Bridging the Gap
By STACIE COCKRELL, CATHY O’NEILL AND JULIA STONE
Continued from Page 13. Escape When You Can
“Our kids are 6 and 8 and I still have to get my wife 150 miles away from them before she’s even remotely interested in having sex with me.”
--Evan married 9 years, 2 kids. |
The greater the physical and mental distance between you and the kids, the better the sex. Getting away is not always easy, but it’s worth the effort. Take a couple of vacations a year alone together. Get a hotel room just for the night every once in a while. It’s the best way for a woman to get out of Mommy Mode and remember her “other self.”
With loads of humor and practical advice, the Babyproofers will guide first-time parents and veterans alike around the rocky shores of the early parenting years.
4. Put it in your Planner
Let’s face it. The days of spontaneous “take me now on the kitchen table” sex are over. Those carefree Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoon sessions are a thing of the past. If you want to have quality sex (i.e. where both people are in the mood and in the right place at the right time) you have to plan for it. Cathy has been scheduling “spontaneous sex” with her husband for the last year and a half. He thinks it’s a spur of the moment thing (well he did up until now) when in fact it’s a carefully timed affair.
“I’ve finally started planning sex. It’s not particularly exciting, but it’s better than the alternative, which is not having it at all. What guys don’t understand is that when a woman has sex, she’s inviting someone into her body. We like having a little time to get ready, just like we would if we were having someone over to the house for dinner.”
--Joanne, married 6 years, 2 kids. |
It’s nice for us girls to have a little time to get ourselves ‘in the zone.’ We can plan to give the kids leftovers so we won’t have to cook dinner. Guys, you can plan to get home a little early to help get the kids to bed. During that drive home, you could even think of something nice to say to her later.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road: The Great Sex Negotiation
All niceties and kissy faces aside, at some point it’s time to belly up to the bargaining table for some heavy-duty negotiating. Get your game face on. You might have thought you knew your spouse through and through, but wait until you sit across the table from ach other and start trying to make 2 and 2 add up to 10.
How much sex is enough?
“Going for more than a week without sex is really, really, rough.”
--Randy, married 8 years, 3 kids.
“Three or four times a year would be about right.”
--Leslie, married 8 years, 3 kids.
“After kids everything changes … we’re having sex about every three months. If I have sex, I know my quarterly estimated taxes must be due. And if it’s oral sex, I know it’s time to renew my driver’s license.”
--Ray Romano, comedian and father of 4. |
How much sex do the married parents of small kids have? What’s average? We asked our friends (you can do that sort of thing when you’re writing a book). The women said “about once a week” and the men said “about once a month.” Unless our friends are having sex with someone other than their husbands, they are unknowingly inflating the numbers. Our guess is that the men’s answers are more accurate. After all, most men can tell you
to the hour the last time they had sex. Women, on the other hand, are notoriously unreliable on the topic.
A couple of Data Points: A 2002 study by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago states that married couples say they have sex 68.5 times a year. That’s slightly more than once a week. But according to a June 2003 Newsweek article, psychologists estimate that 15 to 20 percent of couples have sex no more than ten times a year.
Twice a week? Twice a month? Who cares? All that matters, obviously is whether or not the two of you are happy with the amount of sex you’re having. One man’s feast is another man’s famine. Are you happy? What about that person lying next to you in the bed?
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