“Oh my God, three days without sex is like DEATH for me.” says a sweet, child-less friend upon hearing a couple of moms talking about how sex once a week is an honorable goal in our child-full existences.
“Oh my God, I NEVER want to have sex.” says a mom of an almost one-year-old over coffee, her eyes brimming with tears.
Both of these are conversations I’ve had recently.
And they are both examples of the different perspectives women have about how much sex is too much, too little, and not enough (for us or for our partner). There are moms I know for whom sex once a week is way too little, and others for whom sex once a month feels like way too much.
I know I’m not the only mom who keeps a mental calendar in her mind about the last time she had sex. But it’s more than a check mark on a calendar. Sometimes I feel like having sex four times in a weekend, other times I could go a month without it. It varies–and there is no right or wrong number.
But too many moms DO worry about it. They might stress out that it’s been “too long,” and can find themselves going through the motions of having sex–not so much because they WANT to– but because of their sense of responsibility to mark another sexual encounter off on the calendar.
“At least that’s done,” they think. “Now I don’t have to worry about it until next week, or next month.” (Or whatever increment of time your sexual calendar is on.)
It’s not that it’s never okay to have sex more for your partner than yourself. It happens.
But moms begin to tread dangerous waters of forfeiting our sexual identity if EVERY time or MOST or the times that we have sex, we’re doing it because our internal calendar tells us “It’s time again! Need to check this off the calendar now too.”
Our sexuality is much more important than playdates, bills we pay, and soccer lessons. And if we find ourselves checking sex off our to-do list, like we do other things in our daily lives, its time to take a step back and take an honest look at what’s going on.
WHEN WE HAVE SEX BASED ON OUR PARTNER’S SEXUAL NEEDS
At some point, moms can realize that almost every time they have sex it’s because of their partner’s sexual needs and not their own.
And if that happens often, our highly-developed mom’s sense of guilt turns our sexuality into something that only performs based on our guilt or worry about meeting his/her carnal needs. And we forget about our own sexual needs.
Too many moms then find themselves in a cycle of not paying attention to when THEY want to have sex, and more importantly into WHAT MAKES them want to have sex, and they only have sex when they feel their partner wants it.
This breeds guilt. Guilt breeds resentment.
Resentment breeds itself.
THE HARDEST CONVERSATION
One of the hardest conversations a relationship can have is when you sit your partner down and tell him or her that the way you are having sex isn’t working for you. But if our sexuality has been hijacked by a sense of duty, this is exactly the conversation you should be having.
It doesn’t have to be a litany of you never do this, and I always do that, and you must not care about me.
But the honest truth is that sex won’t get better unless you talk about it. And you should. Because your sexuality and your pleasure belong to YOU.
As moms we are so used to letting our needs go by the way-side, that we can let this happen to our sexual needs. There have been times in my life when I was so utterly bogged down with motherhood that sexual desire seemed alien to me and I didn’t even know WHAT turned me on anymore. So for too long, I just ignored this very big problem thinking it would come back at some point.
It wasn’t until I sat down and had the conversation (it is an on-going one) and with my partner brainstormed about what makes me aroused, what makes me want to have sex, that I made any progress in figuring out how to improve it. We came up with movie scenes I thought were hot, vibrators I enjoyed, erotic stories (a big one for me!), ways to build sexual anticipation during the day so I’m even thinking about it–and we even talked about the interactions we needed to have before sex was initiated that would make me feel relaxed and close to him and ready for intimacy.
Our life, just like yours I’m sure, is chaotic and messy, and so these criteria for what put me in the mood rarely all line up, but we pull from them when we need them. We don’t usually have sex if we haven’t talked at all during the day because during our conversation I realized that what I need most is to feel emotionally close to him. So we wait until we’ve had a chance to connect emotionally before we connect physically.
THE MOTHERHOOD REINVENTION
Things change once we have kids, and that can include what makes us feel in the mood for sex. It is our responsibility to make sure we know what these things are.
Sex should be about us, about what makes us feel good, because then we eagerly and graciously attend to our partner’s needs as well as our own without falling into a sea of guilt and resentment.
How has desire changed for you since you became a mom? Have you and your partner had the conversation?
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