The Kids Are in Bed by Rachel Bertsche

Author:Rachel Bertsche
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Let’s Talk About Sex

Oh, the drama of the empty nest. The anxiety. The apprehension. What will life be like? Will the two of you have anything to talk about once your children are gone? Will you have sex now that the presence of your children is no longer an excuse for not having sex?

—NORA EPHRON, I Feel Bad About My Neck

I woke up the other day to a panicked text message from one of my oldest friends. “Ummm, C walked in on us having sex this morning,” she wrote. C, her five-year-old daughter, was confused at first, and then started crying. “Mommy, what are you doing to Daddy?” C yelled.

“Obviously the mom gets blamed for everything,” my friend pointed out.

My pal told her daughter that “Daddy’s chest hurt from riding his bike” and so Mommy was “rubbing it and doing a special massage,” which somehow calmed her little girl down. (This makes no sense but kids will believe the darnedest things.)

Although I couldn’t stop laughing as I read the recap of my friend’s most embarrassing moment, my immediate response wasn’t about the horror of her kid walking in (although, ugh, horror). “First of all, good for you for having morning sex!” I wrote. This is a woman who has a full-time job, as does her husband, and two kids. How she could possibly have the time, let alone the energy, to sneak in a quickie before the kids were awake (or so she thought) boggled my mind.

“It is so rare and clearly a bad idea!” she responded. I guess she had a point, but still. I was impressed.

It’s tempting to pin all the relationship problems parents have after kids on the issue of sex, or lack thereof. Couples lying around in sweatpants and mouthguards have come to represent comfort gone wrong. The first time I saw this dynamic play out in real life, I was visiting old classmates who’d just had their first baby. They were the first of my friends to have kids, and I was sitting on the couch with the mom, dad, and infant, who was in her father’s lap eating his hands, as babies do.

“Look, hon,” the dad said to his wife, clearly entertained by his little girl. “She’s sucking my finger.”

“Now you know how my boobs feel,” my friend said, with more than a hint of bitterness.

“Well, actually, I don’t,” he griped. “It’s been a while.”

“That’s because this”—she pointed to her chest—“is not for you anymore.”

The plunge in marital satisfaction after kids is about much more than sex, of course. Maintaining a relationship isn’t as simple as a night of passion, or a quickie, or whatever worked for you and your partner when you couldn’t keep your hands off each other long enough to make it to the mattress. But intimacy does play a critical role in romantic relationships, and watching my friends snarl at each other made that pretty clear.

The importance of sex is both biological and emotional. Sex and intimacy release

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