We measure the duty cycles for an existing sample of well observed, nearby dwarf novae using data from AAVSO, and present a quantitative empirical relation between the duty cycle of dwarf novae outbursts and the X-ray luminosity of the system in quiescence. We have found that log DC = 0.63(±0.21) × (log L X (erg s −1 ) − 31.3) − 0.95(±0.1), where DC stands for duty cycle. We note that there is intrinsic scatter in this relation greater than what is expected from purely statistical errors. Using the dwarf nova X-ray luminosity functions from Pretorius & Knigge (2012) and Byckling et al. (2010), we compare this relation to the number of dwarf novae in the Galactic Bulge Survey which were identified through optical outbursts during an 8-day long monitoring campaign. We find a specific frequency of X-ray bright (L X 10 31 erg s −1 ) Cataclysmic Variables undergoing Dwarf Novae outbursts in the direction of the Galactic Bulge of 6.6±4.7×10 −5 M −1 ⊙ . Such a specific frequency would give a Solar neighborhood space density of long period CVs of ρ = 5.6±3.9×10 −6 pc −3 . We advocate the use of specific frequency in future work, given that projects like LSST will detect DNe well outside the distance range over which ρ ≈ const.