Do you really have no time for sex? Or is it something else ?
In this episode of the Sex After Kids Podcast, Sex Coach Sofia Ashley challenges couples to explore what they are doing with their time, and how those choices impact their intimacy and their relationship. She explores four reasons why you might be using lack of time as a distraction from the root cause and how to use even 30 minutes a month to get back into the saddle of your sex life after kids.
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Today’s episode is inspired by a chat I had recently with a mama who shared in her initial intake with me that more time together alone was the biggest hurdle. They're older parents with parents that are even older, so they don't have a lot of childcare. They've got lots on the go, building a house, living life, doing all the things as many of you are as well, and it's just feeling impossible to make the time and find the time to do the do, right? They feel like they're in survival mode, and by the time they get to bed each night, it's all they can do to just put on a show and hang out together, right? So many of the folks that I talk to, especially the mamas that I talk to, feel like there's just not a lot of time, energy, or desire for sex in the tank, and I get it. I have been there, okay? The to-do list is never ending.
Many of us are carrying more than our fair share of the mental load at home, and even when it is balanced between any of you are in that boat, maybe you just want to skip this little pep talk. Many of you are filling this time, especially that window of time between when your kids go to bed and you go to bed with other shit. Now, on its own, this stuff is not bad.
You might be taking on that art project. You might be reading again. You might be choosing to watch a movie with your hubs.
You might be cleaning out the garage. You might be doing lunches and meal prepping for yourself or exercising. All of these things are wonderful, important things to do for sure.
The challenge comes when we choose these things night over night over night instead of choosing the occasional opportunity to get naked and sexy with our partner, and when we make those choices night over night over night, there's a stark contrast, right? We are yearning to feel loved and desired. We are yearning to feel sexy. We are yearning to have some spark and some aliveness, some zest in our relationship, and we are not making choices that support that.
Why do we do this? Okay, there's a couple reasons I'm going to go over four here that I think are really factors that are at play in us getting stuck in this no time trap when it's not necessarily true.
1. We are numbed out in consumption mode
We're in this society of information overload where we're consuming and ingesting information from everywhere more than we are creating and connecting, and what I mean is like there's this literal fire hose of information all day every day with all these information touch points across social media, meetings, text messages, advertising, podcasts, books. It's information being thrown at us but also information that we're like seeking and seeking and seeking.
We are looking for answers to every little problem that we have because there's answers, right? But this overwhelm does two things. One, it keeps us stuck almost frozen. One could argue in a very passive consumption mode where we want to turn our brain off and watch a movie as an example, and two, it sets our brain up to feel like getting the energy to do anything else is too much of a mountain to climb.
So folding laundry while listening to a podcast, cleaning the kitchen, watching the movie together. These are tasks that many of us, not all of us, but many of us can do on autopilot without a lot of intention or presence. So our brain in this overwhelmed state kind of deems them as low effort, but then what happens is we make a mountain out of a molehill for any task that requires thinking or connecting.
It's kind of written off as too costly. So what's happening here is we end up frozen in this like overwhelm of consumption which just keeps us in consumption because it feels like the lower cost option and the easiest thing to do when we are stuck in that overwhelm is to just keep consuming in a way that feels mindless. I just want to watch the movie and turn my brain off, right? I want to be in zombie mode because I'm just feeling overwhelmed and any other alternative feels like too much energy.
“Getting the paints out, bothering to have a connected conversation with my partner instead of watching the movie, all of these things feel like too much energy. And the irony of course is that connection and creation are actually the cure to our zombie status.”
Getting the paints out, bothering to have a connected conversation with my partner instead of watching the movie, all of these things feel like too much energy. And the irony of course is that connection and creation are actually the cure to our zombie status and we're going to talk a little bit more about why that is in a bit here, so hang tight on that.
2. Shitty Ideas About Scheduled Sex
The second factor for why we kind of get stuck in this time trap is that we all have some very, quite frankly, dumb ideas about sex needing to be spontaneous instead of scheduled.
We don't want to decide ahead of time that 8 p.m on Wednesdays we're going to get down because it seems lame, it seems unsexy, it seems uninspiring, it seems all the things. And to that I say, how much unscheduled or spontaneous sex are you having now, my friends? If you're listening to this podcast, probably not that much, be honest. So maybe we could try something a little different and just see what happens, right?
3. Lacklustre Sexy Times
The third factor at play here is a lackluster sexy times. So when I talk to mamas who tell me they want more time, when I dig a little deeper in our conversations, what comes up is that actually the sex they're having is pretty mediocre. Things don't last very long, there's not a lot of connection, your body isn't working the way you want it to, and so rather than bring you together, these kind of like failed or lackluster sexy times can end up just driving a deeper wedge in between you, where you end up feeling lonely and isolated and disconnected after sex instead of all the things that you want to feel. So we're too busy or there's no time to make it happen, just kind of becomes this excuse that masks what really is, that it's just not that worth it to have sex.
The orgasm gap is very real, my friends. And if you have never heard that term before, it simply means that research has found that cis women in heterosexual relationships with cis men, orgasm less often and to less satisfaction than other women. Basically women in lesbian relationships.
Why? Because we have done an absolute shit job of teaching people how to have sex well, and the invisible rules in society about how men and women are supposed to engage in sex is what reinforces that and brings us there. So I'll dedicate a whole other podcast to this, but the bottom line is you were never taught how to have great sex, and those gender norms and expectations are reinforcing the shitty sex that you're having. Most people are having shitty sex.
Most people are having sex under three to five minutes, and it's no wonder you're not craving it, and it's no wonder you would rather clean the floor or make lunches, right?
4. Trauma
The last factor at play here is trauma. So on the Sex After Kids Summit, this is an example. I had a very lovely Q&A chat with Daniela Stevens, who's a fellow sex coach. I will link their info in the show notes because they are just wonderful. And we were talking together about how I had been feeling the vibes one day, but I got really nervous to share it with my husband that I was feeling in the mood because I was worried that I might not still be down to roll around after bedtime.
I was worried that the feeling would go away, and I didn't want to like cash a check I couldn't deliver, basically. And the more I was chatting with Daniela, the more I realized that all of my reasons for not wanting to have sex, like I'm too tired, I have a migraine, I'm not in the mood, they're pretty much all symptoms of my body having a fraught relationship with sex, right? Everyone has some degree of sexual shame and trauma, and almost all people with vaginas have a history of sex that has not prioritized their pleasure, not prioritized their needs and desires, or it's been filled with some level of violence and manipulation, not to mention fertility, pregnancy, and birth trauma challenges. So the long and short here, and again we'll talk about this more in future episodes, is that often we feel like we've moved on from these things, but our bodies have not, and it shows up as avoidance of sex, because our body like doesn't want to go there. It's got negative associations.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE
So when we go back to the beginning here, we think about, okay, when I think about it, do I actually have the time? If I actually have the time, but I'm not making the time for this, what could be happening, right? So it could be that we're kind of stuck in zombie mode, and we've let our brain trick us into thinking that watching a movie every night with our partner is all we can manage right now. It might be that we've got some trauma happening. It might be that we are not having sex worth craving, and it might be just a simple misconception that scheduled sex sucks. So what do we do with all of this information I just laid on you?
The big piece I really want you to take aware here is to get real with yourself for a minute, okay? Ask yourself these questions.
What is my vision here. What kind of relationship and sex life do I want to have, do we want to have. None of this is a problem unless it’s a problem but if you aren’t living the relationship and intimacy you crave - then we need to get real about what we are breathing into the vision we have. If it’s nothing, we aren’t going anywhere fast.
Is it absolutely true that you have no time, like not an inch, to spend 30 minutes to an hour naked in bed with your partner one to four times a month? Is it really true?
If you were to audit your time for a week and look at how you spend the hours that you have with your partner, it all looks different, but let's just say how do you spend those hours after the kids are in bed and before you go to bed? How are you spending that time, and is it on things that are valuable?
And does any of what I just said here resonate? Are you stuck in zombie mode and overwhelmed? Are you avoiding sex that's not really crave-worthy? Could there be some trauma at play in your avoidance, and do you need to get over yourself and start scheduling sexy times?
And if you think about it, what could be possible if you made a different choice just one night a month or one night a week?
If you reading this, I'm going to assume that you want your sex life and your relationship post-kids to be different or better in some way than it is. You want to be having sex more frequently.
You want to be having better sex. You want to feel less guilty about turning down your partner or not initiating. You want to feel those new crush fling vibes from the early days of your relationship.
You want to feel in love. You want to feel comfortable. And you can see that there is some time, it doesn't even have to be a lot, some time to be naked together in a week or a month.
Is this time scarcity mindset really serving you and really serving your relationship? You cannot will the loving relationship full of spark and vitality into being in front of Netflix every night. You have got to make a different choice. But I also promise you like we talked about in the last episode and everything about my approach is that it doesn't have to be the mountain that your brain has convinced you that it is.
“You cannot will the loving relationship full of spark and vitality into being in front of Netflix every night. You have got to make a different choice. But I also promise you like we talked about in the last episode and everything about my approach is that it doesn’t have to be the mountain that your brain has convinced you that it is.”
There is a straightforward and practical path to getting back into the swing of naked sexy fun times. The beauty here is that like so many things in life, the obstacle is the path. The antidote to an existence where you are frozen in consumption is to create things.
Get off the damn scrolling, sing, dance, paint, draw, have sex. Sex is an act of creation, my friends, even if we aren't literally creating a baby. The energy that we want to have is created when we make space for present connection and present sex.
Great sex can make us feel energized, relaxed, deliciously alive versus numbed out and distant. So the sex can be the solution if we do it right to what it is that we want to feel. We get to great sex that is worth craving by practicing sex just like we get good at cooking the perfect risotto by trying the recipe a few times and failing horribly, but persevering, observing, and learning from our failures.
And my whole approach is to teach you how to do this in an effortless way. We heal our traumas over time also by getting good at this sex thing in a specific way and that is what I teach people in my programs how to do. You can schedule sex in a way that does not suck.
You can schedule sex in a that doesn't just land you in three minutes of proverbial heaven and you can learn tools to heal your body's avoidance of sex. I've done it, my clients are doing it, and you can do it too. So breath.
If you are done, your little reflection, and you realize that there are some slivers of time to have sex, but you don't know where to go from here. You're like, Sophia says I can plan a sex date that doesn't suck, but like how the fuck do I do that? Just get on a Reset Roadmap call with me. They're totally free.In 30 minutes we will map out how to plan a sex date that you're going to look forward to, how to plan a sex date that's going to reset your sex after kids cycle. It's going to hit the reset button on your sex life, get you back in the saddle of easy, fun, and flirty naked sexy fun times, and it's going to help you to take advantage of the little or a lot time that you have to create better sex that's worth craving for, to create better sex that's going to heal your body, to create better sex that's going to be one of the engines for the life that you want to live, for the spark and the aliveness in your relationship in yourself that you want to have. That is my rant for you today, my beautiful friends.
Get real with yourself. If you are making excuses about time and there's slivers of time present, let's figure out what that root cause is and let's help you shift that cycle into a positive feedback loop so we can get you where you want to go.