Medical Weblog

I’d like to know how anybody with kids ever has sex.

HUSBAND

If having sex was as hard to do before we had kids as it is now, we would have never had kids, because we would never have had sex.

WIFE

In a sense, all sex in a crowded home becomes group sex. Privacy, quiet, and confidentiality are luxuries that few families have, and the more loving, open, and involved the family, the less likely it is that the parent can find much time to have open, free, expressive sex.

Here are some of the types of sexual adjustment to kids and parenting that I noted in the thousand couples. As you read these types, remember the words of David Lodge: “Literature is mostly about having sex, and not much about having children. Life is the other way around.”

The Sneaks: This is the couple who is ever vigilant for an opportunity to “do it” when the kids aren’t around. Their sex life ends up determined by the kids’ schedules, with husband and wife sending immediate “urgent” signals when the kids might be gone for a few hours. Unfortunately, the home schedule may be so hectic that even the “sneaks” run out of time before they run out of chores, and this involuntary “sneaking” for urgent sex can disrupt a more natural flow of sexual interaction between husband and wife.

The Parental Celibates: This couple has given up on sexuality, holding out for the time when all children are gone from the home to college or career. By mutual and usually covert agreement, they have decided that the effort to fit sex in secretly is just too tiring,

or detracts too much from enjoyment of the experience. There may be a few “celibacy slips” when sexual expression is enjoyed, but these events are few and far between.

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Then promise me you will love me forever.

WIFE

As with all events in life, love changes. I mentioned earlier that every love eventually is broken by illness, separation, or death. It is the process of loving that constitutes our wellness, our ability to achieve super marital sex. The process of loving is infinite even if people aren’t.

Marion Richards, in her book Centering, writes, “The product is not what binds the artist to his craft. Nor the actor to the theater. Nor the person to his being. It is the transformations.” We should commit to process, not people, to a process of vulnerability and the sharing of self, not the struggle to keep love alive as somehow separate from us.

Remember, love is a decision and a decision is necessary to end it. Even in grieving, there comes a time when the decision to “un-bond,” must come. Unbonding does not cancel the memory, the love trace, but it requires a change in the relationship because of the loss of the physical presence of the loved person. Ending is as much a part of loving as beginning.

The love decision is never mutual. Author Zick Rubin points out that the decision to separate comes when one partner feels that the costs of being in a relationship exceed the perceived benefits and

one partner is willing to take a chance, to try for another bonding. As I discussed in Chapter Three, we all “dump” and “get dumped.” It is part of the process of loving and being loved. To believe that any relationship or bond is forever is self-deception. To remember that loving is forever is the ultimate human hope.

A bond’s end is one of the most painful of human experiences, but as writer Shirley Luthman writes, “I don’t believe people put themselves through very painful situations unless that is the only way they can learn what they need to know.” Researcher Clark Moustakas states that the very power of the loving process is its continued jeopardy of changing and ending. This is a universal truth for all living systems.

“I never thought I would hurt like this. I feel it everywhere, in every inch of my body. I’m sick, heartsick,” reported the wife. “I’m sorry I ever loved, and I would have never loved if I knew I was going to pay this price.” She should have known. It is the very nature of love to contain in its intensity its own destruction, as a star explodes from its own heat. The decision to end will never be mutual; we all end up hurt. Understanding this will not lessen the pain, but it may free us for a focus on the joy of the process, for it is the process, not the product, that is forever.

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