The Secret to a Solid Relationship and a Mind-Blowing Sex Life
No, it’s not just communication
Taking care of three kids under four years old was peak parenthood for my husband and me.
I was a stay-at-home mom trying to hold things down as best as I could. He was a grad student with way too many extracurricular responsibilities.
Our days and nights were spent constantly responding so some kid’s needs. And since Mr. Austin had to keep writing and researching once all that was done, he never came to bed when I did.
It’s not fair to say that either of us slept during that time. What we did was crash. At some point, we just couldn’t handle it anymore and we allowed ourselves to fall into bed and go unconscious until we heard crying on the baby monitor.
The kids all napped, of course, but we could never seem to get them to nap at the same time.
Needless to say, our relationship coasted during this time. The closest thing we had to a sex life was masturbating quietly when we had a few minutes to ourselves (because it didn’t take any brain power and it helped us feel like we still existed outside of parent mode).
On most days, the closest we got to having intimate time was sitting across from each other at the dinner table until one of us said, “Why the fuck did we think we could handle this?”
But we did handle it (if we hadn’t, you would be reading about us on the news, not on Medium). We handled it well enough to decide to have a fourth child (though we still sometimes wonder what the fuck we were thinking).
Our lives readjusted and recalibrated. Mr. Austin earned his PhD and became a freelance writer. I remained a stay-at-home mom until I started writing erotica and then blogging.
But we struggled to get back the magic we had before.
I mean, our marriage was fine and our sex life was doing better. But none of them were quite as strong as they used to be.
People used to tell us we were their relationship goals. Now, we had kind of fallen into a rut. We were happy, intimate, comfortable — but a little too comfortable, yaknow?
Our sex life was getting better, but we were still having some trouble in that department. We had more time and opportunity to fuck and fool around, but we didn’t always take advantage of it.
This is usually the part of a blog post where I say that communication is the key to everything. I’m not here to talk smack about communication. It’s an essential ingredient for any kind of relationship. But it’s not always enough on its own.
Although we were in a bit of a rut, our communication stayed strong.
Even when Mr. Austin was so sleep deprived that he rubbed my knee after I told him my back was sore. Even when it seemed like all we did was give our babies their bottles and then clean up after they spit up everywhere. Even when it felt like we were drowning in piles of laundry. We could still get on the same page, talk through everything on our minds, and make each other laugh.
Strong communication meant everything was fine. Nothing could pull us apart, not even three babies and toddlers we suspected were having a contest to see how fast they could make us break down and cry.
But if we were going to go from fine to great, we needed a new approach.
The Simple Secret to Keeping Things Great
My relationship with my husband is a million times better now (I’m bad at math, but I’m pretty sure that’s right).
Our sex life is no longer on the mend. It’s got as much passion as it did when we first got together, except now we’re not as insecure and we have the muscle memory to pleasure each other expertly.
But it took us a while to get here. Longer than it should have, really.
We were busy, we were stressed, and we were overwhelmed.
Our relationship was doing alright and our sex life was — well, who gives a shit about our sex life, the baby just pissed all over my shirt while I was changing him.
We figured “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
We were right about the first part. Our relationship was never broken. It was me and him vs. a small brood of demons — that shit creates a solid bond.
But we were wrong about thinking we couldn’t benefit from a little effort.
Things really turned around for us when we decided to keep working on our relationship, no matter how well things were going.
Instead of waiting for signs of trouble, we would keep doing little things to make us feel closer to each other and we would keep trying new things to keep our sex life hot.
Instead of leaving things alone, we tried to make continuous improvements.
That’s right, we Kaizened the shit out of our sex life. Except we’re not management assholes — we’re just a pair of giddy, horny fools.
Relighting the Fire Is Hard
At the risk of sounding like a personal development bro, I’m going to use a mundane analogy and pretend it’s got huge significance.
Our home has a wood fireplace, and we used it all winter to keep us warm. I loved sitting by the fire and throwing a log into it whenever the flames started to die down.
What I didn’t care for as much was trying to start a fire again once the fire was dead.
I’d stack kindling and crumpled paper along with the logs, lit the paper, and watch as it was consumed by the flame and did fuck all.
I could spend twenty minutes trying to light the damn thing while I felt my dreams of living on a homestead evaporating. (It’s fine. I don’t even own a prairie skirt anyway.)
Throwing a log in the fire to keep it burning was easy as pie (eating pie, not baking a pie because who even has the time?) Trying to light the damn thing again was just difficult and frustrating.
And yeah, maybe I just suck at lighting a fire. But it’s an analogy so that’s not really the point.
Working continuously on our relationship is like chucking logs in the fire. Waiting until things go wrong and then trying to fix it is like trying to light the fire again.
I felt that the most with our sex life.
Trying weird sex positions or a new sex toy is fun and exciting. Worst case scenario, they’ll look fun on paper but suck in real life. We’ll try them, fail, laugh about it, and after we’re done giggling, we’ll be so high on endorphins we’ll fuck each other anyway.
But when my sex life was on life support, trying new things wasn’t all that exciting. There was a lot of pressure for everything we tried to be the thing that was going to fix us. And when it didn’t, it just made us feel even more hopeless than when we weren’t trying.
Plus, I don’t know about everyone else, but my mood doesn’t turn on a dime.
If I’m in a shitty mood, you can’t surprise me with flowers and expect me to become ecstatic. I need to work my way up to that.
(Give me the flowers anyway. Flowers are fucking awesome. They just won’t fix everything.)
It’s the same with sex. You can lick my nipples all you want, if I’m at a one on the horniness scale, instead of biting my lip I’m going to just give you a Stanley eyeroll.
And it’s pretty much how it went, because having a low libido kind of bummed me out. And it took a lot of work just to get me from bummed out to kind of okay — forget about lovey dovey and lady bonered.
Relighting our fire took a fuck ton of work.
It took patience, perseverance, and sustained enthusiasm — and it wasn’t easy to bring that kind of energy when we were in a rut.
But now that the fire’s burning, we just have to keep throwing logs in.
These days, if Mr. Austin gets me flowers now — or if I get some for him — we’ll be smiling ear to ear all day.
If he licks my nipples, my eyes might still roll, but this time they’ll roll to the back of my head. His mouth on my tits isn’t an attempt at getting things going — it’s the start of a series of events that sound like Pornhub titles (e.g. Amateur MILF comes hard with cock in her mouth).
And we want to keep it that way. So, we’re doing what we can to make sure we don’t become complacent.
Keep Doing the Little Things
Mr. Austin and I are both writers, so naturally we do a lot of reading. Lately, a lot of our reading has a purpose.
We read relationship advice. We read sex tips. And we’re not above watching the occasional YouTube video, either. (Or, ahem, other kinds of tube videos.)
When we read or see something that seems interesting, we give it a try.
We’re experimenters by nature, but instead of tinkering in a garage or a lab, we try out new sex toys and do dorky crap like time our hugs.
But we’re also not above just being reminded of the basic shit. And I mean basic like that we should be touching each other more, giving each other more attention, and making each other feel desired during sex.
That’s the kind of thing I should really just know by heart, but that fall by the wayside if I don’t keep reminding myself.
It’s kind of like how I know I’m supposed to have water throughout the day, but unless someone reminds me about the importance of hydration once in a while, I stop drinking enough.
Sometimes it feels a little silly to read relationship and sex tips that just rehash what we I already know, but it keeps me focused on the important stuff.
And so we read, and read, and read. Then we discuss what we read. We try what sounds good.
We keep looking for ways to stay excited about cuddling and fucking.
So, if you want to make sure your marriage stays strong, take some proactive steps before there are any signs of trouble. It’ll make you stronger, you’ll reach levels of intimacy you didn’t know were achievable, and you’ll feel closer to your partner because of it.
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