Have you talked to your partner about sex recently? I’m not talking about just a simple, “Hey do you want to have sex tonight?” kind of talk, but rather an intimate conversation about how your sex life is going for both of you? Are you both sexually satisfied? What could you be doing better for your partner and what could your partner be doing better for you?
If the answer is a resounding no, join the club. I’m was right there with you, until recently.
I recently listened to the book “Girl, Wash Your Face” on audiobook. Unbeknownst to me, the book includes an entire chapter on improving your sex life, and that chapter happened to play while my husband was listening along with me. (Thank goodness the kids weren’t present at the time!). While it wasn’t planned (and made me feel SUPER awkward in the moment), listening to that chapter together really helped us to start a conversation and take a moment to evaluate the current status of our sex lives.
Truth be told, I think listening to a discussion about sex was really powerful for both of us. It came as a relief to hear about another couple experiencing an extended sexual dry spell after adding children to the family – and it gave us hope to hear about how they came out of their dry spell having better sex than ever before. While we were both painfully aware that we hadn’t been having a lot of sex in recent months, we hadn’t really had a conversation about why – or done anything to try to correct the problem.
The best advice we heard was the idea that having open and honest communication with each other was paramount to having a good sex life. How can you be on the same page if you haven’t even opened the book? Neither one of us is a mind reader, but we were expecting one another to be. This sounds great in theory, but implementing it? Having this type of conversation is HARD. It’s amazing how difficult it can be to have an open conversation about sex, even with someone you’ve been married to for years. Despite it being a difficult conversation to start, though, we agreed that it was a conversation that was worth having – and continuing.
In order to keep the conversation going, we also realized we need to be having more routine sex so we’d have something to discuss. We need to be having more sex so we can discuss what we like and don’t like, what turns us on, and what new things we might like to try in the bedroom. I realized that while we’d certainly been having more regular sex early in our relationship before kids, the sex was great then because we were newlyweds – the fact of the matter is, the sex was nothing to write home about. Now that the newlywed bliss has worn off, we have to take the time and put in the effort to figure out how to make our sex life exciting and very enjoyable – for the long term.
The other great suggestion we heard was the concept of a “Sexy September” – the idea of committing to having sex every day for a single month. We discussed it and decided that daily sex was a bit ambitious for us, but we’re implementing our own version of Sexy September, with a pact to make time for sex at least 3 day each week. We’re both looking forward to the coming month, and I hope we’ll come out the other side feeling like we’ve found our groove again – and in fact, maybe things will be even better than in the past.
Considering joining in for your own form of Sexy September in your home. What have you got to lose?!
It happens sometimes!
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