"Increasing Quality Time As A Family Solved Our 'Dead Bedroom' Issue”
A mom just like us — comparing prices at the grocery store, cheering at the baseball field three times a week, running PTA meetings — shares her sex story, no matter how “boring” or “shocking” it may be.
This story is an “as told to” and anonymous. The mom in this story is a mother of two, in her 30s, living in the PNW.
Like so many other parents, my husband and I really struggled with our sex life after we welcomed our first child. Eighteen months later, we had our second, and things got really tough. It wasn’t just that we didn’t have time; it was also really hard for us to switch our mindsets from taking care of little kids to, well, taking care of each other.
Everyone told us, “Oh, you have to get creative,” or “Once you put the kids to bed, it’s go-time,” but neither my husband nor I worked that way. By the time we rushed through bedtime, even if we ignored other chores like laundry and dishes, I was too hyped up and touched out, and the thought of quickly banging it out on the couch just so we could say we did it gave me the ick.
We figured we just needed to give it some time and realize that the season of life we were in — with two under two — was not conducive to the sex we wanted to have.
Suddenly, three years went by... and we could count on two hands the number of times we had sex.
OK, so maybe we had sex more than that, but the kind of sex we wanted — where we felt connected and actually enjoyed it instead of humping against each other like teenagers — was seriously lacking. I went to a playdate with my mom group right after my oldest started kindergarten, and all of us immediately launched into a vent about our sex lives. Another mom called hers a “dead bedroom,” and I felt an instant connection to that phrase. That’s exactly how ours felt. And we didn’t know how to fix it.
We spent the next few months trying lingerie and date nights and carving out more time for us. But I never felt like we got it right. I’d feel guilty pawning the kids off on our parents so we could have sex, and I hated feeling like we rushed through some of the best parts of our day just so we could get to the part of the evening where we were finally alone.
Then one day, we decided to just have a good old-fashioned family day. It felt like we’d been trying to do a little too much of everything and were failing at all of it, so we woke up early, took the kids out for breakfast, went to the park, got ice cream, hit up our favorite children’s museum, and just had one of those super satisfying family days.
We got home, made dinner, got the kids in baths, and I will never forget looking at my husband as he put our boys in pajamas and thinking, “Oh my gosh, I just love him so much.” I had never been so attracted to him as I was in that moment, and I told him so. While we were doing the bedtime routine, we were holding hands and he was rubbing my shoulders and all of us were snuggled together, and it was just this total sense of happiness and contentment and bliss that came over me.
And as we came downstairs, we just went after each other. It was the best sex we had in years.
It felt like extending our family time and really pushing to be more present and in tune with our family dynamics that day sparked some intimacy between us. It makes sense now, like of course we feel more intimate with each other when we’re pouring into our family together, but it felt revolutionary at the time. I think it was a combo of not feeling like we had to have sex or else, and not feeling rushed through our family time to get to our alone time. For years, having two under two just felt like pure work. It was fun and joyful, sure, but it was hard to find ourselves or the time to be together.
That day, we just realized we needed to stop making it feel like such an either/or situation, and that intimacy breeds in some pretty magnificent ways. Watching my husband be a good dad does more for my libido than any lingerie or sex position we’re trying.
I truly think more quality time together as a family saved our dead bedroom. It doesn’t feel like an us-versus-them mentality anymore, and my husband and I have found deep connection to each other through parenting and our family time. And if having great sex means I have to spend an extra 20 minutes building a Lego set or taking my kids to a water park for the day, then I’m all for it. Everybody wins.
