Love, in reality: how intimacy survives marriage and motherhood | Saman Shad

The first thing a friend did when I told her that the title of my book was laughing. “THE Sex Lives of married women? “He asked NO Sexual lives of married women. “

I also laughed. He was not wrong: married people are not exactly known for their thriving sex life. And I suspect that the only couples in a reliable way that they have sex must be those who planned it in their Google calendars, probably in a shared folder together with “Bunings Trip” and “Remortgage Review”.

I am not so interested in how many sexual people are or do not have in long -term relationships, but rather to how intimacy evolves over time and desire moves after 10, 15, 20 years with the same person. How does it compete with tiredness, children, finances and the infinite pile of laundry?

We all read stories Speaking of the electrical beginnings of love: the butterflies, the full looks, the non-manner of the hands, for the other urgency. But what happens after the “happy and happy”? When the thrill of the new love gives way to the hum of everyday life, when the only sparks come from an overloading table and the closer thing to the preliminaries is that someone finally empty the dishwasher?

Changes of love. We all learn it sooner or later. I met this concept for the first time in a university psychology course, in which I studied the phases of love. Teenage me has been attracted by the initial and obsessive phase – the type of love that keeps you awake at night and has hurried your brain. The final phase, accompanied love, seemed tragic. I imagined two fragile people on rocking chairs, silently waiting for the end. I did not imagine thirty and forty-somettes who still have decades in front of them, their passion has not attenuated for time, but for school abandonments, working e-mails and the weight that crush the soul of the news cycle.

Because the truth is that love does not change alone: ​​it adapts, extends, bends under the pressure of the competing priorities. And nowhere is it more evident than on maternity. Pregnancy alters your body, Postpartum leaves its signs: it loses breasts, elongated skin, a completely new relationship with the exhaustion. Your identity changes. You are no longer just a person or a partner; You are a mother and that identity can eclipse everything for a while. In the meantime, you should keep a career, follow your dreams, drink enough water, take your steps and What do you want to say you want to have sex, it’s after 22:00.

Maybe we expect too much of ourselves. Perhaps we have never had to juggle only in the number of responsibilities requested by modern life. Yet we do it, in particular women, who are still sold the myth of having everything – a promise that seems authorizing but, in reality, prepares us for tiredness and disappointment. Because we don’t call it for what it is: a scam. A lie for which women fall in love, generation after generation.

As the sexual Perel sexual therapist in his book wrote, mating in captivity: “Today we turn to a person to provide what has once done an entire village: a sense of rooting, meaning and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic and emotionally satisfying. Is there a wonder that so many relationships move away under the weight of everything?”

We cannot be everything for everyone. Expecting that a relationship meets every emotional, practical and romantic need is an impossible standard. Yet we continue to try.

So are we all condemned to a life programming life between school races and reimbursements of the mortgage for the home? Not necessarily. Perhaps the key is not chasing an impossible ideal of the passion that never vanishes, but learning to appreciate love in all its evolution forms. Perhaps it is a question of finding intimacy in everyday life: a shared joke about washing, a text that says that I am thinking of you, for no reason, the silent comfort of knowing that someone still chooses you, even when you are worse and both run with caffeine and three hours of sleep.

Passion doesn’t just have to be stolen weekends of distance or great gestures. He also remembers collecting their favorite chocolate from the shop as he returns home. He is choosing, in a thousand small ways, to turn to each other rather than the way. And maybe it’s about moving our expectations. So maybe turn off Netflix, ignore the news and rediscover yourself, at least for a few minutes before one of you inevitably falls asleep.

As for the sex life (or lack) of married women? Let’s say only, it is complicated.