Stop Talking About Having Sex With Your Husband Like It's a Bad Thing



I am a stay-at-home mom. I have been for nine years. Motherhood can be both exhilarating and exhausting. I follow a ton of mom pages on Facebook because if you don't embrace the funny, you’ll go crazy. I am incredibly grateful for them. The content is so relatable. Sometimes it's almost as if they have cameras set up inside my house. It's comforting and reassuring to know that other moms are experiencing the same ridiculous daily woes in their journeys through motherhood as I am.

Many days are filled with diapers, endless toy pick-up, funky smells of unknown origin, and arguments about tiny bites of food. Some days the toddler skips his nap and falls asleep before bath time. Sometimes he has chips for dinner because that's what he will eat, and I am too tired to fight. He has code red meltdowns in the checkout line because I didn't let him put his drink on the belt exactly the way he wanted to. I get it. Motherhood can be trying and overwhelming and daunting.

Most days I would love nothing more than to toss the children at my husband as he arrives home from work while simultaneously escaping out the front door. I refrain though because he has had a long day too. The world kept spinning for everyone else while I was in my mommy bubble.

I need all of the mom funnies, daily, to push through it all, but I am seeing an alarming trend. All too often I am seeing moms on videos talking about sex as a negative thing. It's treated like a chore to check off a to-do list, and everyone is struggling to get out of doing it. The reasoning behind it is that with all the baby wearing and toddler acrobatics on our faces throughout the day that we are just “touched out.”

I know what “touched out” is. From the movie The Princess Bride, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” There is a difference between being sick and tired of little offspring hands and bodies and fluids all over you and being “touched out.” On two separate occasions during my breastfeeding journey, my son was sick and nursed around the clock. He was basically latched for 24 hours minus diaper changes. Both times, toward the end, I became disgusted and repulsed. It was a bitter, horrible feeling. I wanted desperately to leave him latched to provide comfort and hydration, while every ounce of blood running through my body was screaming, “Get ‘it’ off of me!” I held it together, but I know that feeling all too well. If you are having that feeling regularly, you need to see a doctor. As far as tiring from the everyday incessantness of kid hands, that is normal. That never interferes with the desire I have for my husband.

These online videos make avoiding sex normal, funny even. Your husband had a hard day. He's tired too. I don't see the need to ridicule him for wanting to be intimate with you. Different people have varying degrees of sex drives. Hopefully you married someone whose drive you can work with. There's no need to scoff with your friends about his poking you in the back or making jokes about his audacity to want you.

These videos are perpetrating the idea that it's normal to not want to have sex with your husband. WHAAT?! What kind of life is that? That's a big part of the fun of being married. Sex provides stress relief, heightens immunity, and boosts confidence. It lowers blood pressure and improves sleep. It's an adult break from all the kids things.

Obviously there are going to be times when one or the other or both of you are too tired. That's understandable. It's normal for the frequency to reduce for a while after having kids. The desire should still be there. The effort should be made from both sides. I don't like the idea that that a woman with a healthy sexual appetite is somehow abnormal. We are not unicorns, people! It is ok to want your husband. It is ok to enjoy sex. If some of you moms out there would stop avoiding your husbands' advances and stop faking headaches, you might remember how much you like sex. That's how you ended up with all those babies in the first place.






*Decreased libido can be caused by a myriad of health conditions and should be evaluated by a doctor if there is concern.

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