I don’t want our WILD lockdown sex TO END

One wife reveals how hearing her husband’s high-powered work calls at home has made her fall back in lust...

YESTERDAY, my husband and I had a quickie in between his morning work calls and afternoon Zoom meetings.

That means our sex quota for this month now eclipses that of the past two years. Oh yes, I’m counting. But then, don’t most women my age — early 50s — who’ve spent more than half their lives married to the same man?

When Michael and I first got together, almost 30 years ago, sex was such an intrinsic element of our relationship neither of us kept a tally.

The idea of eventually being satisfied with a sex life where we could count our annual encounters on one hand was a cliché we couldn’t imagine becoming.

Unfortunately, in the long-term, life — careers, housework, children — has a way of quashing ardour by stealth.

One minute you’re swinging from the lampshades; the next, the idea of going shopping for new ones seems more thrilling than having sex with your husband — someone you’re so familiar with that, when you realise you’ve stopped fancying him, it just feels like a depressing inevitability.

At least, that’s how I felt — well, until lockdown happened, that is.

That’s when Michael, like so many office workers, started working from home, providing an unexpected boost to our sex life. So much so that there’s a part of me that’s dreading the end of lockdown.

I never envisaged this happening. For the first couple of weeks, having Michael around all the time meant he just got on my nerves. But, by week three, as we settled into a new routine, there was a shift — I started to remember what I found so attractive about him when we first started dating.

Hearing him on calls being industrious, clearly a strong leader who offers surprisingly insightful care to his team; watching him stride around with the phone to his ear problem-solving with a colleague — I began to find it all a huge turn on. Suddenly, there were three of us in our marriage — me, my husband and his work — and that shook things up.

Like most wives, I don’t normally get to see this dynamic side to my husband. But I used to, because we were colleagues before we became lovers.

Lockdown brought me face to face with the version of Michael I fell for when we were both trainee marketers at the same firm, nearly 30 years ago.

I found myself physically drawn to him back then — he was charming and attractive — but there was more to it than that. He was sharp-witted, with brilliant instincts.

FOR ME, those talents made him sexually appealing as much as any physical attributes. Within the year we’d moved to separate organisations but remained a couple. A year later, Michael proposed; a wedding and two children quickly followed.

I went freelance, working around the kids’ needs, before becoming a full-time author. Meanwhile, Michael progressed through the ranks, forging a brilliant career.

I always felt proud of him for that. But, inevitably, the life we’ve shared has ended up predominantly on a domestic footing — we were colleagues for a year, but have been spouses, parents and joint mortgage-payers for more than 20 times as long.

Those things have bonded us, but they’ve also killed the passion. Michael often came home from work exhausted; we didn’t exactly rip each other’s clothes off.

When we were younger, I’d tell myself that when the children had grown up and Michael’s career slowed down, there would be time for ‘us’ again. But, over the past few years, both our boys have moved into their own places with their partners and nothing’s changed.

In fact, Michael has been working harder than ever.

And so we entered lockdown as newly fledged empty nesters. Things weren’t looking good.

No wonder then, when I realised Michael would be working from home for the foreseeable, I was worried we’d get so fed up with each other it would just about finish our relationship off.

Yet, in reality, it’s had the opposite effect. At first, I put that down to a conversation early on where we agreed to make a concerted effort to get on. What we hadn’t expected was how lockdown would shake up our routines.

Familiarity breeding contempt is, of course, a well-worn cliché — but it’s also true. For the past 20 years, Michael has left the house at the same time each morning, having stood in the kitchen drinking his black coffee. I’d got so used to his routine and no longer saw the man behind them.

Michael still drinks his black coffee. But now, as I’m exposed again to another huge element of his being — his professional self — I’m reminded that there’s more to him.

He’s become interesting and unpredictable to me again; hearing him come up with brilliant ideas, off the hoof, reminds me he’s still the quick-witted youth I fell for all those years ago.

WE’VE started flirting with one another over breakfast; sending provocative texts when we know the other is on a video conference call just to make trouble.

I’m also seeing how hard he works, and why he comes home so tired, which means I’m instinctively being kinder towards him.

Michael says that this shift in my attitude has boosted his confidence and made him feel more invested in our relationship — he told me the other day that he feels like my partner again whereas, for years, his role felt to be that of father to my children.

This all sounds incredibly shallow, under the current circumstances, I know. The fact Michael is still working means we’re buffered from the economic misery so many are experiencing. If money was a problem then I’m sure things would be very different.

My newly invigorated sex life doesn’t mean I don’t still spend a great deal of time worrying. Michael and I are in our 50s; our parents are elderly and vulnerable.

It’s not hard to see how living with a prolonged sense of jeopardy might be encouraging more spontaneity in the bedroom, too.

But now, there’s another change on the horizon. As restrictions slowly ease, Michael’s looking at returning to the office. ‘My colleagues and I need to start working in the same space again, so we can bounce ideas off each other face to face,’ he told me last night.

‘I just want you here, where I know you’re safe,’ I insisted. ‘And I’ll miss having you around.’

What I didn’t say was, actually, there’s more to it than that: I don’t want to stop seeing this other side to him. If we do go back to ‘normal’, I’ll miss the intimacy we’ve rediscovered as much as anything else.

THE author’s name has been changed.