After I was downsized from my job at an Internet company last year, my sex life went into something of a dot-coma.

While I was still attracted to my fiancé in the physical sense, certain psychological factors started getting in the way of my desire to get down.

For one thing, I was constantly worried about money. How was I going to pay my rent? What if I couldn't find a job before my pitiful severance pay ran out? Where the hell was I going to get the money for our upcoming wedding? Financial anxiety was the order of the day (and night), leaving me with a distinctively unsexy feeling.

To add to the lack of excitement, I spent most of my days in the solitary confinement of my apartment, surfing the Net for work and finding depressingly little. By the time my beau got home from the office, I was usually too drained and discouraged for sex.

With thousands of other Americans falling victim to the dot-com crash and a slowing economy, I couldn't help wondering if I wasn't the only one living such a pathetically chaste life.

After surveying several friends who had recently been given the pink slip treatment, I discovered that I had plenty of company in the convent.