Alison, 40
Sam is a uniquely gentle, kind man. He reads my body language so perfectly
If it was up to me, Sam and I probably wouldn’t have sex, because I am terrible at initiating. Once we get going I enjoy it immensely, but I am lazy, so I tend to need persuading. We’ve been together 14 years, so Sam has had time to accept this fact about me, and sometimes we even make a game out of my reluctance. Sam will float the idea of sex early in the day, hours before we plan to get into bed, and I will generally say no. Then Sam will try to seduce me. Of course, if I’m genuinely not up for it, I have a way of communicating that to him. Instead of saying “no” I will say “potato”. “Potato” is our safe word.
Intimacy is made more logistically difficult by the fact that our son, who is eight, still sleeps in our room – on a mattress on the floor. The sex might only last five minutes, but while it’s happening, I give it my full attention. Often I will bite Sam a little, and scratch his skin, and that builds a kind of crackling electricity between us. I like to maintain eye contact with him while he’s inside me, and smell his body, and breathe in his exhalations.
Before I met Sam, I did not feel capable of having this kind of “emotional” sex. I was abused by a friend when I was younger, and that made me see sex as something transactional. With my previous partners, I always got the sense that they cared more about the body and what they could do with it, rather than the person inside that body.
But Sam is a uniquely gentle, kind man. He cares deeply about my feelings, and he will always put himself second when we are in bed together. If I feel uncomfortable with a position he will switch it immediately; he reads my body language so perfectly, I usually don’t even have to verbally communicate my discomfort. Sex can still bring up bad memories for me. Sometimes, after we have finished, I still feel truly dirty. I have to wash immediately, and then come back to bed and cuddle him. He understands my desire to be clean intuitively – and never asks me to explain myself.
I can have difficulty reaching orgasm, and that is something Sam struggles with. He is such a giving person that if I can’t climax he will ask me 10 times: “Are you sure? Are you sure?” That is the only slight problem I have with his extraordinarily unselfish nature. I’m very lucky. It’s a nice problem to have.
Sam, 42
If she’s comfortable not having an orgasm, that should be fine, but it’s still a challenge for me
Alison and I have sex about twice a month, and usually we stick to the same sequence of positions: I will go down on her for three to five minutes until she climaxes and then we’ll have missionary sex. Occasionally, Alison will go on top, which I love, because we tend to orgasm simultaneously in that position. But Alison doesn’t usually want to exert herself in that way. I initiate 99.9% of the time, which I’m happy to do. I think it would be upsetting if she constantly rejected me, but, generally, she says yes. In relationships, you tend to take on set roles. If you’re the one who usually empties the dishwasher you start to think of it as your special job. Initiating sex is my job.
I am a pleaser by nature, and I feel most emotionally connected to Alison when I can see that she is aroused and satisfied. I’m not actively thinking about Alison’s difficult sexual history while we’re in bed, but I do watch her body language to see how she is responding to what I’m doing. I am able to recognise if she is feeling uncomfortable. Alison and I don’t talk very much in bed – I envy people who can boldly voice everything they want their partner to do – but we are adept at non-verbal communication. Interpreting one another’s tiny, involuntary movements is the way that we converse in the bedroom.
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Occasionally, Alison doesn’t climax, either because she can’t or she doesn’t want to. She senses that reaching orgasm will take her a significant amount of time and would prefer to go to sleep. That causes friction for me because her orgasm is my goal, and I have a hard time resetting a goal once it is fixed in my head. It’s self-centred of me, I suppose. If she’s comfortable not having an orgasm, that should be fine, but it’s still a challenge for me.
Since our child was born, our sex life hasn’t been terribly adventurous. Partly that’s because he’s still in our room, but I also think it’s a matter of energy. So much of romance is about creativity. Alison and I used to come up with elaborate date nights, and little treasure hunts to surprise one another, but now a lot of that energy is soaked up by our son. I’m not worried, because Alison and I talk openly about it: we have tacitly agreed to keep having sex, but to put spontaneity on pause until our son has grown up a bit.
We plan to buy a vibrator, which should provide a bit of novelty with minimal effort. We’ve actually joked that the sound of the vibrator will make our son sleep more deeply. It will be like a cheap white-noise machine.
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