My Younger Japanese Wife Hasn’t Slept With Me in 7 Years: I’ve Never Been Happier
I never imagined one night without my wife. It’s been 7 years. So why am I so happy?
Tell me, in how many places can you “do the business”?
In private hot springs. In outdoor natural swimming holes. In swanky love hotels. In seedy love hotels. In jacuzzis, beds, forests, and waterfalls — before my Japanese wife and I got married, we did more business than Warren Buffet’s wet dreams.
Even after we got married, we were still like two little rabbits who’d been secretly drip-fed ecstasy in our sleep.
Then 7 years ago, it all came crashing to a sudden halt. We stopped sharing a bed. We stopped sleeping together. And we stopped waking up beside each other.
Since 2016, I haven’t slept with my wife.
Yet I’ve never been happier, and our marriage has never been stronger.
Let me explain how this strange turn of events unfolded.
In March 2009, I drove 1,400 kms from Tokyo down to the south-east of Kyushu to start a new job. On my very first day, I met a young woman in the copy-room and we got talking. Turns out it was her first day, too.
We were both alone in a new town.
Though I was considerably older, conversation came naturally, and we shared several things in common.
With time to spare, we began to hang out. Then things turned physical.
Voraciously so.
Is there anything that makes your skin tingle more than sexual introductions and experimentation with a new lover?
What they like. What they really like. What they love…
I soon gave her a key to my place, and she began staying there more often. The sex increased and intensified.
Then we moved in together in 2013. To celebrate the occasion, we bought a king-sized bed.
We explored every inch of it. I explored every inch of her. She explored however many inches I had!
At the start of 2014, I proposed. She said yes. We got married in September.
Somehow, we started having more sex. Well, I shouldn’t say somehow, because we both knew why — we were trying to have a baby.
But the fertility Gods conspired against us (or for us) and said “NO” to kids for more than a year. We went bananas on the bonking for 14 straight months as we tried in vain to procreate.
Then it happened. In December 2015, my wife emerged from the bathroom holding up a little pink plastic contraption that had two dark lines on it.
The only other time she’d held up a pink plastic thing in front of me I had to run and get some batteries.
So yeah, I was a tad stunned in the moment. I didn’t know what the lines meant, but I sure as hell knew what the tears streaming down her cheeks were saying.
BOOM.
At the age of 42, I was about to become a father for the first time. You little fu**ing beauty, I thought!
However, something else was about to happen that I could never have imagined.
As crazy as it sounds, my wife and I hadn’t really discussed sleeping arrangements for when our baby was born. That was because we both expected she’d do satogaeri shussan, a traditional Japanese custom whereby new mothers return to their hometowns for 3 months or so to get support from their parents and extended family.
I’ve written about that here.
However, due to a few minor complications leading up to the birth, my wife didn’t return to her island hometown. Instead, she came home with me.
Happy days. Until it was time to sleep on that first night.
Rather than setting up a makeshift cot for our daughter and hopping into the king-sized bed with me, my wife laid out a big futon in the tatami room downstairs and went to sleep with our newborn there. It made sense, as our bedroom is upstairs — I didn’t much fancy the idea of two sleep-deprived parents walking up and down a wooden polished staircase 50 times a day with a newborn in one arm.
So, like every first-time, doting father, I decided I’d join them on the futon downstairs. Two big problems immediately plagued me:
- I’m such a restless sleeper my convulsive kicks could knock a moose out cold, so I was scared witless that I might involuntarily karate-chop my little girl’s noggin. Or roll over during the night and crush her.
- Back pain. After 30+ years of surfing, my lower back creaks like a rusty bike chain in the early mornings and it takes a good 10 minutes of “please God help me” salutations for it to start working.
The futon killed me on that first night. I tried it a second night but only slept about 30 minutes because of fear number 1 above.
Fear number 2 just about debilitated me. I swear I saw my tiny daughter giggle when she watched me try to lever myself off the futon, roll across the floor, then winch myself up along the wall.
No good.
There and then, I said to my wife: “My God, I love you two. But there is not a snow cone’s chance in Satan’s sauna that I can continue sleeping on this futon.”
And so it was.
From that night, I returned to the luxury of our king-sized bed upstairs to sleep alone while my little girl and my wife slept together downstairs on the futon.
When we had our second daughter in 2018, the routine continued, except now there were three of them on the futon and daddy on the king.
Two years ago, they all migrated to one of the bedrooms upstairs, but my wife and youngest daughter still sleep on a futon while my oldest daughter sleeps in her own bed.
So, how can I be happy with this arrangement?
I went from intimacy that wouldn’t be out of place in an X-rated novel to sleeping alone. Away from wife. For 7 years.
Well, here’s the thing. We’ve worked in beautiful synchronicity to get our girls in bed and asleep by 9pm since they were born. Still to this day.
What does that mean? Simple.
After 9pm, it’s on! My wife makes sure the girls are counting origami sheep jumping cherry blossom bridges, then she tip-toes like a ninja into the king-sized bed with me.
And closes the door. Slightly ajar, of course.
Once we’re done, we have a snuggle and a huggle, then she tippy-toes back into bed with the girls.
And Saturdays have been renamed “Saturdates”. That’s because we take our daughters to gymnastics in the morning and keep the next few hours free.
Weekend fireworks!
When I had kids, I never imagined my wife would be sleeping in another room. Not even for a few weeks. But 7 frikken years? You gotta be kiddin’ me!
That said, it’s worked for us.
There’s no rulebook that dictates how every couple or set of parents should live their lives. We all just muddle our way through and do the best we can.
Once you have kids, their happiness becomes the priority, but you can’t just sacrifice your own well-being.
It took a little bit of trial and error for my wife and I to work things out, and I know she’s counting the days down until she can get back into that king-size with me.
We haven’t slept together for 7 years, but after 14 years together and 9 as husband and wife, we’ve never been happier.
And more importantly, we’re as physically “active” as ever.
Unlike these Japanese couples, who live in the common “sexless marriage” situation in Japan
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And another life lesson I’ve learned with my wife
