Sex challenge left my hubby broken
THERE was something different about my French friend Sylvie the last time I bumped into her.
‘How’s life?’ I asked, expecting a blast of her usual ‘my husband is driving me crazy, why did I marry him?’ rant. Instead she said ‘Great!’ and flashed me a smile straight out of one of those French films where the bored wife starts having a passionate affair.
‘What’s changed?’ I asked, intrigued. She pouted. ‘I gave my husband an ultimatum,’ she said. ‘Watch less football. Help more with the children. And do the two-week challenge with me.’ She paused and gave me a piercing look. Bemused, I asked her what she meant. ‘To complete the two-week challenge, you must have sex once a day for 14 days,’ she explained. ‘It can be over in seconds or last an hour. It can be in the bedroom or the kitchen, but it must be every single day.
‘A friend in Paris said it transformed her sex life. I wanted to try it.’ ‘And how did it go?’ I asked. ‘Fantastic!’ she said, smiling that radiant smile again. She had basically been having an affair with her own husband; her skin was glowing, she had a spring in her step and looked ten years younger. ‘You should try it.’
I had sex on my mind for days after I saw her. A study in Israel showed that women who had two orgasms a week were almost a third less likely to have heart disease. Another study at Queen’s University in Belfast found that having sex three times a week could slash your heart attack and stroke risk. It is a super-healthy activity. There’s now evidence that it improves your cognitive function and appears to ward off dementia.
I mentioned the two-week challenge to Derek. ‘You mean, sex every two weeks?’ he asked nervously. Derek sat down with a spreadsheet, our diaries and multi-coloured pens – ooh, the romance! Day One went well. It was rather fun, actually.
Day Two was not so good, when a nightmare about Voldemort brought our sevenyear-old down into our bed. On Day Three, we had a whole blissful hour to ourselves.
On Day Four, Derek suddenly had an extra meeting scheduled in and so we were seriously squeezed for time.
On Day Five, I discovered I like tickling. On Day Six, I discovered he didn’t. On Day Seven, I bought new underwear, thinking it would come as a nice surprise. But it wasn’t as easy to get off as get on and the bra clasp got caught in my hair.
I found I was really enjoying myself. It was an adventure. Even planning it and trying to make it work seemed to make us giggle. Then, on Day Eight, disaster. Running to pick up our son Billy in the park, Derek slipped and smashed his ankle.
Four hours later, he emerged from A&E with his leg in plaster, a wheelchair and instructions ‘not to put any pressure on the foot at all, possibly for as long as three months’ – never mind swinging from the chandeliers.