One of the things that struck me while working on ‘How to have Sex after Marriage’ was that lots of the couples seemed to have a real problem with their work life balance. Or more accurately, they had a real problem with their work-sex balance.
Put simply they were working too hard and sex got squeezed out of their lives. They were working, looking after the kids, doing the washing, watching the telly and just generally too busy to have sex.
Now this seems really crazy to me. Really, in your life shouldn’t you be prioritising the best stuff first? I don’t know about you, but sex certainly ranks up their pretty much at the top of my fun list. And it’s the same for everyone else. Professor Richard Layard, in his groundbreaking book Happiness, found that sex was the thing that made people most happy.
So why aren’t we doing it more? I reckon that sex ends up getting shoved to the bottom of the pile for two main reasons.
First is the myth that sex is always supposed to be spontaneous. A wave of lust overcomes us, we rip off each other’s clothes, have a lusty shag and lie in the afterglow. One of the biggest complaints of couples on the show was that sex wasn’t ‘spontaneous’ any more.
For something to be spontaneous, you have to actually have the time to do it. If your life is filled with other priorities, like work, like watching telly, like doing the washing, then there is no time for you to be spontaneous! Put another way, ‘spontaneous sex’ means sex that gets stuck last on the priority list and shoved in as an afterthought in between everything else.
Which neatly fits into the second main reason – we are all working harder, longer and more. We suffer time sickness, we seem to have less and less time.
So it’s a vicious cycle – you’ve got no time, but you need time to have ‘spontaneous sex’, so in the end, unsurprisingly everyone gets less sex. I think the myth of ‘spontaneity’ is killing people’s sex lives.
The solution? Prioritise sex. Treat it how it should be treated. Make it a top priority. Regularly put time in your diaries for sex, block out Sunday afternoon in red. Make Tuesday nights sacrosanct. Give yourselves space to actually have sex. Otherwise sex will end up where it is now, last in line and at the bottom of the pile.
How’s your work v sex balance? Where is sex as a priority in your life?
Put simply they were working too hard and sex got squeezed out of their lives. They were working, looking after the kids, doing the washing, watching the telly and just generally too busy to have sex.
Now this seems really crazy to me. Really, in your life shouldn’t you be prioritising the best stuff first? I don’t know about you, but sex certainly ranks up their pretty much at the top of my fun list. And it’s the same for everyone else. Professor Richard Layard, in his groundbreaking book Happiness, found that sex was the thing that made people most happy.
So why aren’t we doing it more? I reckon that sex ends up getting shoved to the bottom of the pile for two main reasons.
First is the myth that sex is always supposed to be spontaneous. A wave of lust overcomes us, we rip off each other’s clothes, have a lusty shag and lie in the afterglow. One of the biggest complaints of couples on the show was that sex wasn’t ‘spontaneous’ any more.
For something to be spontaneous, you have to actually have the time to do it. If your life is filled with other priorities, like work, like watching telly, like doing the washing, then there is no time for you to be spontaneous! Put another way, ‘spontaneous sex’ means sex that gets stuck last on the priority list and shoved in as an afterthought in between everything else.
Which neatly fits into the second main reason – we are all working harder, longer and more. We suffer time sickness, we seem to have less and less time.
So it’s a vicious cycle – you’ve got no time, but you need time to have ‘spontaneous sex’, so in the end, unsurprisingly everyone gets less sex. I think the myth of ‘spontaneity’ is killing people’s sex lives.
The solution? Prioritise sex. Treat it how it should be treated. Make it a top priority. Regularly put time in your diaries for sex, block out Sunday afternoon in red. Make Tuesday nights sacrosanct. Give yourselves space to actually have sex. Otherwise sex will end up where it is now, last in line and at the bottom of the pile.
How’s your work v sex balance? Where is sex as a priority in your life?
5 comments:
Oh to be a rent-boy or gigolo and not have this confounded conundrum!
Good point, well made. Add wanking to that to-do list and you've barely got time for a wink of sleep.
And let's face it, fellow men, even if you're 'avin it off twice a day, you still need a bit of 'me time' with your jizz knuckles once in a while.
I reckon Sam is bang on. More conjugal areas in the workplace, I say. Preferably in caravans out in the car park.
(The other mistake couples make is to leave sex until the very end of the night, when one or both is bound to be knackered)
I agree that the whole work-sex balance is really out of whack in this house. Another thing that gets in the way that I am beginning to find that the longer you are together, the more differences start to appear..l one of you likes it in the morning and the other at night, so between the high levels of fatigue and the low levels of giving a rub the whole sex thing just doesn't happen! This could be when affaris creep in, but no, for the only third party is battery-powered, and boy, do I need a lot of batteries!!!
Point well made. I think you just forgot to add one important thing:
TV kills sex!
Less TV and more time in bedroom.
Totally agree with cv:
BIN. THE. TELLY.
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