Sexpot or Boxset? How Sex Became a Big Faff…

Anniki Sommerville - 2 Mar 17

A lot has been written about the impact a baby has on your relationship. Nora Ephron (the late, great American screenwriter) once said it was like ‘an explosion’ going off and that’s accurate. People think it will bring them closer but that’s not always true in the early days when your partner becomes a source of irritation and BONKERS ANGER. When my daughter was born I did incredibly petty things like chuck my partner’s socks out the window. Instead of calling him ‘My Love’ I called him ‘Arsehole’. On one occasion I attacked him with a rolled up newspaper when he sneezed and woke up our baby.

I was hard to live with. I was sleep deprived. My body felt like it had been involved in a terrible accident. Sex wasn’t on the agenda (why would it be when I rarely managed to wash my hair?)

My priority list went roughly like this:

Baby

Do my armpits smell?

Cake

When will I sleep again?

But what happens further down the line? Surely everything calms down and sex comes back on the agenda and it’s all hunky dory ? Well this isn’t often the case. There may be physical reasons that a woman doesn’t want to get busy with her partner (feeling like an elephant). There’s also the ‘I’M TIRED OF BEING A WALKING WET WIPE SO JUST LEAVE ME ALONE’ syndrome. There may also be emotional reasons like the aforementioned resentment and anger which is amplified by exhaustion. The truth is long term relationships are tricky anyway. Add children into the mix and they become more so. Even when kids get bigger, the list of priorities can still look something like this:

Kid

Why are there hairs appearing on my chin?

Cake

Benedict Cumberbatch

Apparently ‘sexless marriage’ is searched for 3.5 more times than ‘unhappy marriage’. The good news is that not all marriages are unhappy but it’s rather worrying if we think about what it says about the state of our love lives.

How come sex isn’t a priority but yet is still VERY important. Is it a uniquely British thing that we sweep this part of our lives under the carpet?

And what happens if you stop having sex? (pretty common). What happens if you don’t want it but your partner does? (also common). What if you want it but your partner prefers to lie on the sofa with a giant bag of Doritos watching Fleabag?

We formed The HotbedCollective in 2017. It doesn’t involve us lounging around in sexy locations watching footage of Idris Elba (though that sounds quite nice perhaps). Nor does it involve selling dodgy, comedy merchandise like ‘penis pasta’ and Ryan Gosling sex dolls (if there is such a thing?)  Instead it’s about trying to bring sex and specifically, sex post-kids out into the open so people can talk about it. We want to create a a space for sharing stories. For laughing about sagging boobs, bits and the splendid awkwardness of sex. Our objective is to make women (and men) feel good -whatever shape or form their love life takes (so if spooning and a good sleep is your cup of tea then great. Intimacy can take many forms).

Sex. It shapes our identity. It releases feel good hormones that are potentially a hundred times more powerful than a bucket-load of G&T’s. It forces us to be in the moment when so much of our lives are  filled with distractions and anxious thoughts about an uncertain future.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget the benefits and just see sex as ONE BIG FAFF. But that’s a shame isn’t it?

The next series of The Hotbed is on ITunes – https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-hotbed/id1343455484?mt=2

You can follow the Hotbed Collective on Instagram (@hotbedcollective) 

‘More Orgasms Please’ is released by Penguin/Squarepeg on 4th July and is available to pre-order on Amazon

Anniki Sommerville

I'm Super Editor here at SelfishMother.com and love reading all your fantastic posts and mulling over all the complexities of modern parenting. We have a fantastic and supportive community of writers here and I've learnt just how transformative and therapeutic writing can me. If you've had a bad day then write about it. If you've had a good day- do the same! You'll feel better just airing your thoughts and realising that no one has a master plan. I'm Mum to a daughter who's 3 and my passions are writing, reading and doing yoga (I love saying that but to be honest I'm no yogi).

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