Laura, a mother of three, schedules it for every Wednesday night but finds it "oppressive." Ellen, a mother of an 18-month-old, describes it as "taking one for the team" and says she only does it because she has to. Oriana, a mother of a 2½-year-old, almost never thinks about it.
It, of course, is sex. Get a group of mothers together, pour a little wine, and inevitably, if tentatively, the conversation turns to sex. Or the lack thereof. That's what happened last year when the topic came up at an impromptu gathering of moms and toddlers at my apartment. There was a slight pause after the mumbled question—"So, how's everyone's sex life?"—and then palpable relief as tales of exhaustion, lack of desire, and plain old boredom came pouring forth: Bodies, which take time to heal after pregnancy and childbirth, were not looking or feeling their best. Resentment was festering in relationships over chores and household duties. Children were providing enough emotional and physical sustenance, so reliance on partners for those things had diminished. After long days working at home and in the office, the prospect of crawling into bed with The New Yorker, Us Weekly, or Jon Stewart was sometimes preferable to snuggling up to a live body. And then there was the simple truth that most of these women had been in committed relationships for years before having kids—so the honeymoon had been over long before baby arrived.
Some of the women were terrified that their erotic selves would be lost forever in the maternal swirl of laundry, lunches, playdates, and Dora the Explorer. Others were unconcerned by the dry spells, figuring that their libidos would eventually return. But nearly everyone admitted to having succumbed to scheduled sex, because putting it on the calendar was the only way to guarantee it would happen.
There was a wistfulness about what had been lost; our sexuality, shaped and defined during college and in our 20s, had been a large and important part of our identity. Why, then, had motherhood subsumed the sexy, more dangerous parts of us? When had our partners become more like roommates than lovers? We noted the sad paradox—particular to our generation, it seems—that while we had once felt entitled to extraordinary sex, we now felt just as entitled to shelve it.
A few years ago, Newsweek declared that 15 to 20 percent of American couples are in "sexless" marriages (defined as having sex fewer than 10 times a year). On his website, Dr. Phil says these marriages are "an undeniable epidemic." On his list of possible reasons? Simply: "Children."
Sex after children doesn't have to be an oxymoron, but it is different, with a new set of rules and feelings. You think you know everything about sex, then realize you have to relearn it.
Guilt And Pity Sex
Heidi Raykeil discovered this firsthand. Raykeil, who lives in Seattle, writes about the havoc motherhood wrought on her sex life in her memoir, Confessions of a Naughty Mommy: How I Found My Lost Libido. She and her husband, JB Tellez, had frequent, experimental sex in the seven years they were together before becoming parents. But after their daughter's birth, sex became rare and tense. Raykeil was physically depleted at the end of each day, so wild sex—or mild sex, or any sex at all—was the last thing on her mind. Tellez's advances felt inconsiderate, even predatory. Resentment and fighting ensued.
Unwilling to let her libido waste away, Raykeil searched for ways to revive it. And through therapy and writing, she slowly got her groove back. "I didn't approach the subject by saying, 'You're a sex fiend, and I'm a prude,' but, 'When you touch my boob when I'm cleaning spilled milk, it makes me never want to touch you again.'"
Raykeil also realized that much of her bitterness had to do with having sex when she didn't want to. "Pity sex is done out of guilt," she says. "It's something to cross off the list. I think it's better not to have sex than to have pity sex."
Tellez agrees—he describes it as "corpse sex"—and after one too many instances of it, he decided to go on a sex strike. Interestingly, the couple says that getting rid of sex altogether for a while helped recharge their erotic life, by removing two sources of tension. "I was tired of getting my hopes up that we might have sex and then having them fall," says Tellez. "I also wanted to change the dynamic where she felt like it was a chore."
When anxiety over sex builds up, experts say, it becomes difficult for couples to break out of established patterns. "If both partners are happy with no sex, it's fine," says Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. But if one person wants sex and the other doesn't, she says, "ignoring [the tension] is a mistake." Unlike Raykeil, Fisher believes in the philosophy "fake it until you make it." Not only is sex good for the relationship, she says, but "physically, it's good for you. It's good for your skin, it's good for respiration, and it's relaxing."
Connecting With Your Prebaby Self
"I used to be sexy, independent, well dressed," says Ellen, a marketing executive in New York City who left her job to be at home with her son. (Some of the names in this article have been changed.) "After the baby was born, I had spit-up all over me and couldn't even shower. It wasn't a particularly sexy time."
During her son's first year, Ellen lost almost all interest in sex—and in her husband. "In the second six months of my son's life, my husband and I lived separate lives," she recalls. "I did classes with the baby; he worked and traveled all the time. Even when he offered, I wouldn't let him take the baby. I wouldn't give up the power."
Right before her son's first birthday, Ellen discovered that her husband was having an intense IM flirtation with a friend's assistant. "My first reaction was 'How could you?'" she says. "Then I woke up and saw that I had played a part in it. I had lost my sense of humor and fun. I had shut my husband out, and he had withdrawn."
Ellen's dilemma is a common one in the American bedroom, according to Esther Perel, a couples therapist and author of Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic. Perel, a mother of two who was born and raised in Belgium, questions Americans' willingness to ascribe cult status to children at the expense of adult relationships, as well as our tendency to reclassify a woman after she has a baby. "In American culture, there's an idea that motherhood is desexualizing," she says, "as if the transition to motherhood is shutting a door on the woman inside of you."
Ellen confronted her husband about his online dalliance. Then they headed to therapy. She soon realized that distancing herself from her role as mother would help her feel more relaxed and, as a result, more sexual. She found a part-time job and hired a babysitter to care for her son one day each week when she wasn't working. "I needed to rediscover who I was before I had a baby," she says. "Sometimes it's as easy as going to Starbucks and reading a magazine." Ellen also allows her husband to do more caretaking, and the couple now schedule sex twice a week. Even if it's not always mind-blowing, and even if she's not in the mood, she says, "the intimacy makes me feel better—it's like Prozac."
Unlike Ellen, many women lose themselves in their maternal roles, and it takes years for them to emerge again. In the meantime, partnerships fray and disintegrate, and sexuality is put on ice indefinitely. "Family thrives on consistency, comfort, and routine," says Perel. "That is very different from how eroticism arises—it's unpredictable and spontaneous."
Next Page: A distinctly American problem?
