Some things are best left unscheduled
The boyfriend and I are naked, oiled and being stroked by two women we don’t know.
Nope, we are not in a sex dungeon, but are having a Couples Connect massage in a rural hotel. I’m not sure what I think about this concept.
Massages are rare, precious treats and I don’t know that I want to spend one in close proximity to the boyfriend, suffering self-induced anxiety about my predisposition to body judders, snorts or, worst-case scenario, audible ‘fluffs’. I don’t want to spend 60 minutes (at over €1 a minute) rigid with fear that I will be overcome by the giggles when the therapist begins talking about balancing my chakras and expelling my stresses nasally.
Maybe he will be sceptical? Eye-rolling inwardly or, worse, outwardly? It’s the antithesis of relaxing.
I’m allergic to manufactured romance. Date nights, couples holidays, Valentine’s aphrodisiac menus ‒ they all send shivers down my spine, in the wrong way. And the same goes for scheduled sex.
‘We will do it, without exception, on Saturday mornings.’ Yuck.
Surely these things should happen organically and spontaneously; be fuelled by passion, not a reminder on your iPhone.
When I got married almost 20 years ago, I was afflicted with a bad state of the cringes on our honeymoon. Rose petals on the bed in a heart shape? Pass me the sick bucket. Oysters to kickstart your libido? No thanks.
My friend went to Mauritius on her honeymoon and was ejected from her room for two hours with no explanation. It turned out it was so that a SWAT team of hotel staff could create a phallic floral sculpture on the super king, make kissing swans out of towels in the bathroom, run the hot tub and fill it full of love potions. She said it made her husband go limp immediately.
The run up to Valentine’s Day is the worst for this sort of thing. Is there anything less conducive to loin-stirring than sitting in an overcrowded restaurant, staring at an overpriced menu, smiling through gritted teeth at someone playing the accordion?
But here’s the flip side – thanks to my postdivorce maturity, I realise that consciously making time for romance is a good thing. There’s a reason date nights are routinely prescribed by relationships counsellors.
I need to fight my inner snarky teenager and recognise that, while spontaneous romance is sexier, it doesn’t happen very often, if at all. It’s too easy to end up slumped in front of the television doomscrolling.
Research shows that devoting two hours per week to each other improves the quality of your relationship and results in higher levels of satisfaction.
I find that to be true. Phones away, feeling heard and appreciated is crucial for both of us. Plus, shared experiences are bonding – they fill your emotional bank with happy memories that keep the love alive, even if events themselves don’t always go to plan. Especially if they don’t go to plan. (I’m thinking of the mini-break we took last year that involved us battling through Storm Eunice, circumnavigating blown-over wheelie bins and fallen trees, then being evacuated from the hotel mid, er, ‘bonding’.)
If you share a positive experience ‒ even a hilariously chaotic one ‒ research shows you enjoy it more than you would on your own. So I’m going to accept that my relationship does require investment. I will continue to encourage us off the sofa and into doing ‘experiences’ ‒ like our massage. But scheduling sex? I still can’t go there. I know it’s therapistapproved but it gives me the ick.
The upside to my painful divorce was a sexual renaissance ‒ and that does not involve diarising sex between ‘put the bins out’ and ‘worm the dog’.
SEX SHOULD BE FUELLED BY PASSION NOT A REMINDER ON YOUR IPHONE