As we have seen, except when a fairly serious problem arises, the law is generally reluctant to interfere in personal relationships. So you might think that it would steer clear of sex—which is, after all, the most intimate of personal relationships. Yet sex is a subject about which most societies have seen fit to make rules. In Canada, most of these rules are found in the Criminal Code, and there are strict penalties for breaking them. The law also lays down rules about the circumstances under which two people can marry, as well as about the rights and responsibilities that marriage brings with it. But this is an area in which the rules can get controversial.

Negotiating safer sex among married women has been identified as an important determinant of vulnerability or resilience to new HIV infections. The results from a complementary log-log regression model indicate that wealthier and highly educated married women were more likely to report that they can refuse sexual intercourse and ask their husbands to use a condom. In this context, involvement in decision-making may have translated into trust and risk compensation. Those who believed in HIV transmission myths were less likely to negotiate safer sex relative to their counterparts who did not hold such myths to be true. Women's ability to negotiate for safer sex is, therefore, a function of their autonomy in terms of their full participation in decision-making in health care, household expenditure and mobility.

Audio for this article is not available at this time. This translation has been automatically generated and has not been verified for accuracy. Full Disclaimer. Many spouses are feeling trapped under one roof. Amid the strain, uncertainty and unending sameness of pandemic life, many couples find the bandwidth for intimacy is gone.

Image: Shutterstock. How often are married Canadians getting busy? If you think single Canucks are having all the fun in the bedroom, think again. It turns out, married couples are seeing plenty of action.