We are so busy with the kids we never have time for sex

I thought that once our three children were out of the baby stage our sex life would improve, but I was wrong.

Sex at bedtime doesn’t happen because my partner and I are always tired. Weekends are spent ferrying the kids from parties to swimming and back, and during the week we both work. What can we do?

>> When I read your question I shuddered at the parallels between your life and mine. My husband and I used to get wound up about it all, and for a while it caused a kind of low-grade friction between us.

Though we never articulated it as sexual frustration, I believe that without some form of physical connection it is hard to make sense of whatever it is you are trying to build together.

Instead of feeling smug and self-congratulatory about the job and the kids and the house and the fridge full of goodies, you end up bitching at each other about how difficult life is and whose turn it is to stack the dishwasher. It’s as if all the stuff you have worked towards and achieved becomes a grind.

The pattern of behaviour I describe is one that most parents can easily relate to. Children do put a lot of, often unanticipated, pressure on a relationship. And according to the Centre for Policy Studies, more than 50%of cohabiting couples and 8% of married couples in Britain split up within five years of the birth of a child.

I can understand why. Two people meet. They fall in love. They have a child. They have two. And they both love their kids so unconditionally that they unwittingly neglect their love for each other. And then one of them fills the sexual vacuum by having sex with someone else and, suddenly, it’s all over.

That’s not something that I wanted to happen in my relationship, ever, so when things came to a crunch, my husband and I decided that our relationship with each other needed, and indeed deserved, greater priority.

It’s a decision that the marital therapist Andrew G Marshall endorses in his book Build a Life-long Love Affair: Seven steps to revitalising your relationship (Bloomsbury. €8.20). Marshall thinks that parents need to be more calculated about scheduling sex and he also advocates a degree of selfishness because “your kids don’t need you 24/7”.

One of the most important points that Marshall makes is that we need to broaden our definition of what ‘sex’ is. He believes that we shouldn’t limit ourselves to the idea that sex must include penetration.

“Sex can be any intimate act, whether that is soaping one another in the bath, slow dancing, or having a naked cuddle before you go to sleep.”

When you begin to think about sex in those terms, you begin to understand ‘love-making’ as being fundamental to intimacy rather than orgasm. It is an important distinction and one that often confuses because, as Marshall points out, “men need sex to feel close, whereas women have to feel close to want sex”, but, ultimately, we are all after the same thing — intimacy.

If you and your husband can find a few moments to communicate affection, to validate each other, or share the shower in the early morning, you will strengthen the threads that tie you to each other.

We managed it. Our crazy schedule didn’t change, but our attitude did. Now we enjoy our busy life, rather than endure it. And we don’t even mind our grumpy seven-year-old pitching up in our bed at 2am because we know that pretty soon we’ll have to knock before we enter her bedroom. How did we do it? Well, I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say that I can never do lunch on Tuesdays. Good luck.

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