Vol. 47 - The Art of the Quickie

How to master fucking in the age of parenthood

This one might be a bit too TMI for some of you (looking at you, dad). So if the sex life of this writer/dad isn’t something you’d enjoy with your Wednesday coffee, best to come back next week.

One of the most difficult parts about parenting has nothing to do with parenting at all. Often, the parenting is the easy part. It’s relationship maintenance that can be the thing we quickly forget to tend to. Being a husband to your wife, wife to your husband, partner to your partner. It’s sitting down and talking to each other, taking inventory of where your partner is in life, in the head, in their emotions. It’s simply having a conversation about your day or what you might want to do for your birthday or what’s been weighing on your lately. It’s finding time to laugh together.

More than anything, though, it’s sex.

Because this week, I want to talk about fucking. When it comes to fucking, Emily and I have been able to maintain a healthy sex life throughout our first half-decade of being parents, both of us getting ours (almost) as often as we need.

The key? Quickies.

Let me rewind for a second. Many newsletters ago, I told a story about how one of the few pieces of advice Emily and I give to new parents (who ask. Don’t ever give unsolicited advice. Especially to pregnant women, especially during their first pregnancy) is that you can still do the things you did before you had kids—travel, dinners, movies, adventures, et cetera. Only now, with kids, those things are done differently. When traveling, you have to put the kids’ needs first, to make sure they’re happy. When eating out, you have to consider new places, places where noise and a mess are not an issue. If you want to go to the movies, you have to go to their movies. When adventuring, you have to embrace adventures that are kid-friendly, if not kid-focused.

But what about fucking?!

Well, yeah. You can do that, too. And you can do it a lot. But, like travel and dining out and adventuring, sex is just different once you have kids. Mainly, it’s more about the destination than it is the journey. Get in, get off, get back to work.

And, unlike those spontaneous days of our pre-children yesteryears (spontaneous moments that are all too creepy in those ED commercials. I mean, has anyone ever actually gotten after it while folding laundry?), when we weren’t in much of a rush at all, there’s almost always something lurking just around the corner; a nap wakeup, a school pickup, an actual child wondering what that noise is.

Considering as much, we’ll often default to a schedule, which is second only to changing my truck’s oil in our driveway on the list of most suburban things I’ve ever done. We seek out those little windows in which we can have a tumble. We get in, we get off, and we get back to work.

Often, before we get into it, I’ll quote Short Round. “Hey Doctor Jones; no time for love” (which is guaranteed to get a woman going). It’s a joke that contains a multitude of truths. But the one truth that it overlooks is that I love my wife very much. And I love having sex with her. Which is why we make time for love, Dr. Jones. Even if it’s short, curt, and to the point (pun potentially intended).

Romance ain’t dead*. But for now, it’s hibernating. Someday, who knows when, we’ll get back to fun and foreplay and good, long fucks. But for now, the destination is the goal. Get in, get off, get back to work.

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*Romance, like everything else, just looks different now.