Card games can be fun, and a handy spice to a flailing intimate life, but there needs to be regulation and understanding. This deck of cards presents a broad array of sweet, sultry, and positively raunchy opportunities, and therein lies both its strength and evident weaknesses.

For starters, it's a 52-card deck, which represents each week of the year--a handy mathematical relationship--providing an encounter that could happen over the course of that week. That essence is great. It doesn't need to happen NOW, it just needs to occur in the course of those seven days. Even if you pull the card "Quickie" it can be held in check until such time as that quickie works for both partners.

Some of the cards are a little too specific to maintain that week-a-card theory, however. Maybe it's me, but I can't imagine that a broad range of couples will be able to follow through, however progressive they get with their attitudes.

As a result, the deck misses nearly as often as it hits. I mean, it can be fun, without question, but unless both people are prepared to accept everything as written, it's going to be tough to maintain.

Some cards, like "Quickie" are fantastic, everyone can relate. Others are so specific to elements that one partner or the other might feel uncomfortable with and that it would just have to be discarded, thus throwing off the fundamental premise of this one-a-week process.

Or maybe some are just not for us, and will be for you... but I believe there are enough shoddy, throwaway cards in the deck to undermine the core potential here. Maybe the rule should be, if you don't like it, ditch it... but draw another card. It won't last a year, but the potential is there to keep you both entertained (and comfortable) for several months.