Married Women Like Sex Too

**Warning–If you didn’t get it from the title, this post is about sex. If you’re not old enough, come back tomorrow.  If you don’t like reading about sex, come back tomorrow.  If you get embarrassed, come back tomorrow.  Otherwise, read on.**

A quick scan of magazine headlines in the grocery store, on the rare occasion when I don’t bring children with me, would lead me to believe that single girls are swinging from the rafters and married women are baking pie. When did sex become something that only single women liked?  What occurs when women put on that white wedding gown that makes editors, producers and society assume that we go numb from the neck down?

I recently spent an educational three hours under a hair dryer reading Cosmo, Glamour, and other “single lady” magazines I haven’t picked up since college.  I flipped open to a page which began “How many sexual positions can you name?”  I quickly listed 5.  “If you named fewer than 20, then this is for you.”  20?  Are they serious?  Not only were they serious, they had 77.  77!!!!!  Why has no one told me these things before now?  While not everything the author advocated was kosher for a believing Catholic, I would say 50 of the 77 were on the up and up.  Have I been living under a rock?  50!!!

The next magazine I picked up gave detailed instructions for giving my man a massage.  He has totally different pressure points than I do.  It makes sense, but I’ve never seen it before, and I read.  I read a lot. There are reflexology points in the arches of his feet which relax his whole body, and others just above his ankles which wake him up and get his attention.  Ladies Home Journal tells me what questions to ask the doctor about his heart health, Cosmo told me how to get his heart racing.  Glamour told me “37 Ways to Please Your Man and Leave Him Begging for More”;  Good Housekeeping tells me “10 Summer Recipes They’ll Really Love.”  Guess which ones I want to read?  (Hint: I already have enough recipes.)

Television is no better, with “How I Met Your Mother” showing single 20/30 somethings enjoying their sex lives, while “The Middle” has a married couple too tired to even be interested.    Does something happen when we get married which has us more interested in making pies than making hay?  Or do we just behave as if it has?  In our desire to appear as the “perfect” mothers, have we forgotten the joy of being women?  The sensuality of being wives?  What are writers seeing that makes them think no one is chasing anyone around the bedroom any more?

While most women I know would never dream of serving the same dinner 5 nights in a row because the family would quickly become bored, but they think nothing of offering their husbands the same bland, tired menu a couple times a month in the bedroom.  We need to educate ourselves as to what is possible, decide what we consider acceptable, and go from there.  We need to remind ourselves that we are women; women who are loved.  We need to slip into his arms, not as his exhausted wife, but as his beloved bride.  We need to rediscover sex.

Sex is a gift to us and to our marriages.  It is not meant to be one more job on a to do list; it should be fun and joyful, full of play and delight in each other.  God did not design our sexuality merely for the begetting of children.  Its other purpose is to draw us together, to strengthen our bond within marriage, to remind us of our enchantment with each other, to give of ourselves completely and unreservedly, to become one flesh, and for joy.  Sex is for joy.  I think that too often we forget that.