As I noodle around the stacks of pastel-colored futons, a chubby salesman approaches. He’s wearing a black apron embroidered with the English words Home Show. To my delight, he has studied in New Zealand and speaks a cheerful if halting English.

I point out something that’s obvious to the bedding salesman, who by now has told me that his name is Toru: There are only one-person futons available. The store also keeps Western-style beds in stock, he tells me, but those, too, are only in single sizes (what we Americans call “twin” beds and use mostly for children).

But wouldn’t doubles come in handy? Doesn’t anybody snuggle to sleep in this country?

Toru furrows his brow and lowers his head, in that distinctively Japanese gesture that suggests, “I’m sorry, I’m about to deliver information that will displease you.” Double beds are by special order only, he says, but, as far as he knows, no Japanese person has ever ordered one. The only buyers have been foreigners like me. “They are all working at the embassy or something,” he ventures.

Japan is the land of the single bed. Maybe Japanese couples push their futons together. Maybe they crawl into each other’s single beds the way my grandparents did. But what they don’t do, obviously, is share a mattress.

Is this significant? I’m wary of fetishizing Japan’s sexual habits, as foreigners often do. I had seen that when I studied Japanese for three years and spent a semester of college in Osaka. Back then I even had a Japanese boyfriend named Yuji, who wore a cowboy hat and loved it that my name rhymed with “camera.” Unfortunately for the purposes of my current research, Yuji wasn’t married at the time. And there don’t seem to be any national sex statistics.

I set up a manic schedule of interviews in Japan, arranging to speak to lots of ordinary people and sit down with experts from the government and with leading sociologists and academics. I make appointments with divorce lawyers and psychologists, and hire research assistants to search for statistics and articles about affairs.

I intend to get to the bottom of the mystery of the single futon, even if I have to burst into Japanese bedrooms. Are couples here having regular sex with each other? Are they celibate? Or are they, as I suspect, off shagging other people?

I set out with a novice interpreter named Maiko, who, despite the fact that she gets the giggles whenever anyone mentions sex, charges the egregious fee of twenty dollars an hour. Our first appointment is with a “marriage adviser,” whose office is in a tiny Tokyo neighborhood where trees droop over low wooden fences. I imagine the kids inside the sprawling houses here rushing to the door when their fathers arrive home holding briefcases and shouting “Tadaima!“-the greeting that means literally “I’ve come back!”

When we arrive for our appointment, Maiko and I put on slippers and enter a hygienically clean room to meet Hiromi Ikeuchi. Ikeuchi is a cheerful, petite woman in her mid-forties with a perfectly tousled bob and a fresh coat of red lipstick. Within minutes she tells us that she’s divorced. This is, in fact, her calling card. “I like divorce! I love divorce!” she says. It turns out that her specialty is divorce, not marriage. The pamphlet she hands us explains that her office is called the Tokyo Family Lab — Research Section, which explains the quasi-surgical atmosphere.

On a white marker board, she draws a kinship chart showing the Japanese characters for “wife” and “husband” separated by a red line. The husband is the head of the Japanese household, called an ie (rhymes with “eBay”). When a woman marries, she’s appendaged to her husband’s ie, and her status shifts from “woman” to “wife. ” Ikeuchi draws more red arrows showing that the couple’s children are born into their father’s ie while their mother always remains on the other side of the red line.

No one writes love songs about the ie. It has more to do with property and responsibility than love. The ie is the opposite of the American marriage, where couples aspire to communicate and work on “the relationship.” Ikeuchi says some older Japanese husbands don’t even use their wives’ names and instead address them with a crude form of “you.” Even younger couples begin calling each other the Japanese equivalent of “Mother” and “Father” (or the marginally more modern Mama and Papa) after a child is born.

And then there are the single beds: “Mother” typically moves her futon into the baby’s room and sleeps there until he’s five or six (according to tradition, her husband replaces her in the master bedroom with a large stereo system and a flatscreen TV). Even younger couples who think the formal ie system is old-fashioned retain some of its trappings, snuggling be damned.

I tell Ikeuchi that none of this sounds very sexy to me. She agrees. That’s why they call it “sexless marriage,” she says.

Sexless marriage? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?

Not in Japan, she says. “Sexless marriage” (or the abbreviated “sexress“) describes Japanese couples who either have very little sex or no sex at all, particularly after their first child. It’s a kind of syndrome that afflicts couples as young as their twenties and thirties and can last for years or even forever, usually without the couple ever mentioning the “problem.” Hiromi isn’t sure how many Japanese marriages are sexress, but she suspects the problem is endemic. She blames the ie heads, some of whom take a strange sort of pride in having a chaste marriage. “There are certain men who believe you don’t bring sex and work into the home,” she says.

That solves the first part of the mystery. There’s not much sex at home. But is it happening someplace else? Or have I found a sexual culture without sex?

Excerpted from Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee by Pamela Druckerman. Reprinted by arrangement with Penguin Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright (c) March, 2008.

Author Pamela Druckerman is a former staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She has a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University and has reported from São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem, Paris, and New York. She lives in Paris.

The experience of minor jealousy here and there is usually not something to fret about. A fleeting bout of anxiety or fear that someone may attract your partner is normal and not necessarily an issue. This is especially true when you realize your fears aren’t reality-based and the feeling doesn’t linger.

Good Jealousy

So what exactly is “good” jealousy? While it might seem like an oxymoron, there is such a thing as a healthy dose of jealousy. Even in the best relationships we can start to take our partner for granted at times. On those occasions, when you suddenly feel a pang of jealousy, say while noticing a gorgeous singleton chatting up your significant other, that emotion can serve as a potent reminder of the things that initially attracted you to your partner. If someone else is finding him interesting, you might realize that you’re still interested in him too (even more than you were aware). In those cases, a little twinge of jealousy can serve to briefly reinspire the relationship.

Jealousy can also serve as an indicator of love and interest. How so? Well, oftentimes people may not even realize they have romantic feelings (or realize how deep their feelings run) until they get a jealousy pang. And that little twinge serves as a wakeup call that they are more invested than they thought. In that case, jealousy is also positive because it ups the stakes in a relationship that may have needed a kick to move it to the next level.

The above scenarios illustrate how a little jealousy isn’t deleterious and could possibly even add something to a relationship. Thus, should you or your partner experience minor, everyday jealousies, it’s best to recognize them for what they are, even laugh at them, accept them, and then release them. Unless trust issues are also involved, chances are you can just let them go and move on (and even take them as a sign that things are still on track with your relationship).

The risk with “good” jealousy, however, is that things can easily change from it triggering a mild jolt of anxiety that can even be exciting or enjoyable to the more extreme forms of jealousy, anger, and fear. At the extreme, jealousy can become seriously debilitating and destructive to a relationship.

For this reason, jealousy is not something that should be toyed with. Some people play on their partner’s fears and anxieties by engaging in little acts of seeming disinterest to make them jealous, such as smiling suggestively at a passing stranger on the street and commenting on her physique. Bad idea. Organic jealousy can be tolerated in a relationship because it serves as a reminder of emotional investment. Intentional acts of jealousy — invoking behavior, however, serve only to ultimately break down a relationship.

Bad Jealousy

When jealousy runs in the other direction, it will start to chip away at a relationship. Instead of adding intrigue or spice, it adds doubt, which is incredibly powerful. A doubt-filled mind is a fertile breeding ground for other relationship-wrecking thoughts and may lead to relationship sabotage (i.e., if a partner becomes possessive, demanding, or controlling out of fear stemming from jealousy, it will generally lead to the very loss of love they were afraid of in the first place).

How can one recognize the bad before it gets really ugly? Consider this: Any situation where jealousy leads to irrational, overprotective, or demanding behavior would probably qualify. A relationship fraught with jealous undertones might also look a bit competitive or fractured to the outside observer. Think about it: A member of a happy couple isn’t usually flirting with others to make his partner take notice nor will he make a scene anytime his significant other so much as looks at another person. A couple without jealousy issues are comfortable giving each other a long leash in social situations because each person knows that his partner will find her way back to his side eventually

Bad jealousy sometimes shows up as dominant behavior. It may also come out in repeated accusations, which is not healthy for any relationship. Bringing up something your partner did — like ogling a stranger — is okay once, especially if he wasn’t aware that his behavior bothered you or made you feel insecure. In fact, voicing that jealous reaction may even make him feel good knowing you care enough about him to seek reassurance of his love.

The danger in repetition of such a behavior, however, is that it may become draining emotionally, or your reactions may intensify. For example, instead of asking questions about what your partner has been doing in an ordinary, interested way, you may start grilling for every detail of any encounter he has, which really makes you look nuts. Even worse? You might try threatening or confronting the person you believe, correctly or incorrectly, is your rival.

This would definitely be “bad” jealousy because instead of strengthening your position with your significant other, it makes you look needy and insecure and there is nothing attractive about that to anyone. See how tipping the scale too far can lead to relationship ruin?

Ugly Jealousy

On the extreme end of the spectrum is the “ugly” kind of jealousy and you can probably figure out what kind of situation that entails. Think jilted lover gone berserk or cheated-on wife who takes her husband for everything he’s got. When it comes to relationships and sex, “ugly” jealousy probably gets the most intense. That is likely because sex is already a heightened experience; when jealousy enters the mix, the results can be devastating for a relationship.

A contemporary, fictionalized example of such a situation was in the movie Unfaithful. In this film, Constance, played by Diane Lane, is a woman in a solid but rather boring marriage who on a chance encounter meets a mysterious Frenchman. Eventually they are off on a torrid and passionate affair. Soon her husband, Edward, played by Richard Gere, starts to get suspicious that something might be going on. He has her followed and when photos of her and her dashing amour confirm his worries, he decides to confront the man.

At this point, however, the power of contained jealousy comes to light and he ends up murdering the man. Regardless of the outcome, you knew his life and his relationship would never be reparable.

While this is on the extreme side of the jealousy continuum, the point we’re illustrating here is that jealousy is a powerful emotion that should not be underestimated. Learning to deal with it in a positive manner may be the healthiest thing you could possibly do for your relationship. Otherwise, the resulting fallout could be ugly.

The above is an excerpt from the book Sex Comes First: 15 Ways to Help Your Relationship . . . Without Leaving Your Bedroom by Joel Block, Ph.D. & Kimberly Dawn Neuman. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2009 Joel Block, Ph.D. & Kimberly Dawn Neuman, authors of Sex Comes First: 15 Ways to Help Your Relationship . . . Without Leaving Your Bedroom

Joel Block, Ph.D., is an award-winning psychologist, practicing couple and sex therapy in New York and offering couple-relationship seminars throughout the United States. Dr. Block has appeared on the Today show, Good Morning America, and CBS Morning. He lives in New York. Visit Joel Block, Ph.D. at www.drblock.com

Kimberly Dawn Neumann, is a Broadway performer and highly credited dating/sex/relationship writer. Her work has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Marie Claire, Maxim, and more. She lives in New York City.

For more information please visit www.SexComesFirst.com

The desire to have one’s needs met, however, is deeply rooted in your past. The concept of mind reading may well be a vestige of childhood. At that time in your life, you expected your parents to anticipate your every need, perhaps before you were even cognizant of what you wanted. As adults, however, we must be responsible for our own needs. That’s part of what it means to be a grownup. But in that same vein, if our needs involve our partner, it is up to us to speak up. Unfortunately, we all-too-often don’t.

The problem is that within silence lives a major precipitating factor for relationship failure. While it may be commonplace in this day-and-age to gripe about “communication problems,” many couples — influenced by the images of romantic love promulgated in our media-driven culture — believe that they should be inextricably linked to their partner through an innate understanding and sensitivity. In effect, they say, “You ought to know how I feel or what I mean if you really love me.” Realistically, however, this is often not the case.

You Should Just Know Me

Do you and your partner really know each other? Chances are you will answer “yes” right away if asked this question. Chances are a better answer would be “sometimes.” Human beings are mutable. People change, ideas change, thought-processes change — that’s how we grow. So to say that you unequivocally know your partner is to put a bit of a damper on the possibilities for growth within your relationship. And to expect your partner to know you and anticipate your every need also puts that growth-barrier on you. The only way your partner could possibly meet your every need would be if you never changed your mind about anything. Pretty limiting, right?

Yet, some would contend that being in a relationship allows them the privilege of being less forthcoming in their efforts to communicate than they might be with casual contacts precisely because their partner knows them better (and therefore presumably can fill-in-the-blanks when things are not communicated perfectly). The only problem with that theory is that if you’re using your communication skills more effectively with strangers than you are with your nearest and dearest, well, soon your partner won’t be your closest confidant any longer.

Additionally, people in relationships tend to consistently overestimate the ability of their partners to anticipate their behavior (and vice versa). Research has supported the claim that closeness does not automatically equal comprehension. Even in the simplest predictions of one another’s behavior, couples are usually wrong.

In a report published in Marriage and Family Living, researchers asked spouses which one of them would tend to talk more during a decision-making process dealing with how they would spend a hypothetical gift of several hundred dollars. The session was taped so that the actual amount of talking done by each could be measured. Only seventeen out of fifty individuals correctly predicted who would be the more active speaker. What’s more, after the session was over and the participants were once again asked who talked more, over half still judged incorrectly

In another study, investigators increased the participants’ motivation to predict correctly by showcasing a myriad of “prizes” — gloves, scarves, lingerie items, belts, and wallets. If, without communication, they could successfully coordinate their choices — that is, choose the same item — they would receive the items as rewards. They all failed. Not one of the twenty-five participating couples succeeded in predicting one another’s choices on as many as five of all twenty items.

In still another study, this time involving 116 couples, each partner was asked separately to give the names of persons considered by both partners to be close mutual friends, not including relatives. In an astonishing result, only six couples were in total accord on this task. One couple even failed outright, completely disagreeing on their mutual friends.

What this illustrates is that while couples may claim to know each other like the back of their hands, chances are they’re pretty frequently off the mark. That said, and studies aside, it should not be surprising that couples who engage in solid communicative efforts are happier and more sexual than those who make no concerted efforts to understand each other. In fact, a major feature in relationships suffering from a lack of intimacy is not a discernible lack of attraction between the partners but more likely a deficiency in their communication skills. In discordant relationships, there is usually a marked failure of both partners to express and be attuned to each other’s feelings and thoughts.

There may be any number of reasons a person might have an inability to “speak up” including coming from an uncommunicative family (which might mean inadequate development of verbal skills), shyness, lack of self-confidence, intimidation, controlled hostility (in which an individual may not communicate in an attempt not to “blow up”), suspicion, self-protection, and so on.

Whatever the reason, most often the deterioration of communication occurs gradually and is the result of an interactive process. For example, sometimes a partner will encourage communication and then discourage it by frequent interruptions, in effect, disqualifying the speaker and her message. Or perhaps one partner will ask for more communication only to then feel like the other partner is “nagging,” which consequently leads to harbored resentment. The bottom line is that there is only one route to a truly happy relationship and that is through communication, not ESP.

Sex and Mind-Reading Needs

There is no doubt that talking about sex is tough. If it were a piece of cake every couple would have an amazing sex life. But on that same note, expecting your partner to just figure it out or automatically know what works for you is also totally unreasonable.

Still, when it comes to sex, most people tend to live by the credo “No news is good news.” In other words, if neither partner says anything, they tend to assume that their partner is okay with what is going on. Unfortunately, that is frequently miles from the truth. Sex is a highly intimate and vulnerable exchange. As a result many people are terrified to speak up about their needs for fear of hurting their partner’s feelings or possibly even worse, turning their partner off.

Women tend to have a particularly difficult time asking for what they need in bed because some women still believe they are supposed to focus on their partner’s pleasure rather than their own, and oftentimes their goals during sex are less about climax and more about closeness. So she just hopes and prays that by being sexually conjoined to her partner she will somehow get the intimacy she craves and that he will somehow figure out what would make her feel good without direction.

Thing is, the phrase “different strokes for different folks” applies here; no woman or man comes with a road map. So what might have worked with one partner in the past won’t necessarily be pleasurable for a new partner. Unless there is a dialogue about the situation at some point, neither partner will know what is truly working and what is not.

Reading physical cues may give some couples information (i.e., if they seem to be sexually turned on then they assume things are good). One thing to keep in mind, however, is that there are a lot of good actors out there as well. People will frequently fake sexual pleasure in order to enhance their partner’s self-esteem or perhaps enjoyment of the experience. But this kind of behavior is usually to the detriment of one partner’s pleasure as well (the “acting” partner).

The basic point is, you’re an adult. Adults are responsible for their own needs. Likely, your partner is not going to be able to read your mind, so at some point, you’re going to have to get over it and talk to each other straight up about your sex life. By not doing so, you risk remaining unfulfilled. If you don’t create a road map, you’re likely to get lost.

The above is an excerpt from the book Sex Comes First: 15 Ways to Help Your Relationship . . . Without Leaving Your Bedroom by Joel Block, Ph.D. & Kimberly Dawn Neuman. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2009 Joel Block, Ph.D. & Kimberly Dawn Neuman, authors of Sex Comes First: 15 Ways to Help Your Relationship . . . Without Leaving Your Bedroom

Joel Block, Ph.D., is an award-winning psychologist, practicing couple and sex therapy in New York and offering couple-relationship seminars throughout the United States. Dr. Block has appeared on the Today show, Good Morning America, and CBS Morning. He lives in New York. Visit Joel Block, Ph.D. at www.drblock.com

Kimberly Dawn Neumann, is a Broadway performer and highly credited dating/sex/relationship writer. Her work has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Marie Claire, Maxim, and more. She lives in New York City.

For more information please visit www.SexComesFirst.com