You’re tired. You’re stressed. You ate pizza for dinner and feel a food baby coming on. You have an early start. You’re half-way through a Netflix binge and you’re avoiding spoilers.
You’ve been dreaming of wearing flannel pjs all day. No naked exceptions.
The fact is, sometimes you want to have sex.
And other times, well you’re really just not that into it.
So what if you felt like you had to have it on demand? If there was a deadline to your sexcapades.
If it made you a bad partner or lazy if you just weren’t feeling sexually inclined.
One female writer has written an unusual feature piece on her sex-life with her husband – and it involves a ‘one hour sex rule.’
Natasha Bell divulged the fact that for her relationship ‘to work’, she has a deadline for sex.
The details, she explains:
‘So we devised the one-hour rule: when he returns from a trip, no matter how fraught, fetid or unwashed we both are, we have to have sex within 60 minutes of him walking through the front door.’
Writing in The Telegraph, she opened the scene on what is a pretty standard domesticated life:
‘Late last night, my husband returned from a work trip to find me scraping the bottom of a casserole dish. He listed all the ways he was shattered. Then I listed all the ways I was.’
Then she continued:
‘“Right,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
‘Gritting our teeth, we plodded upstairs to have sex.’
She paints a pretty grim alternative, of a couple bored into silence by each other’s company:
‘Rewind this scene – take the sex out of the sandwich – and you’d just have two tired people, eating in resentful isolation and fighting for custody of the ketchup (not to mention the remote).’
While we know a relationship takes work, time and effort, referring to your sex life as a chore and deadline probably isn’t the stuff you dream of when you utter those two little words “I do”:
‘It works, because it gives sex a deadline. And deadlines work. Just think of all the things you’ve ticked off your to-do list today.
‘Everyone bangs on about sex being a gift. I’d rather call it a chore – if chore means ‘necessary job to keep our life together’. More to the point, ‘chore’ means it’ll actually get done.’
Speaking to a psychologist, Bell addresses the fact that:
‘Dr Schuster finds this a common reaction: “Many of us, when stressed, think ‘if I can’t have good sex, I’m not going to have sex at all.
‘“But delaying for the perfect moment means ‘sex becomes too big a thing”.’
While every relationship is different, and it’s important to feel connected to your partner emotionally and physically, supporting the idea of a sex deadline somehow feels a lot more robotic than taking the time to be considerate, caring and loving with one another.
She adds:
‘It’s pouring with rain, you’re late for work, but you still manage to put the bins out – no matter how soggy or breathless it leaves you. Why can’t the same rule apply to sex?
‘Not romantic? Maybe, but it’s a lot more romantic than splitting up.’
Or maybe you could sit down and talk through your days, or stresses. Not feel like you’re on a timeline, or judge yourself too hard for not wanting to physically act out your affection.
Skipping sex for a day or two doesn’t make you a bad partner.
It makes you human.
