S.O.S. – Making Intimacy a Priority
We would like to say thank you to MarriageHeat and the MH community! You all are amazing. This is our first post, and we hope that it may help others.
As a couple married for over 20 years, sometimes life, work, etc., get very busy, and we take our personal life, family life, and even our intimate life for granted.
To help combat this, we have adopted the S.O.S. plan: Sex On Schedule. At first, we were very against this as it seemed to take the spontaneity out of intimacy. But we realized that making sure that we had these moments together is more important than how these moments came to be.
We also realized that we each need different kinds of intimacy, from maintenance quickies to sexy fun to cuddle time.
So we have made our schedule such that Mondays are our quickie nights, Wednesdays are our sexy fun nights (while our kids are at youth group), and Fridays are our love/cuddle nights.
We will write a future post about Sexy Fun Night and describe how we use a roulette app to spin a wheel to see what sexy activity we do that evening.
We hope this helps another couple as it has helped us.
D&A
From MH: Thanks, Dustin and Alene! We look forward to your story submission!
Our friends at Get Your Marriage On! have a great app called Intimately Us * dedicated to helping married couples experience great sex, and one of its features is a private Intimacy Calendar—perfect for planning and recording sexy time. If you are the higher-drive spouse in your relationship, it can help to know that specific times have been agreed upon for sex. And for a lower-drive spouse, sometimes the anticipation of that dedicated period to focus on one another can build excitement. You can decide ahead of time who will initiate and annotate whether to expect languid lovemaking or torrid passion—unless you both prefer a surprise. 😉 The app features many other marriage intimacy builders, too!
How about you, MHers? Have you found scheduling a time for sexhelpful to your relationship? If you are having trouble finding time to connect, would you suggest to your spouse that you set aside a day (or three) for meeting each other’s needs? Let us know in the comments.
* Affiliate link. Full disclosure at this link.
Scheduling sex has worked for us occasionally, but after a while, our business seemed to always get in the way. Like everything else in our lives, sex had to be a priority to be regular.
Hey Dustin and Alene,
This is our very first post/comment as well. We also found the intimatelyUs app a couple of months ago. We really love it! There's so much good advice for couples. Also the podcast "Get Your Marriage On!" is really helpful and fun to listen to.
The app really helped us to talk about sex. We really recommend it 😉
Regarding your question, we don't have to schedule sex yet, but we definitely would if life gets busier!
H&J
I love this idea! I applaud your efforts at keeping sex a priority.!
Although I have discussed the idea of having scheduled sex evenings with my wife, she was never totally on board with the idea. She has always believed sex should be totally spontaneous. But hoping that your spouse is in the mood or even the same level of mood when you are is a roll of the dice, so to speak.
Instead of actually scheduling sex, we got to a point in our marriage where sometimes early in the day or early in the afternoon, one of us would make it known to the other when we were 'in the mood' for a night of romance. Like, we might decide to do some yard work during the day, and I would hint about a future 'reward' at the end of the day. Most of the time, the pleasant banter that followed would set the mood and expectations so that the initiator would at least know they weren't going to get to the end of the day and be 'disappointed'. My wife many times will ask if I have any plans for the evening (like, she wouldn't know our plans?). When I say no, and she's in the mood, her response might simply be "how about we turn in early tonight"–Her signal for making sure we get to bed before we are too tired to enjoy each other in a physical manner before drifting off to sleep. Or she may state that she has a big favor to ask of me (helping with planting flowers, etc). Sometimes she'll ask if I need the inspiration of a reward, or I'll just say, 'Is it worth a kiss?' And if it is, I may ask, "Is it worth more than a kiss?" Etc etc until we have decided on whether sex is even on the reward menu for the night, and how high the temperature of the bedroom is going to be before the final reward is attained.
Not the same as a real scheduled romp under the covers, but just some old married couple games we have used over the years to keep each other satisfied and fulfilled with our intimacy and sex life.
We used to schedule all sex, one day on the weekend and one during the week. We still do somewhat, but not as rigid of a schedule as we once had. We like it, I know I am getting sex and wife doesn't do something unexpected. On the off days, she doesn't have to think about sex at all.
We have definitely pre-planned intimacy but more so in the very near term vs. creating a regular calendar. Sometimes E will just tell me as we walk out the door for the day “tonight is a date night”. It’s her way of telling me she needs and wants it. I will do the same or sometimes send her an email describing in great detail exactly how I want us make love and devour each other that day or night. I love that approach as it gets both of our juices flowing to visualize and imagine what’s to cum.
I love the way E makes her needs and wants known. Also, the email with the detailed description to get you both wet and ready.