Posts Tagged ‘Sex’

Jun 2011

Reclaiming Wife: Married Sex is AWESOME.

When we decided to finally dip our toe into the waters of sex talk here at APW, I was adamant about one thing: while I was more than willing to talk about The Hard Stuff when it came to sex, I also wanted the conversation to be A) Sex positive, and B) Married sex positive. Because the cultural narrative around married sex is terrible, and even the blogging narrative around married sex is dubious, if you ask me. Because yup, when you get two people in a long term relationship, you tend to have different sex drives by definition. But there are lots of ways to be intimate, and well, just do it. So today, we have an (amazing) anonymous post about the excellence of married sex, and advice on ways to keep your sex life a priority, including some excellent NSFW links (whee!).

Have you ever heard the “Bean Jar” theory of married/long-term, committed sex?

Before you get married, go out and buy a big glass jar and a big bag of beans.

On your wedding night, during your honeymoon, and every time you have sex thereafter, put one of the beans in the jar.

Keep doing this until you’ve been married for one year.

Now, in your second year of marriage and in every subsequent year: each time that you and your spouse have sex, you are to remove one bean from the jar.

The jar will never be empty in your lifetime.

Aside from the dubious mathematics and outdated exclusion of sex-out-of-wedlock, it was “theories” like this that scared the h*ll out of me before I got married. They still do, to some extent. Sexual attraction, after all, was a large reason behind why I started dating my partner in the first place. I’d heard stories (true life ones) about people who felt like their marriage had progressed to “just friends” or was more akin to that of siblings or business partners than lovers. That really alarmed me. Is it possible to sustain the spark of sexual chemistry over years, over decades?

I’m here to tell you that… I don’t know.

What I do know: my partner and I have been together for six years and we’re still doing our best to empty that jar—and having a good time doing it. In other words, we have sex once a day on average. Granted, we are still in our late twenties and we do not have kids, so perhaps that will change with age and time. But for six years and counting ::whispers:: we’ve had a rockin’ sex life, and for once in my life, I’m going to (anonymously!) own it.

I suppose my reticence might seem puzzling. But I’ve never, ever mentioned this to anyone—and not simply because I’m a private person. The average amount of sex married couples are having, as reported recently in the New York Times, is estimated around 58 encounters per year (though it’s closer to 111 times a year for couples under 30, while another 15% of married couples have likely not had sex for 6 months to 1 year). Who wants to hear about the couples who are quadrupling or… sextupling (really, is there no other word?) those numbers? So forgive me if this is a sensitive issue. I’m not trying to boast about my prowess, I swear. It’s just that… married sex gets an awfully bad rap. And that saddens me. Maybe it’s deserved, given the statistics. But it seems like there is no one — no one — out there saying: long-term, committed, monogamous sex ROCKS! In our culture, each of those adjectives is viewed as the ultimate buzz-kill. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Married Sex is AWESOME.

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife, Uncategorized | 183 Comments »

May 2011

Reclaiming Wife: Sex and Insecurity

A few weeks ago, I asked for submissions on topics I really thought we should be talking about on APW, and one of those was: Sex. So I'm beyond delighted to kick off the sex discussion with the hilarious Ang of Lowbrow Events (APW sponsor) talking about battling through sexual insecurity and being covered in chocolate while naked. And, may I just point out? Not too many wedding planners are talking about their sex lives graphically on the internet, but Ang is a bad-ass, and told me, "I don't do many things anonymously, so won't start here." And with that, let\'s dive in.

{I have it on good authority that Ang's husband is grabbing her ass in this picture.}

I held onto my virginity until the age of 18, not because of some moral quandary (Although I was brought up in a very strict Christian home. We weren't allowed to watch football because the tight pants might inject some evil seed of lust), but through sheer naivete and poor self esteem. I remember one instance in particular, where I was 16 and hurt the feelings of a guy at work. I asked what I could do to make up for it so he asked me to jump up and down, which I did, the whole time saying "What? This makes no sense" while he stared at me with glazed over eyes. (When I was twenty something, reminiscing about the old days I was hit with the "OHHHHH! Boobs, now I get it!") I was totally oblivious to sex, even though my only friends then were five incredibly good looking guys, who's hot tubs I soaked in, and who's laps I'd fall asleep in. The only man who's ever touched me "in that way" is my husband. And I'm OK with that.

He, on the other hand, was what I endearingly call a male whore. Ridiculously good looking, a bad boy (what teenage girl doesn't want a bad boy?), and a pretty heavier partier back in the day. He had his share of girls, and being the blunt bastard he is, he's never hidden that.

To be honest, I never thought it'd bug me. I adored him, the sex we were having (in my totally noob mind) was great, and over the years it got SO much better. The icky doubts didn't creep in until we started talking marriage. Maybe it's because we were planning forever together, I started looking at him differently. Before, sex was just a good time, and now, well, we'd be having husband and wife sex, this will eventually bring babies, how am I going to keep his interest if we're going to be doing this for the next million years? (I plan on being immortal apparently). I just started seeing the act of carnal love through a distinctly skewed filter. Fixating on it, dwelling on it, obsessing about it.

When I did bring the issue up, it probably could've been handled better. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Sex and Insecurity

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife | 117 Comments »

Mar 2011

Reclaiming Wife: Open Marriage & Respecting the Foundation

Well. Here is a post that has been a long time coming—the discussion of open marriages. So often, discussion of non-monogamy goes off track, because all people can hear is, "Oh my god! This is not like how we do things! I don't think I want to do things this way! This must be wrong!" But APW-ers are really good at listening to each other without screaming at each other, so I'm delighted for this post. It makes me think about the rules under which I live out my relationship, and the ways we communicate. Hearing about other ways of doing things makes us stronger. Even perspectives as seemingly diverse as waiting till marriage to have sex, and open marriage show me that we're all more alike than we are different, and we all have wisdom to share with each other. And with that, I bring you Christina:

When my husband asked me to marry him in a vineyard a year and a half ago, I was overjoyed. We spent a beautiful day together in the Valley talking about our life and the wedding that was now in our immediate future. When the day was done and it came time to share the news, the first people we called were the lovely couple we had been dating for just shy of a year.

My husband and I have what I like to call a respectful-and-consensual-quasi-non-monogamist-marriage—but since that’s a ridiculous mouthful, we just call it an open marriage. Ever since I was in high school I knew that I was going to have an open marriage. I didn’t know anyone in an open relationship nor had I ever seen one before, but somehow I got it in my head that it was something I wanted before even really knowing what it was. Maybe it was because I had seen my parents dealing with infidelity, or maybe it’s just my genetic makeup. Who knows. I just knew the idea of lots of people loving each other appealed to me.

I read somewhere that there are about as many kinds of polyamory as there are polyamorists, and my husband and I just have one kind. Like any relationship, figuring out what you want your relationship to look like is no easy task. For us it took loads of communication, tons of honesty, and a willingness to explore and occasionally figure out some things you don’t want to do. Over our five years together, we’ve learned two basic things about how we want to engage in an open marriage: Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Open Marriage & Respecting the Foundation

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife, Thoughts & Action | 152 Comments »

Mar 2011

Ask Team Practical: The Bachelor/Bachelorette Party

with Alyssa

It's Ask Team Practical Friday with Alyssa! To end the week with a bang, today we're taking on Bachelor and Bachelorette parties, complete with strippers and secrets. Don't tell us we never tackle the controversial subjects! Because this is a complicated subject, both Alyssa and I wrote our own, slightly different, responses to the question, though we're mostly in agreement. So, without further ado, let's dive into the taboo:

Today's question is from Elizabeth:

A couple my fiance and I are friends with recently got engaged. I'm happy for them, but slightly disturbed that in the same conversation where they announced their engagement they started talking about the bachelor party (and bachelorette party) and the strippers that they'll have. Though it seems to be taboo, I personally believe that celebrating your impending marriage with your friends by treating it like impending doom and getting drunk AND hot and bothered by a member of the opposite sex that is not your intended seems to imply that you aren't really ready to get married. They also said that whatever happened at the respective parties must remain a secret to the other, like "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" which seems to allow for all sorts of immoral things to happen. It seems disrespectful of the vows they will take, and of the vows my fiance and I will take, to say, "Well, it doesn't matter what I do tonight, cause as long as you don't know what happens, you'll be there tomorrow." I've read that these parties are supposed to prove to your friends that you're still one of them, but it seems that this can be done without strippers, and without secrets, though perhaps not without the booze.

Am I crazy for feeling this way?

Would it be unfair to ask my fiance not to participate, since I no longer plan to participate in the bachelorette party?

Is there really any good way around this issue at all?

First, lets start with Alyssa's point of view:

To answer your questions,

No.

Yes, mostly.

And maybe.

Let's start off with a little ground rules. I'm going to say a lot of "bachelor" in here, but this advice applies to same sex couples also.

Also, and most importantly, this is not about strippers. SERIOUSLY. Therefore, I am requesting that those of you with strong feelings about strip clubs and strippers (be they positive or negative,) keep them in check as much as possible in the comments, please and thank you. We have women on APW that work in sexual advocacy as well as women who work (or have worked) in strip clubs or in things that easily get confused with strip clubs. Please keep that in mind.

Because, incidentally, this question isn't really about strip clubs. This is about boundaries. Continue reading Ask Team Practical: The Bachelor/Bachelorette Party

Posted in: Ask Team Practical | 170 Comments »

Jun 2010

Sex & Marriage: A Bisexual Perspective

After our very first post about sex and marriage, or more particularly waiting to have sex until you got married, I got to thinking that our next sex and marriage post needed to be from a LGBTQ perspective. I started chatting with Desaray (who formerly blogged at Digmoonment, and since her marriage has been whirling through blogs, and is now at Be More Yours) about things I'd learned from the LGBTQ community about relationships and sex. Because here is the thing: it's fashionable at the moment to say that gay relationships and straight relationships are exactly alike. And, well, love and love are exactly a like, but as Desaray points out, gay relationships are sort of the Galapagos Islands of relationships. EG, if you deny a community access to publicly sanctioned relationships, the one up-side is that gives them all the room in the world to be creative, and to come up with what works for them.

So. As we were saying, what I am very grateful to have learned from a multitude of queer committed relationships that I have had the joy to observe closely in the last 20 years, is that I do not have to set never-failing-no-mistakes-monogamy in the center of my relationship, as a booby trap that has the power to take down a lifetime of commitment. That is, perfect monogamy can be the ever present goal, but I don't have to conflate perfect manogomy with fidelity.

So. Desaray and I chatted, and then suddenly, I had in my inbox a guest post that gave me chills every time I read it. It made me want to take notes, it made me giggle, in made me teary. And it made me feel a whole lot smarter. So, it's provocative, and brace yourself for that. And Desaray isn't speaking for everyone, she's speaking for her. But DAMN the woman is smart:

....

I have the special privilege of being bisexual. That means I'm also bi-cultural when it comes to sex and relationships. I really like to relate to people, too, so I've been in a lot of relationships. Long-term, sexual ones involving cohabitation. If you want to do the numbers, I have 10 years and 3 lovely people on my LTR resume. My LTR education includes a bachelor's in Women's Studies and a Master's in Social Work. My LTR skills include: anorgasmia, chat room sex, phone sex, long distance relationships, interracial relationships, impotence, premature ejaculation, heterosexual bed death, pornography addiction, cohabitation, condoms, birth control, non-consensual sex, coming out, dating, on-line dating, internalized transphobia, non-monogamy, female ejaculation, non-legal in-laws, legal name change, marriage-type agreements, divorce-like situations, transgenderism, STDs, BDSM, diamond rings, weddings, re-marriage-type marriages, budgeting, interstitial cystitis and infertility.

Clearly, I'm an LTR expert*.

And what I've found is that queer people are really great at sex and heterosexual people are really great at relationships.

What I Learned From Queers About Sex

Everything is sexy. And by this I mean, everything. Queer people taught me how to dance, dress sexy, talk about sex, and watch sex. Queers taught me that almost everything is sexy, including high heels, dresses and cellulite. From watching porn to replacing light bulbs, life is sexy. I guess once I took a millennia of rape and domination out of the equation, I was really able to let my hair down when it came to sex.

Sex is not a deed. When I started hanging out with queers, I noticed that sex was a lot easier and more fun because in addition to everything being sexy, sex was no longer contractual, it was not transfer or bargain. Sex was an art, a good time, a goal -- but it was never binding. (Except, of course, when it was.)

Every relationship is sacred. OK, fine. Queer folks know a thing or two about relationships, too. Without the labels of marriage and divorce in the queer community, all long-term relationships are meaningful, really, romantic or otherwise. It doesn't matter if your person died, cheated on you or moved out. It doesn't matter if you shared a lease or fluid or neither. If you loved them, if you lived together, or if they cooked a meal for you during a Judeo-Christian holiday, what you had mattered a lot. Even if it ended. There is no such thing as a "failed" relationship, like the way heterosexuals talk about "failed" marriages.

What I Learned From Heterosexuals About Marriage

Marriage is a group project. As a queer person with a wife, I thought that it didn't matter if my partner never hung out with my parents and I thought that standing up in front of friends and family to declare my love and devotion was unimportant. For some reason, I was under the impression that my relationships could survive if It my partner skipped the baby showers and birthday parties, or wasnt invited. I thought it was OK that my friends were iffy about her and I had nothing in common with her friends. This was not the case.

Marriage is not a feeling. I called my first wife a wife because I loved her, but we had nary an understanding when it came to money, sex or children. We may no longer come with cows, but heterosexual people taught me that marriage is still an arrangement, rife with expectations, compromises and promises best made explicit and in advance. If you love someone, buy them a coffee, send them a card -- heck, you can even have sex with them! But, marrying them is a whole other matter entirely.

Sex is not a choice. OK, fine. Heterosexuals know a thing or two about sex, too. They were kind of right when they came up with the whole sex-is-a-duty angle. It is non-negotiable. If you're not having it, you should. If you disagree about it, come to an agreement. Sex is the key to the lock. Sometimes you want the door locked, sometimes you want the door open, but you have to have the key. If you lose the key, you have to get a new one made and if you havent lost the key, you get a spare and hide it. All doors have locks, losing the key doesn't make the lock disappear. If you lost the key and don't want to get another one, you're not going to remove the lock are you? Unless you are going to call the locksmith and have the lock removed, you need to get a key. Because what if some one accidentally locks the door and you can't get it open? (Heterosexual people also taught me how to talk about sex using extended, extended metaphors.)

Applying What I've Learned

In my new role as a lesbian wife, I am trying to apply everything the straights and the gays have taught me about sex and relationships. Continue reading Sex & Marriage: A Bisexual Perspective

Posted in: Manifestos, Reclaiming Wife, Thoughts & Action | 147 Comments »

Jun 2010

Ask Meg (and she’ll ask someone else): Sex, Waiting, and Weddings

Awhile back, the smart and thoughtful Liz (you'll remember her wedding and her post on self catering a desert reception) mentioned in East Side Bride's comments that she'd waited to have sex till her wedding night. And I was surprised. Not surprised because I don't know people who have waited (I know lots), but surprised because that didn't quite fit in with my mental file of what I knew of Liz. And if I've learned one thing in my thirty years of life, it is that when someone really surprises you with a belief, you should ask them about it. Because they will *always* have something really thoughtful to say, because guess what? If they are stepping out of what you expect from them, they've really thought it through, and they will make you look at your own decisions in a new light. So, right away I wanted to get a drink with Liz and get her to dish.... but.... I don't know Liz in real life (yet)..... and I'm actually not that nosy. So. When Liz popped up in the comments on APW and offered to write a post about it, I insisted that she do it now, now, now.

Before we get into this, I want to state, for the record, that I have really complicated feelings on this subject. As much as readers like to regularly accuse me of spending my life in a liberal bubble, that couldn't be further from the truth. I (we - David and I grew up in the same town) grew up in a really conservative area, and the vast majority of my counterparts in high school gave lip service to waiting till they were married to have sex. What ended up playing out was less pleasant. As sex became THE forbidden fruit, people became more and more focused on it. We saw a lot of our friends pregnant at 16, and a lot of our friends married at 18. Most of the time, things didn't end well. Goodness knows that can happen when you're not waiting, and that waiting can be a wonderful thing, but for us, growing up? It didn't always play out that way. So, given my long and personal life experiences with this, it's a complicated subject for me. Not bad complicated, just complicated.

So of course I was dying to discuss all this with Liz, and (no surprise here) I was thrilled and fascinated by what Liz wrote. She wrote a WHOLE lot of things I agree with, but modern women are not supposed to say. She gave really good advice to people who are choosing to wait (and frankly, good advice on this subject is hard to come by). She wrote things that made me think, and laugh. Best, her story had a happy ending. For me, personally, that's redemptive and amazing. So, here is Liz, on waiting to get laid. Because Liz is awesome, she told me, "I'll try not to make it TOO raunchy." And she almost succeeded.

....

I’m so excited and nervous about writing this post. After I suggested it, I tried to chicken out, but Meg is a persuasive lady (have you noticed?). When people would find out that I was a virgin, or that Josh and I weren’t sleeping together (I know, right? How does that even come up in conversation? I can’t for the life of me remember…) I was met with a ton of questions/warnings. You guys think unrequested wedding advice is crossing the line? Try sex advice. Yeah. Here are some of the things I heard which turned out to be very untrue… (and, uh, sorry in advance. I really like lists and bullet points.)

1. Waiting puts a lot of pressure on your wedding night. False. Well, ok. I could see how this could be the case for some. Josh and I sorta worried about it. We also knew that we'd probably be exhausted, maybe grumpy, maybe a leetle sloshed after the wedding. So Josh suggested we just have no expectations for the wedding night- we would have all week of our honeymoon to have sex. Let's not rush and cram it into that night. I gotta say, this definitely removed that pressure of The Sex Time. It was genius. I would really advise anyone else who’s waiting to set this standard- not just to remove the pressure, but so that you can ease into getting to know one another’s bodies (even if that sounds like a middle school health class video). Josh had never seen me in less than a bathing suit, and touched anything between my neck and my knees before we got married. “Normal” couples move gradually, right? You don’t just tear around all of the bases in one night (usually). Same can go for Waiters (as in those-that-wait… not those-that-serve-at-restaurants).

2. It’s gonna be awkward. Umm. No. Josh and I were already experts at enjoying spending time together- and believe it or not, we pretty much already knew the basics of, um, what goes where... I think this is probably only true for people who expect it to be like movie sex, and then try to force some fake, sultry, smoky crap. One of the APW brides once suggested that the wedding day be treated like any other day- just be yourself. Laugh if something’s funny. Don’t put on some false self. Same is so very true for sex, isn’t it? It’s much more of an intimate moment if it’s two people, totally exposed and being themselves together.

3. You need practice. Meh. Not really. Like I said above, we kinda figured out how things work. Beyond that, sure, sex gets better the more you do it. But trust me, the first night wasn't awful.

4. You need to know if you’re compatible/if he’s “the one.” I hafta wonder at using sex as a barometer for that sort of thing. And it's kind of like kissing, isn't it? Your first kiss may or may not be awesome, but you get better at kissing as you kiss each other more. You become attune to one another. Whether or not he's awesome in bed in the first round doesn't determine how good you can be together- and I'm guessing if your chemistry is fantastic enough that you wanna marry the guy, you'll do just fine. (Also, who do I have him to compare to…? It’s the best sex I’ve ever had.)

5. So you think you’ll go to hell if you have sex? Not even close.

So if that’s not why I waited, then why, right? If not to avoid the fiery pits of hell, what could it be?

1. Sex effs with your mind. Honestly. Who can say that having sex has made them more capable of thinking clearly and making good decisions? It complicates things.

2. Sex links people. I don’t know how to put this in a forward-thinking, logical-sounding way. But, sex ties people together in this near-mystical way, doesn’t it? How many of us have clung to no-good-people because of how attached we felt as a result of being physical with them (or is that just me)*? This directly ties into the above- it just complicates things.

3. Finding the “right” person. This one’s the key, obv. There’s something so undeniably romantic about having only had sex with just one person. Finding the right person to sleep with or marry- that takes time. And clear-headed thought. So these folks who say they’re “waiting” to have sex, and then hurry up and get married because they can’t keep it in their pants any longer- that kind of defeats the purpose, to me. Sex is important. Take your time in figuring out who you want to be there to share that experience.

4. Self control. I probably couldn’t tell you how much respect I have for Josh as a result of the self-control he displayed in the 3 years we dated. Did I know he wanted to do it? Hell yeah- sometimes it’s obvious, if youknowwhatI’msayin. But his commitment to waiting was a sign of his love for me… not in the cheesy, “true love waits” sense. But in the sense that setting a good foundation for our marriage was more important to him than a physiological impulse (and I’m not saying it wasn’t a struggle for me… have I TOLD you how hot this man is?). Being able to control your downstairs bits demonstrates the kind of maturity necessary to pick a spouse… ya dig?

5. Growing together. Getting used to doing it is one more intense way in which we’re growing together. I get to experience this whole new world, and I get to have a husband by my side as I figure it out. Awesome.

6. Romance. Can I just reiterate how amazingly romantic I think it is? It’s like Heloise and Abelard. Doesn’t the fact that they couldn’t even touch each other almost confirm for you that their love was the deepest kind?**

Because we were waiting, we needed to sort of… set ourselves up for success. Spending 3 years with a sexy man and not touching him. That, um, takes work.

1. Short engagement. Know how I just told you not to rush into getting married just to have sex? Yeah. This is different. Once you decide that you do want to get married, don’t set some 2 year long engagement. That, my friends, is called TORTURE. “Yay, we’re going to have sex together! …but NOT YET.” Womp womp.

2. Lots of sex talks. I think we probably talked about sex pre-marriage more than people who aren’t waiting. Sex is kind of a big chunk of married life… if we’re already discussing if we want to have kids and where we want to live, it only makes sense to talk about what sex is gonna be like. (there are pretty clear limits to this… “Oh, baby, I can’t wait to do this to your that…” not really the best route to go if you plan on waiting.) We talked about likes and dislikes. I know you’re wondering how I could know what I like or not, since I’ve never tried. I think there are some things you don’t need to experience to know. For example, I don’t need to try having Josh choke me while he’s doing his thing to know that I’m not a fan of the “play rape” sex. Nope.

3. More sex talks. We also set parameters and discussed expectations. If there’s anything that’s detrimental to a relationship, it’s unvoiced expectations. I told him what I expected sex to be like, what I was hoping for, and he did the same. There was nothing that was more healthy for our sex-life… and I would recommend it for everyone, married or not, waiting or not.

And now. We’re married. And doing it. And life is good. Some of the important things I’ve gleaned through our ongoing learning process include...

1. Recognizing that sex is a delicate thing. It’s one part of our lives that impacts so much else. If we haven’t had sex in awhile, you can probably tell by the way we talk to and treat each other- that’s not an old cliché, I think everyone would agree it’s true. It’s the physical representation of everything that marriage means to us- so if the sex is bad, something’s off here. What do I mean by that? In sex, we’re entirely vulnerable and exposed, flaws and all- and yet when we look at each other, we’re overwhelmingly attracted (isn’t that a beautiful idea?). Sex at its healthiest is when two people are entirely focused on one another- sex isn’t about physical urges (not entirely at least) or body parts… it’s about paying attention to one another’s wants in a very personal and special way. Because of this, sex is that place in marriage where we have the most propensity to appreciate one another, and the largest capacity to hurt one another. It’s so, so easy to feel slighted or ignored or manipulated or unfulfilled or mistreated in sex. It’s a very delicate matter.

2. Open honesty. If he wants it, he needs to tell me. If I feel like he’s going at it in a roundabout way, I feel manipulated. (How many of us have dated guys with little manipulating ways of conning us into sex? “But it can do serious damage if I don’t…”) If I don’t want it, I need to tell him. If we both have the understanding that the other person is going to be honest without insult, there’s no need to feel guilty or try to hint. This kind of honesty may sound unsexy (“Hey- wanna do it tonight?” versus donning lingerie and sprawling across the bed), but I recognize that it’s just a stage in learning about each other. Like all other things in our relationship, if we do it enough, I’ll get to a point where I can (mostly) intuit what’s going on. But even then, communication is going to be so essential. Isn’t it with everything in marriage?

3. Team spirit. Like I said above, sex in its purest form is not about what I get out of it, but what I can do for the other person. (If he’s spending all of his energy trying to please me, and I’m exerting all of mine to try to please him… we both end up… satisfied, I guess? Can I say that, Meg?***) So sometimes, I need to take one for the team and just do it when I don’t feel like it. Sounds tres unsexy, no? But if that’s what sex is about at its core (spending all of my energy for what he wants), then I’m definitely in the spirit. (FYI: “I’ll do whatever you want me to, baby” is NOT unsexy.) Other times, when I have a migraine or am in a bad mood, he can lovingly (without being begrudging) drop it. (we’ve talked on here about how the roles are sometimes reversed- I’m not trying to catalogue or generalize, just speaking from my own experience)

So um. There you have it. Probably the most awkward post on APW yet. I’m not sure exactly how to wrap it up- maybe, “Go have some great sex, you guys!” I know you’re thinking, “Wait a second. You were a virgin until 6 months ago. How are YOU going to tell ME how to have great sex, amateur?” I can't. But I can share what I’ve learned on a now-unconventional and bumpy road. And hoping to help Meg open the floor for others to do the same. Ready? GO.

....

And before I open the comments, I'm going to remind EVERYONE to stay civil and not judge each other. Both Liz and I shared some personal thoughts, ideas, and experiences here. Neither of our ideas or life experiences have to be shared by you, but the should be respected (and if you see them not being respected, report those comments please). I'm going to take it a step farther and say, if you're talking about your personal experience, try not to universalize. Waiting, not waiting, or heck, waiting till after marriage for polyamory was right for you? RAD. Just don't tell us we *all* need to do it.

And now, let's talk about sex (baby).

*Not just you, Liz.

**Liz asked me if this was cheesy, and I was like, "Yesss... a little. But you can say it anyway.)

*** Yes.

Posted in: Ask Meg, Reclaiming Wife | 315 Comments »