London, Oct 4 (IANS): If you are married and find that the interest in sex is on the decline, don't be surprised.

According to a new study, frequent arguments and domestic fights -- and not children -- are behind a decrease in bedroom action among couples in just 12 months of living together.

The situation, however, may change as they begin communicating and understand their sexual preferences in the due course of time.

"We found a positive development of sexual satisfaction in the first year of a relationship, followed by a steady decline," said study author Claudia Schmiedeberg from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany.

For the results, some 3,000 participants in the age group 25-41 answered a survey on bedroom behaviour titled "Does Sexual Satisfaction Change With Relationship Duration?"

Surprisingly, children did not appear to have much effect on the sex life, the authors said.

"We analysed how sexual satisfaction changes over the course of a relationship using three waves of the German Family Panel study," Schmiedeberg said.

The team focused the analyses on young and middle-aged heterosexual individuals in committed relationships.

"Moreover, we found significant effects for the control variables of health status, intimacy in couple communication and conflict style, as expected," the authors noted.

The results were published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behaviour.