Sex After Kids: There’s Always Time for a Quickie

I haven’t participated in tantric sex, but I know that quickies are the opposite of that delayed gratification. They’re moments of passion, moments of opportunity, or moments of surprise, and they are 99 percent of the way my husband and I have sex, and it’s great. 

I’m not the kind of girl who uses the phrase, “making love,” in seriousness, so maybe I’m more suited to quickies than other ladies. These romps still check all the boxes of intimacy that I need with my husband without the weight, obligation and expectation that come with candles, music, and, what? Lingerie? Massage oil? I don’t know. We never have sex that way. 

Instead, I get a hand on my hip while the kids are in the bath and I’m washing dishes. I receive a sly text message to meet upstairs at a week-long visit with family. It’s the mutual agreement as we lie in bed at night that it’s late and we’re tired, but we want to feel connected. It’s an arm around me in the middle of the night while we’re still half asleep. It’s realizing the kids are entertaining themselves, and we may have a chance to get two minutes alone if we lock the door. 

Before children, we still might have done these things, but without the sense of urgency that we have now. We don’t take private moments for granted and instead of letting this dampen our lust, we use it. We find ways to stir our chemistry. We have an internal clock of when it’s been too long, and we reset that timer.

It’s not often that I run into my husband by surprise, but when I do, I’ll notice his handsomeness before it registers that he’s already mine. Then I get giddy and school girlish as it dawns on me that I share my life with him. It’s these feelings that ultimately translate into our effort to squeeze in quickies every seven to ten (to fourteen?) days. When daily conversations center around which kid had a potty training accident, what caused the latest tantrum, and where we left their sippy cups, neither of us has the energy for anything more. Quickies save the day. 

I plan to give my children this advice when they’re old enough to hear it, and I’m looking forward to embarrassing my grandkids with this wisdom, too. I’ll take up smoking exactly for this conversation and say in a raspy voice with a touch of an inauthentic New York accent, “Go have a quickie. It’ll solve everything.” Maybe, if I really embrace the public kookiness that old people are allowed, I’ll use this line at a wedding. As the DJ asks us, the oldest married couple in the room, to stand up and give the bride and groom advice, I’ll say, “Make sure you have two to four quickies a month. You’ll thank me later.”  

That advice will be shorthand for what I really want to tell them:  You know you’ve found the prospect of long term love when you get beyond the initial butterflies in the stomach and still feel a magnetic draw to one another. When you show each other mutual respect and share the same values and beliefs, then you can make a life together. With it will come a phase of quickies, and I hope you embrace that stage. It means you both care enough to connect, even when your lives are putting up road blocks that make it feel impossible. 

There are real hormonal changes that happen after having a baby that affect women’s sex drives, and those should not be minimized or ignored. And, of course, the physical healing and overwhelming exhaustion that come with new babies makes the thought of sex as appealing as a Pap smear for a period of time. The trick is getting back into the swing of things once the fog of those early days lifts.  

Life will find a rhythm again and that new beat has to include the thumping and bumping that creates little babes in the first place. When have you ever regretted having sex with your partner?  After it’s over, aren’t you at least thinking, “Well, that was nice.” Of course there will be moments when the answer from one of you is, “Not tonight, honey,” but that can’t become the routine. Sex is an important element of marriage and committed relationships that shouldn’t be ignored, so let quickies be the answer.

By now you may be wondering what the other one percent of my husband and my sex life is like, so I’ll tell you. We’re swingers. Kidding! We barely have time for each other. I can’t imagine having to shave my legs more often to impress other people. Nope —That lifestyle’s not for us. The other one percent of the time we have monogamous, uninhibited sex after an evening away from the children. Cocktails got us into this mess, and, sometimes, they help us get through it. For the other 99 percent of the time, quickies hit the sweet spot. You’ll thank me later. 

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Anonymous

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