No, My Marriage Isn't Some Magical Unicorn

I know what some of you think. Of course she has a great sex life. Her marriage must be rock solid. Her partner must be some amazing magical unicorn guy. Or, well, she's a sex coach, so of course she cares about sex, she's the magical unicorn woman.

I want to take you back to the earlier days of my marriage and paint you a picture. Because I am no different than most of you. That is exactly why I get it.

How We Actually Started

Here is the context. I met my husband when I was around 30. He was 28 to 29. I had wanted babies for a long time, since about 25, when my previous serious relationship ended. He was a single dad with a four year old. We did the classic meet in your 30s thing. Dated about a year. Engaged about a year. Married by year two. Pregnant within three or four months of the wedding.

The first parts of our relationship were solid. They were magical. I was learning how to be a stepmom. My partner was a great dad. He had all the dad skills that made him ideal in my eyes, because I had dated a lot of men where I felt like I was going to have to do all the work all of the time. That, by the way, was clue number one about my own patterns and my own shadows that I needed to deal with.

Then the Baby Came

My husband had already had a newborn before, so he was a lot more chill. He knew what to do. He was not anxious every five minutes about her sleeping or fussing or puking. I probably had some postpartum anxiety that went undiagnosed at the time. It was a lovely season and it was a hard one. I struggled with breastfeeding before we finally found our way. I exclusively breastfed, no bottles, which meant I was on all day and all night. I was running a business part time. I was tired.

When I think back to it, I remember it in my body. Me at the breakfast table in my old granny breastfeeding nightie, probably mid feed, having yet another fight about why the kitchen was not clean or the laundry was not done or something was not done to my standard. Me asking my partner if we could go to counselling, because I could feel the four horsemen the Gottmans warn about circling our house. The contempt. The resentment.

I will admit it openly. I probably spent those first three years after we had our first baby complaining about my partner to my girlfriends. All the time. To the point where one of them had to call me out on it. We both felt frustrated. We both felt misunderstood. Sex was infrequent, though we found a rhythm that worked for us at the time. There were a lot of feelings about a lot of things as we adjusted to life with a neurospicy kiddo and a brand new baby who was not easy.

So no, we are not some paragon of perfect. We have been to therapy. We have had the hard conversations about what we want, what is not working, and what we need to change. And we keep showing up for each other, and we keep making bold choices to figure out what works better for us.

The Mental Load Nearly Broke Us

Fast forward to baby number two. A surprise pregnancy that I very much wanted, and that also took me by storm. Some medical stuff, a lot of fear, a lot of stress, a very quick delivery. It was a tough one. Things were hard again.

Honestly, the mental load in our house did not really shift until my youngest was about two. That is when we read The Fair Play Book by Eve Rodsky and started having clear, overt, productive conversations about the mental load instead of going round and round and round, even with our therapist.

Is it perfect now? No. I am annoyed this week about how things are going. But instead of bitching about it, instead of getting angry at him, I have asked for a meeting. We are going to sit down. We are going to look at the system we have in place, name the places it is failing, and make some adjustments to see if the new experiment works better for everybody.

The 2 a.m. Fights Nobody Posts About

I have been there. I have been through the days of, is this really my person. I have been through the 2 a.m. version, the one where you look at them and think, who are you, and why did I marry you. Usually in some insomnia induced fog. This is raw. This is vulnerable. Because we have all thought it. We have all thought it at 2 a.m. with a toddler who peed the bed and a baby screaming beside us.

I have been in full resentment. I have been in contempt. And I kept showing up.

So How Do You Actually Get Through It

If you want to get through this, you have to decide that your relationship matters. You have to decide that it is not all your partner's fault. You have to stop pointing the finger and waiting for them to change something. That is not the answer. You have to start looking at your own patterns and your own way of dancing in the relationship.

The three biggest questions I keep coming back to are these. How am I handling my own stress and my own emotions. How does my partner handle theirs. And can I learn their stress cues well enough that instead of getting annoyed when they are stressed, I can name it. Oh, they are stressed. What might be helpful for them right now. Or at least point them gently in that direction.

Us Against the Problem

Then you have to become a team. This is not me versus you. This is us against the problem. This is us against the dishes. This is us against a modern society that does not support parents and leaves us drowning on our own trying to do everything.

This is not me versus you. This is us against the problem.

There are basically five jobs here for two people to cover. Making enough money to live. Maintaining a home. Raising good humans. And taking care of ourselves. Five jobs, two people, my friends.

So we experiment. My husband and I keep experimenting with self employment and different jobs. Will this job reduce stress and make everyone happier? Will this one mean less money but more time with the kids after school? We have experimented with date night routines. We have experimented with quality time routines. We treat our life as a living experiment, constantly watching what works and what does not, adjusting, and talking about it together.

Our Sex Life Has Had Seasons Too

In the early days, after my stepson joined our family, I remember a conversation where I realized I was used to having sex almost every morning and almost every night with exes. That was not the kind of sex we were having, because my partner was the lower libido one, and because he was an exhausted part time single dad. I remember it landing. Oh. I am in married with kids sex land now, not just couple sex land. So we adjusted expectations and found something that felt good. At the time I was doing my tantra coaching certification, so I kept bringing home what I was learning. It was a delicious season.

Then came the pregnancy sex season. Then the postpartum season. In that postpartum stretch my husband said something like, you know we get bitchy with each other when we are not having sex. I know it is not the first thing on your mind, but can we agree that about once a month one of us taps the other on the shoulder and we just go for it. That worked well for us then. We were always grateful when we did it, even when nobody started out raring to go. Things always flowed better between us afterward.

With my second, postpartum looked different. I had an autoimmune disorder I did not know I had yet. I was an emotional wreck. I was in a stressful job I loved and did not want to leave. The tap on the shoulder once a month stopped working. It actually did the opposite. Any sex that was not long enough or good enough or connected enough, the kind of routine sex we got away with the first time around, just left me feeling sadder and more disconnected and more alone. So we talked about it. I needed quality. I needed novelty. I needed something new. Part of that was how long we had been together, about eight years by then. Part of it was just what my body needed in that moment.

It does not matter how often we do this. But when it happens, it needs to be juicy.

Not pressure to be juicy. Just the intention of it. As I started to regulate my health, and as I started putting together the framework I now teach in the Naked Fun Comeback, I could step into a maybe or a yes more often, and things got more delicious for us.

The Season We Are In Now

I feel like we are on the cusp of a new phase. I am curious about rope play and Shibari. I crave novelty and more play. I want to follow the curiosity. I want to spend some of our date nights in what I call sexploration mode, where the goal is not orgasm. The goal is, let us put on an instructional video and learn a basic rope tie and see what happens.

The Real Point

It does not matter what you experiment with. It does not matter what agreements you two land on. What matters is whether you keep talking about what is working and what is not. Whether you get real with yourself about what you actually need at the moment. Do you need creativity? Do you need a break? Do you need a season of just one kind of thing? Do you need to be gone down on first every time for a little while? What is going to make this a more enjoyable process for both of you? What is going to help you meet each other in the pleasure place? What is going to help you play naked together?

I Am Not Different Than You

I am not any different than you. Yes, I have an interest in sex. Yes, I am open to talking about it. And I have still had my moments where I was stuck in silence and could not bring up the hard thing. It was actually my partner who broke the ice first. So talking about this for a living does not mean the cat never gets my tongue.

I have been in full resentment and contempt for my partner. I have been in a place where I was not sure how we would find our way back. I have doubted whether this was my person. And I kept showing up. He kept showing up. We found the good faith, and we found the love. That is how I know we are going to be together until we are 80. And it is how I know we are going to play naked until we are 80.

So you can do this too. Even from those places.

Want In

If you want in on the next round of the Naked Fun Comeback, we start this October. Get yourself on the waitlist here. Or send me an email and ask me all your questions, including whether it is the right starting point for you. I will talk to you soon.