As one of the nation's most prominent sex therapists, Ian Kerner has a battery of statistics at his fingertips. Here's a particularly sobering one: Nearly 70 percent of couples go through a significant decline in relationship happiness in the three years following the birth of a child. But the New York City–based Kerner wants to change that. His sixth book, Love in the Time of Colic: The New Parents' Guide to Getting It On (Collins), which will be published early next year, is based in part on his own experiences as a harried father and sexually flummoxed husband.
"We're these worn-out, tuned-out, turned-off parents," says Kerner, 42, a father of two boys, Owen, 4, and Beckett, 2. "We lose our ability to mentally engage each other in the way that makes us want to have sex."
It's not the first time his life has inspired his work. After struggling for years with sexual dysfunction, Kerner was helped by a therapist; then, deciding he wanted to assist others, he became a sex therapist himself. In 2004, he wrote She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman (Collins), a frank—some might say exuberant—manual on oral sex. "The introduction was called 'Confessions of a Premature Ejaculator,'" Kerner says with a laugh. "It was the hardest thing I ever had to write. But once you've written that, you can pretty much say anything to the world."
For close to a decade, Kerner has been doing just that. In addition to having a private practice, he holds forth on the Today show and on his website on topics ranging from sexual positions to creating intimacy outside the bedroom. But it is parenthood, and the havoc it can wreak on couples' sex lives, that are front and center for him right now.
"Having kids taught me that regardless of being some sort of expert, I have a lot to learn in my own relationship," Kerner says. "I'm guilty of a lot of the mistakes I see in other people." An example? "I will get angry and frustrated, especially if my wife and I haven't had sex in two weeks," says Kerner. "Usually there's one parent who reaches out for sex, and that person is basically saying through his or her actions, 'Hey, you need to come back into this relationship, because we need to start connecting emotionally and sexually again.' What I really want in wanting sex is to bring my wife back. But sometimes I do it in an asshole-y way."
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