one of the tasks will be impossible for this couple. After all, there is no universal "right" way to build a relationship. There is a way that fits a particular pair at a given time.