Whisper #32 – Oh Baby, Maybe

Author: And Then There Were Three

I think it’s fair to say The Boy and I have a pretty healthy sex life. He has a very high sex drive (3 times a day would probably just about keep him satisfied). Mine is not quite so high, plus there are just not enough hours in the day once we’ve factored in working, eating and a bit of sleep, but I’m hardly a once-a-week-is-plenty-thank-you-very-much girl either. We generally manage to reach a happy medium which keeps us both satisfied and far enough away from starvation or sleep deprivation.

However, I’m conscious I should probably be writing this in the past tense, as things stand at the moment.

Last night The Boy came back from a couple of nights away. Usually I would be falling into bed with him at the first opportunity. Last night I only had sex with him because if all goes well I will ovulate in a few days, and I don’t want to miss any chance we might get. I still love The Boy, and fancy him loads, but if his penis got broken and we couldn’t have sex for the next two weeks, I think I’d feel pretty happy. Not for his broken penis, obviously – apart from anything else he would never stop moaning about it – but just for the ‘no sex’ thing.

I’m really struggling to separate sex from trying to conceive at the moment. When we first started trying it was all exciting and new and naughty. We’d spent the whole of our adult lives being incredibly careful to avoid pregnancy; sex without contraception is like sampling the forbidden fruit. Was.

Back then, in those heady first few months of trying, I’d engineer particularly romantic and passionate scenarios, thinking that was the kind of sex that was sure to result in conception. Now it’s all charts and timetables and scans and what the consultant has told us to do and medication and horrible side-effects. It’s all about: when’s the best time? If we skip tonight and I don’t get pregnant, how will I feel? Last month we did it in this way, and this often, and I got pregnant, so we can’t risk not doing the same this month. What if, despite all this sex, I still don’t get pregnant? We absolutely must do it now. Should we be doing it more often? Less often? If I don’t orgasm will that make it less likely that I get pregnant? Oh, skip the foreplay and just come already.

Basically I feel so much pressure to do it even when I’m so not in the mood, I’ve talked myself out of being in the mood at all. Ever. Despite the fact I’ve always enjoyed sex for its own sake, I’m turning into one of those women who doesn’t see the point if I’m not ovulating. The Boy has noticed. He keeps buying me sexy underwear and propositioning me. Which just makes me feel less sexy than ever.

It all comes down to that ‘Men are from Mars’ conundrum (an engagement present from my in-laws, which I was quite offended by at the time. It’s actually saved rather a lot of arguments and misunderstandings in the ATTW3 household). Men need sex to feel loved, women need to feel loved to want to have sex. The Boy propositioning me whilst I (and he) knew I was miscarrying probably gets the top spot in the ‘not feeling very well loved or understood’ moments from our relationship, even though rationally I know that was him trying to show how much he cares about me. What’s wrong with flowers though, that’s what I want to know.

We’ve maintained the equilibrium pretty well up to this point, through thirteen long months of trying to conceive (TTC). Hopefully, once this horrible, desperate month is over, we can move on and back to the usual state of affairs. I really hope so, because I so want to want to have sex with my husband again without it always being about what may or may not occur nine months from now. I can’t help but wonder, with quite a lot of sadness, whether we’ll ever recapture the spontaneity of pre-TTC sex though. I do hope so.

If you’d like to write your own Whisper, we’d love to read it! The submission guidelines are here.