Next up in the Sex, Love and Bonding Series and last in our section on ruts, is none other than your neurotic blog owner Brandee, talking about how being crazy never helped anyone have a good sex life (well ok, there are definitely certain types of crazy which lead to very awesome sex but, not THIS kid of crazy).

Have you ever started an exercise program? You get psyched up, THIS time it will be different, you will do all the exercise all the time and you will feel amazing and IT WILL BE AWESOME….and then after about 4 days you hate your life and about 9 days later you just plain give up? And then you spend the next several months weeks trying to motivate yourself off the couch but maybe you’ll just start tomorrow?

That is often what happens with sex for many of us.

You know it’s important. You know you like it, and hell you are probably even good at it. You know that the more sex you have, the happier both you and your partner, and thus those around you, are. You know that it’s good for your health, it helps you sleep, burns calories and even gives your skin a freshly fucked glow (you did know all this, didn’t you?). You know that at some point in your life you were a sexual being all full of prowess, a simple glance in your partners direction and you’d be laid up with your ankles by your head in minutes (no? Just me then? Ok never mind proceed….).  Yet time and again, your sex life falls by the wayside…just like your new exercise regime.

I hate to tell you but, you’re not special. This appears to happen time and again to many people, including myself.

I don’t really know what the catalyst is for the rut to start, but I know that the longer it goes the worse it gets. Maybe you’re n a roll having the amount of sex both you and your partner are happy with (once a day? twice a week? three times a month? That’s a personal choice), and then your kid gets sick, or there is a hellacious deadline looming at work which has your brain all “spreadsheets and useless meetings” instead of “touch me right there”. Maybe, like Alicia, you’re just busy talking yourself out of it because YOU ARE A MOTHER AND HOW DARE YOU DREAM TO ORGASM. Or like Brandy, you’ve been TTC for what seems like an ever loving eternity, and sex is just another chore on the to-do list you’d rather sacrifice for an extra 25 mins on the couch with a bottle glass of wine. Whatever it is, it happens. Sex falls by the wayside. Obvious things are obvious. However I feel the need to continually point this out because often times, when I am so wound up in my own head I play the “poor me” card and assume that the rest of the population is boning their life away, happily and on the regular, while I sit pouting.

The worst part, for me anyway, is the fact that the longer the rut goes, the longer it will go. I cannot seem to shake it. It’s like I get afraid of sex, or I think there is some deep seeded reason we’re not all up in each others pants that goes beyond the regular life things, and I analyze. I analyze the reasons it could be, I get anxious, I stress out and before you know it, I’m holding my breath afraid to even hug my husband for fear of some major life thing blowing up in my face.

And you know what? Never once has this been the case.

Maybe it’s because I am a woman, and I tend to complicate things. Maybe it’s that I’m the over thinking type who can’t accept anything simply at face value. Maybe it’s because we’ve grown up in a society that both over promotes sexuality while simultaneously chastising it. Who knows, but what I do know is like Alicia, I need to get the hell out of my own head (and also that I like the word boner town but then, who doesn’t?).

For me it’s not about feeling like I’m not sexy enough. It’s not about thinking I’m too much of a mom to get down or that I’d rather be doing the dishes. No, it’s none of that. Quite frankly I feel like I should be performing some sort of hot lusty straight out of a book in THAT section act on the regular, but that is just me. My problem comes from the thinking, the stressing, the anxiety. I want to have this life, I think I should have it, but it doesn’t magically just happen on it’s own so then I try to find something to blame that isn’t my neurosis.

Yes, it’s obscene but I get anxious about the thought of trying to up and do my hubs whenever I damn well see fit. No one likes to feel rejected, and when too much time passes and no one has made a move, BOTH parties start to try and rationalize it, and it becomes a whole lot about what it isn’t, and not enough about what it is. What it IS is the natural ebb and flow of most relationships in which you add jobs, household duties and children to the mix. What it ISN’T is a sign that you are no longer even remotely desirable to your spouse and are thus destine for a life of potato chip eating solitude on the couch.

The longer it goes, the worse it gets. The longer it goes, the longer it will go. It always starts with simply noticing your one-on-one time is becoming less frequent and ends with the anxiety of a high school choir boy and his first crush being assigned seats next to each other on the bus (OH HOW I WANT HER BUT WHERE DO I EVEN START?). Sex has a tendency to go from being something primal and instinctive, to being something wrought with tension and over thinking. Time goes on, feelings get hurt, and suddenly you’re glorfied roommates sitting on opposite ends of the couch, pouting about the same thing, paying no attention to one another.

To add insult to this injury, I’m here to tell you that there is no simple way out of this.

The hard and fast truth (about how to get it hard and fast) is that you just have to stop with the mind games; both the ones you play with yourself and the ones your play with your partner. You need to dig deep down inside, find the shell of your former sexy self and slap that bitch right in the face for going into hiding. You need to stop making a problem out of something that isn’t a problem, and form a plan of attack to take back what is yours. You need to stop thinking and start doing.

I know it sounds scary, I’ve been there. I’ve talked myself into a spiral of depression, become increasingly short with those around me without knowing why, and basically given up on the idea that I could ever have sex again, let alone care about it. I’ve villianized my husband in this scenario, questioned the validity of our marriage, and ultimately landed on accepting that I am in fact a class 10 weirdo who wants something that you simply cannot have. And then I did the unthinkable – I acted on my wants. I talked to my hubs, I took matters into my own hands (ehm I mean figuratively….ok and then maybe a little literally), and I stopped putting undue pressure on us.

It didn’t solve everything. There are still ruts, but the difference is now, the ruts don’t spiral out of control to the point we’re sleeping back to back, sexless for who knows how long waiting for the other person to break the ice. You have to get back to the root of your sexual relationship, the one which started before you got married or had kids or became “adults”. There was no thinking then, you didn’t gasp in horror at the thought of your partner seeing you in the nude or think about meal planing when the sexy time started. You were just a person with a sexual appetite whose hormones were doing all the driving.

Things have changed but the fact remains that you and your partner are in it for the long haul. Those self-conscious struggles you have are silly because even if you weigh 15 lbs more than you did when you and your partner met, you’re at least 1500 lbs more connected than you were then. Sure some of the raw sexual attraction has faded into something different, but that something different is better. You’re connected, you’ve built a life together, and you know the in’s and out’s of each other’s in’s and out’s.

This is a time of great liberation that shouldn’t go unnoticed. Your partner certainly isn’t concerned if you shaved this morning or what colour your underwear is (though, let’s be honest ladies, feeling sexy about yourself is a big part of this battle), and you’ve already overcome some of the normal awkwardness that plagues sexual relationships. You’re adults, and you’re connected. Now is not the time to forgo all that you’ve built because a sippy cup might be leaking milk somewhere. Now is the time to take that comfort with each other which leads to feeling like old socks and transform it into something deeper, hotter, better. If you can pee with the door open you can tell your husband that you’d bone him more often if he’d just learn your clitoris isn’t a scratch and win ticket (it’s always a winner but never if you scratch it). You can discuss what you want, or how you want it, or even just ask for your partners opinion.

Talk, listen and try. It’s all you can do. The longer it goes on, the longer it will go on and if you don’t jump on it (and him) now, you may wind up 7 months down as long sexless path and those cobwebs really will be forming and, one thing that ISN’T sexy? Is having to dust off your lady parts.

Stop thinking, just do. I’m telling you, it’s the only way out and just as ruts beget ruts, sex can beget sex.

Like this? Check Out These!

• Sex, Love & Bonding {Derailing The Baby Train}
• Sex, Love & Bonding {Leave Your Comfort Zone}
• Sex, Love and Bonding {When TTC}
• Sex, Love & Bonding {Turning the Page in your Marriage}
• Sex, Love & Bonding

Tags: Advice, Happiness, MILF, Mom Sexy, SEX, Sex Love & Bonding, SLB