Q I've been with my husband for more than 14 years and we've been married for five years. We have two children, aged three and one, so things are pretty crazy most of the time. I work five days a week and my husband works nights.
My problem is our sex life, or the lack of it. It's been disappearing slowly for years, even before the kids came along. I'm probably to blame but I just don't have a high sex drive and since the kids came along, it's non-existent.
We get only two nights a week together and we're so tired from the pressures of working and minding the kids that we usually just crash in front of the TV.
I don't know what to do; we often speak about it but neither of us makes any effort to do something about it. I really do love him and would hate to damage our relationship over this. Lorraine
A Any mum with more than one child under five can relate to your situation, Lorraine, and probably most of those with just one. Factor in that you are working five days a week and your husband is working nights, and it’s a miracle you found the time to worry about this, let alone to write in. So well done for getting your head out of the sand and asking for help.
Don’t be deceived into thinking that other women in the same boat as you are enjoying rampant sex every other night, as many glossy magazines would have us believe. I don’t know anyone with kids under five who is having regular sex: and any of you who are, please shut up about it.
That you love him, Lorraine, is all that matters. That your husband is sympathetic and caring enough not to make you feel sh*t about the lack of action, even better.
Don’t be surprised if he is also pretty relaxed about all this; he must be knackered too, what with a three year old and a baby, and may see sex as just another chore at the end of a long day – or night, as the case may be – that he is as thankful as you to be able to duck out of it.
All of your combined energies are going into raising a young family, and that can take everything you’ve got during the early years.
We women blame ourselves for everything, but if he is going along with the abstinence without much complaint and, perhaps more tellingly, is as ambivalent as you about doing anything proactive to change things, take it as read that his sex drive is also on the wane.
Do something constructive
All that being said, you obviously want to do something constructive to shift the status quo, so here’s what I advise you do. Firstly, don’t worry that you don’t actually want to have sex and feel as sexual as an amoeba.
I never feel like doing my VAT return but that doesn’t stop me doing it – nor, dare I say it, feeling good about it once I’ve got cracking. Sex, much like running or that VAT return, has a queer way of seeming abhorrent until we are actually in the thick of it, when it becomes strangely desirous.
So the good news is that all that is really required is a concerted effort to do it – just the once – and then you will have got the ball rolling.
There are two ways you can go about this. The gritty way, which is, literally, to grit your teeth and do it: have a glass of wine to steel yourself, close your eyes and think hard of Ireland, or Mr Florrick from The Good Wife, or George Clooney, or the handyman who came round earlier or whoever else can arouse you until the job is done.
Once the stalemate is broken, it is so much easier to do it again and again until a sexual routine is re-established.
Genuine intimacy
However, a much more wholesome way to approach the deadlock involves genuine intimacy, which the above scenario doesn’t require at all.
Intimacy is the hardest thing for a couple with babies and full-on work schedules to recreate because intimacy requires time and space. I’m not talking about physical intimacy here: I am talking about connectedness, a togetherness between a couple that comes from simply talking – and being heard – feeling understood and having a laugh.
Children are the enemy of intimacy I’m afraid, and in order to resurrect it, you have to get rid of the kids. Not for good, but just for the night. What about swapping homes with one of your parents or a sister/brother for a night and trading the puke-stained Breton top for something clean and fresh? Or book yourselves into a B&B or a fancy boutique hotel if you can afford it. All that matters is that you have a child-free full night and morning with just your husband.
Go for a lovely meal and talk about anything and everything that crucially has nothing to do with your children and daily grind. Enjoy each other’s company again, and physical intimacy will follow. Isn’t it worth a shot? If it all fails, at least you will have had a full night’s sleep and there’s always the morning after.
Don’t pressurise yourself into a ridiculous bra/suspenders/bustier/combo or nurse’s outfit, unless that is your thing.
Intimacy is all about stripping away the other stuff, the window dressing, and just being yourself. Yourself, apart from your role as a mother and wife. Yourself as a woman with needs that have been so consigned to the bottom of everybody’s list of priorities, most especially your own, that you have lost sight of how to connect with that woman. That woman is a sexual being.
The Grit Doctor
says When we feel truly connected to our
partners, we feel sexual towards them. Ruth Field is author of Run, Fat B!tch, Run and Get Your Sh!t Together