The Marriage Edition: Audrey Ference Answers Your Questions

The Marriage Edition: Audrey Ference Answers Your Questions

Q. My husband and I have been married for five years. At first, our sex was steamy and amazing and I must say, it still is. The only problem is we don’t have time to have it because of our busy work schedules. Do you recommend actually penciling it in to our schedules? I hate to be so strict with scheduling but I know it’s an important part of any relationship. Please help us!

A. I know it sounds totally unsexy to be like oh don’t forget, we’re scheduled to bone tomorrow night at 9:30 pm. But think about it this way: you’re specifically carving time out of your schedule to be intimate with your husband. You’re making sex a priority. Instead of imagining it like a chore you need to cross off of the list, imagine it as an hour you have reserved for just being naked and seeing where it will go.

Certainly, you don’t have to limit yourselves to having sex during the “scheduled” times, but the same way that it’s sort of impossible to get exercise in if you just do it when you actually have time, or to get serious writing done if you wait until you’re feeling inspired, super busy people aren’t going to make time for sex unless they put it in their schedules.

I do think it’s important to be flexible and creative—you don’t want your sex to start feeling rote. If your scheduled sex time comes up and you both aren’t feeling it, then just spend an hour hanging out in bed and talking about things. Or I find that when I get busy, I forget how much I enjoy just being physically close and snuggly with my partner, without necessarily having sex.

It’s also something you can spend all day looking forward to and getting yourselves all horny and excited. Maybe you can schedule specific new things to try during certain “appointments.” Then you can daydream during boring meetings about what you’re going to get up to that evening. It could actually end up being way sexier, since you’ll have time to get yourself in the mindset for sex, rather than just having it kind of come up on you while you’re trying to fold the laundry or whatever.

Of course, if you try it and it doesn’t do it for you, then that’s okay too. But if you approach it with the right attitude, it might lead to some interesting things. You won’t know until you try, right?

Q. I’ve been married to my husband for twenty-five years. We have three beautiful kids, but there’s one problem: I am not attracted to him anymore. We’ve both grown old, but there isn’t anything about him I find sexually attractive. We’ve always been so good about communication, but I can’t bring myself to tell him this detail when he asks me about our lack of a sex life.

A. This is tough. Sometimes attraction fades. Over twenty-five years, I think it is normal to have the spark between you fade. But that doesn’t mean that it’s easy. You definitely have some thinking to do. It sounds like you no longer want to have a sex life with your husband, but he still wants to have one with you. Do you want to have a sex life with anyone? Are you attracted to other people? Is he?

I know many couples grow into being more like roommates or friends as they get older. Some people are okay with this arrangement, and others are not. Are you? Is he? Might you find yourself attracted to your husband again, if he made some changes or if you tried some new things? Would you consider staying married but exploring other relationships on the side? Is this something you would end your marriage over?

These are big, big, scary questions, but it sounds like maybe you need to find a way to approach them together. At some point, the conversation becomes about more than sex—it’s about how you want to live your lives together, and how you want your marriage to look. It is extremely difficult to speak honestly about this stuff, especially if you feel like everything else in your marriage is going well, but if he is asking about your lack of sex life, that means he is unhappy with it as it stands. Honestly, you don’t sound very happy with it either. It sounds to me like maybe you guys could use some help figuring this out. Couples counseling is a great way to have these conversations with a caring mediator guiding you. He or she can be there to help you both sort through your feelings and find the truth of what would make you both happy. Is therapy or counseling a possibility for you?

Either way, please give these questions some serious thought and have an honest conversation with your husband. I’m sure he has been thinking over some of these questions as well. Good luck figuring this out. I know it will be challenging, but I hope that ultimately, however the conversations go, you both end up happier.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Audrey Ference writes the Sex With the Natural Redhead column at The L Magazine. She’s excited to (try to) answer any and all questions you have about sex and relationships here at How to be a Redhead. Have a question? Comment here or write to press@howtobearedhead.com and your question might be the next one featured! She will be answering your questions every Wednesday & Sunday: stay tuned.

Leave A Response

Dont Miss Out...

ponytail-1

Being a redhead, you have vibrant, eye-popping hair and it is important to style your hair to make it stand out even more. We love a great ponytail and sometimes it’s great to braid the ponytail to make it a little more interesting. This look is perfect for the day. Need to look classy in a pinch? Wrap your braided

Redheads-at-the-Oscars-2011

Red Carpet, Red Gowns & Red Hair! Tonight was the 2011 Oscar Awards and we were excited to see our redheads on the red carpet! The color of this season was definitely red as most celebrities were wearing red gowns, but red hair is still all the rage. LOVE: Amy Adams- RED HOT! We love this color on Amy, just

IMG_0061-271x203

Our readers have been writing in about last week’s Shellac review; some stating they love it also and some saying it ruined their nails. We were worried the Shellac would ruin our nail beds, but believe it or not, it didn’t because we used a special How to be a Redhead technique: After having the Shellac removed, we did notice our nails