Would daily sex strengthen a marriage, or reveal its cracks? Charla and Brad Muller decided to find out. When Brad turned 40, Charla gave him a most memorable gift: scheduled sex, every day, for an entire year. "365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy," written by Charla and editor Betsy Thorpe, offers an account of this experiment, and explores the power of intimacy in a relationship. Also, tune in June 26 to see the couple live on TODAY.

The Offer
When I offered my husband sex every day for a year to celebrate his fortieth birthday, he literally fell over. He was so taken by surprise that he actually stumbled over our son’s fire truck, which was lying in the middle of the floor in our den, and landed, with a thud, in his leather chair.

It was a few weeks before Brad’s birthday. I was confident and excited about telling him my dazzling idea. Likewise, I couldn’t wait for him to accept it.

I extended my hand to help Brad off the chair and led him to the sofa. I hadn’t thrown the idea in front of him simply to get a reaction or a laugh. So, sitting side by side, I faced him and repeated the offer to him again — this time more slowly and with more gravitas. “Honey, I’d like to give you sex every day for your fortieth birthday.” I closed my eyes, relaxed back into the sofa cushion, and waited. Waited for the shock to wear off and the gloriousness of my offer to sink in. But to my astonishment that didn’t happen. Instead, Brad actually declined my offer of daily intimacy for a year to celebrate his birthday.

“Do you actually mean you don’t wanna have sex with me every day for a year?” I declared in a loud and rather high-pitched voice. I have to admit, I was close to that weird screeching noise that women are prone to emit when they are rendered to a state of utter and complete disbelief.

“That’s not exactly true, hon. It’s just that I don’t want you to feel like you have to have sex with me,” Brad said.

“I’m your wife. Of course I feel like I have to have sex with you. That’s why I married you,” I reasoned.

“It’s a great idea, I guess ... I just can’t imagine that you really mean it.”

I hung in there. “What if I do mean it? What if I really do want to have sex with you every day for a year? I mean, would you really say no to such a thing?” I was appalled at the notion!

“Of course not. But are you sure you’ve thought through this and what it could mean? Why don’t you think about this some more and we can talk about it later.”

With that, Brad walked down the hall and our conversation ended. I sat on that couch in the family room, surrounded by pictures of us together on our wedding day, and of the kids at Christmas and on our annual summer vacation in the mountains, stunned. That was it? End of conversation? I gave him the ultimate offer — the stuff of fantasy — and he said, “Yeah, not so much.” Why wasn’t he jumping up and down like a kid in a candy store? Why were there no high fives? No kisses of joy and gratitude, and phrases like, “You’re definitely going to win ‘Wife of the Year’ with this one, honey!”

Instead, he had calmly walked down the hall, and left me alone. This exchange is a great illustration of why I both love my husband and why I’m befuddled by him. I mean, wouldn’t most husbands have stripped down to their skivvies instantly, swooning over the delicious idea of fulfilling their sexual desires daily? Wouldn’t most men be running down the hall, jerking the covers off the bed, and hopping in, thinking: “The guys at the gym are never gonna believe this”? Well, not the one I married, apparently.

Brad, who is gifted with an uncanny ability to get along with me and a rather inordinately large dose of common sense, wanted me to think about it. Well, duh, I had been thinking about it, which was why I thought it was such a good idea in the first place! I was a tad bit put off, in fact. Wasn’t he interested? Did he think I couldn’t stick to such an arrangement?

I didn’t feel rejected by Brad, per se. I know my husband well and think he knows my limits better than I, and was aware that this proposal was a mighty big commitment. His initial reticence wasn’t a commentary on The Gift and his interest in receiving it, but rather on my ability to deliver it. I could have been offended, yes. But I wasn’t — he forced me to think carefully about what I was offering, and the nitty-gritty of how I was going to deliver. Because on some level, there could be cause for concern as I’m a “Big Idea” person, which I used to think was charming but am now realizing can be expensive and often hazardous. I can get caught up in the big picture and ignore the details ... and then it’s too late. Like our annual family photo (a big idea and real memory maker) that no one in my extended family under the age of six really wants to take (small but important detail when you’re running around the yard corralling little people). Or our trip to New York City to expose our children to “The City That Never Sleeps.” Well, that trip became the trip we’ll never pay off. But I still contend that sometimes Big Picture folks bring a lot to the party.

So I made a pretense of thinking about it some more. We didn’t talk about it again for a week. But I knew I could and I would deliver the goods. I’m just that kinda gal, or so I thought.

The idea to be intimate with my husband every day for a year had a few origins. The first was that I wanted to give Brad something original for his fortieth birthday. I wanted to give him a gift that no one else, only I, could give him. And intimacy — any at all —certainly fit that bill. All around us people were doing big, expensive, dramatic things to celebrate their fortieth birthdays, including taking fabulous all-inclusive trips with ten of their favorite couples to the Caribbean, running a fortieth birthday marathon, and receiving a Tar Heel blue convertible. I felt like we needed the gift of connection, a gift for our eight-year marriage and ten-year relationship, and not something that would evaporate once a vacation was over, get tarnished, or leave us with indigestion.

There was also something special about this birthday. Hitting forty is significant. That number has long been regarded as “middle age” (think how old our parents seemed when they hit forty), and according to urban myth, it’s when men turn to affairs and fast cars, and women to Botox and liposuction. Isn’t the forty mark when all kinds of people act out in loony desperation in order to feel young, fit, and attractive? Given that context, maybe having sex every day with your spouse doesn’t seem all that loony.

Take away the dread of aging, however, and you get to realize that forty is actually a really cool number. A pregnancy is forty weeks long (although it does seem longer, doesn’t it?). Noah cruised on his ark for forty days and forty nights. Mohammed got his first revelation from an angel at age forty. Christ was tempted in the wilderness for forty days. A cleansing bath (a mikvah) in a Jewish temple is filled with forty gallons of water. Spiritually and scientifically, there’s a lot going on with forty — not the least of which is that you’re halfway to eighty.

More people than ever before are hitting that eightieth birthday. Today, if you stay married to the same person, you could be married to your spouse for sixty years. Just a few generations back, people got married early, worked themselves silly, and then died. Now, we have to learn to keep a marriage fresh for sixty freakin’ years! New ground, friends. So if you can’t survive the seven-year itch and the fifteen-year hives, you might never see a cheesy but sweet golden anniversary party thrown in your honor.

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