The Blowfish Blog

Dry Spells: A Reply

I was going to write this as a comment to Rebekah’s piece on dry spells. But it just got longer and longer . . . until I realized that what I had on my hands wasn’t a comment, but a column.

Quick summary of what the heck I’m talking about: Last week, Rebekah wrote in this blog about being in a sexual dry spell: about not having sex, or the time for sex, or even the inclination for sex, for several weeks on end. The main culprit was time and stress and overscheduling, and she asked, “How does anyone manage to get in good fucks anymore? . . .How has our species managed to survive this long if we can’t procreate when we are taxed?”

This column is my reply.

First: I’ve been there. I’m still there, off and on. Things are good these days, but to some extent it’s an ongoing issue. I think almost anyone with a busy, overscheduled life deals with it. And as we get older, we deal with it more.

And I’ll make the usual disclaimer: I’m just speaking from my own experience here, about things that have worked in my own sex life. These ideas are based on a very unscientific sampling size of one — me. (Okay, two — me and my partner.)

One of the things that’s really helped kick my libido into gear is regular vigorous exercise. I know, I know: exercise is a time-suck. But I’ve found that it pays off in time as well as health. (I work more efficiently, I sleep better, yada yada yada.) And almost nothing makes me more generally horny than working out twice a week.

But honestly? The thing that’s helped most of anything is that tired old couples-counseling workhorse: scheduling and setting aside time for sex.

I know. Scheduling sex sounds so unsexy. And when you’re not in the mood to have sex anyway, the last thing in the world you want to do is block out time for it in your datebook.

But I’ve found that it works — for two big reasons.

Reason One is purely practical, purely a tackling of the symptoms. If I wait until my life settles down to get back in the mood, I’m going to wait a very long time. At the rate I’m going, my life will probably settle down when I’m in my coffin. I have to schedule time for the things that matter to me — otherwise, they’ll never happen. And that includes sex.

But Reason Two gets to the actual heart of the problem.

Reason Two: Nothing in the world makes me want to have sex more than actually having it.

Even if I’m not in the mood when we first get going, having sex usually gets me in the mood. The sight of our favorite toys; the smell of massage oil or lube; the sight of her body in one of our favorite positions (or the feel of my own body in one of them); the sight and sound and smell of her excitement . . . that’ll get me in the mood, even if I wasn’t to start out with.

And when we’re having sex pretty regularly, I find myself thinking about it a whole lot more often. Doing it just reminds me — in a literal, visceral way — of how fun it is, how good it feels, how close it makes us, how important it is to both of us. A funny paradox; the more often we schedule sex, the more likely we are to have it spontaneously as well. It’s very Pavlovian: the more I have sex, the more it’s on my mind.

There is no aphrodisiac in the world better than sex itself. It works in the short term, and it works in the long term.

So scheduling sex — whether a whole evening’s entertainment or a ten-minute quickie — can be a great way to cut the vicious circle of stress and sexlessness.

It can be weird, I won’t deny that. I wrote about this a little in my piece on this blog, Willing. Starting to have sex when my mind is on work and worries and errands and plans can feel awkward at first. But the awkwardness usually passes . . . to be replaced by more pleasurable emotions.

Now, if there’s a special one-time reason why I’m too stressed to fuck — travel, family crisis, a big work project, that sort of thing — I try not to worry about it. I let myself go fallow for a few weeks, and figure it’ll pass. But if it’s just everyday overscheduling, I know it won’t get better unless I take positive action to make it better.

And putting sex in the datebook is the best way I know to do that.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2007. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, 20 December 2007 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.