Sexy Marriage Tips Are NOT Written For People With Kids

Standing in the line at the grocery store, headlines blare from the magazines: Tips and tricks to spice up your marriage!

Actually, the headlines are usually blaring about spicing up your sex life, ways to keep him interested, or how to keep boredom from the bedroom. I just translate it in my head to ‘how to spice up your marriage.’ Magazines usually don’t mention the dreaded ‘m’ word at all.

I’ve glanced through a few of these articles, and the only thing I can think is, “These folks don’t have kids.”

1. Leave sexy notes around the house. Uh, not if you have kids that can read. And I’m pretty sure I failed their suggested prompts. “I love it when … you change a dirty diaper so I don’t have to.” “It excites me when … you make supper.” “I get hot when … somebody cranks up the furnace to ‘roast.'” Pretty sure that’s not what they had in mind.

2. Wear lingerie outside the bedroom, such as while cooking supper. “I’ll take, ‘How To Send The Kids To Therapy’ for $1,000, Alex.” I mean, seriously, how the heck would I get away with that one? Even if you wait until they’re all supposed to be fast asleep, prancing around in lingerie in the living room means keeping a blanket within reach at all times. That way, when you hear footsteps approaching, you can quickly wrap yourself up and do the Shuffle of Shame back to your room to put on actual clothing. Not that I’d know anything about that.

3. Role play. One of the suggestions was to go out to a bar and pretend to be strangers. Yeah, no. I once mentioned that to my husband, and he started to smirk. I knew right then that he’d end up playing pool all night while I sat at the bar waiting for him to pick me up. Cause he’s an asshole like that.

4. Set the scene. Suggestions included candlelight, rose petals, and music. Riiiiight. First off, candlelight is a pretty surefire guarantee, of, well … FIRE. Others can get away with such things, but my ability to injure myself is pretty well-known. Nothing says romance like the house burning down, am I right?! And let’s be realistic here: by the time the kids are all in bed, including the teenager, and I set things up, my husband will be asleep on the couch. Plus, who the heck wants to be cleaning up rose petals after? It’s like the floral version of glitter. We’ll be picking those up from places we never put them for months afterward.

5. Take a bath together. I want to know how big a tub these people have. Because I barely fit in the tub. I mean, it’s not like I can stretch out or anything. How the holy hell would we fit TWO people in there?! Sounds like a game of human Tetris, and not at all romantic. Being wedged in the tub, knees crammed under our chins, while one of us gets the taps right between the shoulder blades? Oh yeah, baby, give me more of that!

6. Shower together. OK, so at least we’d both fit. But I have to be honest here … I’ve never understood what’s so romantic or sexy about showering together. Seems to me it’s just taking turns at being wet and cold, waiting for the other guy to give up the water. ‘Shivering’ has never meant sexy to me. Plus, we have one bathroom. There’s just no way someone wouldn’t need to pee while we each battled for our turn under the hot water. I mean, had our romantic shower.

7. Act out your favourite scene from a book or movie. Great. Most popular movie we’ve watched lately is The Croods. “Release the baby!” is an often-quoted line. No sexy time there.

Obviously, these tips are meant for the childless among us, or at least for times when the kids are away at camp or a sleepover, or something. And for people who have a tub the size of my living room.

For us, it’ll probably mean tips like this wait until the kids are grown and moved out.

Assuming we don’t have grandchildren wanting to visit by then.

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