I started this blog because I wanted to say interesting things about marriage as we approached our 20th anniversary… but now we’ve passed our 23rd and turns out I don’t have time or energy to think of interesting things to say about marriage.   

Besides, no one really wants to hear about a happy marriage. There’s no drama, no inside scoop, we’ve lived a relatively charmed life… so far.  I don’t want to jinx it or anything, just that there’s not much to report.  

Don’t think that means we’re BORING.  Ok, yes, we are a little boring, who am I kidding?  I’m not saying that our *marriage* is boring, just that we’re kind of boring people.  We work, we come home, we drink from the same coffee cup, we chat online all day long, we hate being apart, he defers to my wishes in all things.  It’s sickening.  That’s why I never talk about my husband on facebook.  People would unfriend me.  Well, that, and the fact that he’s a very private and paranoid person and doesn’t want me posting about him online.  

That said, my husband is terribly annoying. He doesn’t help out around the house too much, he watches crap on TV, he leaves dirty & clean clothes mixed up in piles on the floor, he whines about his job, and he never wants to go anywhere or do anything because he spends all his evenings and weekends locked up in his workshop being a mad scientist because if he doesn’t invent something and become successful in his own business, he will consider his life a failure. This is really annoying.  But I still support him. 

And we have a lot of sex.  That kind of arrangement is hard to find elsewhere, especially at my age, so I’ll keep him around.  

I don’t know what it is with the sex thing.  I feel kind of lame about it. I mean, the conventional wisdom is that old married people (especially women) don’t even *want* sex anymore, even if they could find the time or energy for it, right? I hate that conventional wisdom. It’s insulting. I would go so far as to say that our 40-something long-time married sex is BETTER than our 20-something sex.  I’m serious.  When you’re in your 20s, do you really know what you’re doing or what you want?  You haven’t had time to explore and fine tune and you’re worried about things like how you look naked or whether feminism and heterosexual sex are compatible. Or was that just me?  Heh.  It was the early 90s – I was listening to a lot of Tori Amos and Indigo Girls. (The fact that my husband has not only survived but *supported* me as a feminist/women’s studies student/scholar has been the sexiest thing about him.) 

And in my 30s it was all baby stress – when should we have a baby? why did we have this baby? when should we have another one? why did we have another one? will we ever be alone or get any sleep again? 

But in our 40s… whatever, it’s just fun and anything goes and all the anxiety over making a marriage and starting a family are behind us and we can relax!  

I’m just talking about sex here, not daily life.  There’s still not much relaxing in daily life. 

My husband went to China for two weeks and it KILLED me.  I couldn’t stand it.  I cried when he left, first of all, because I don’t like to be left alone with the little hellions.  But then I just could not stand going two weeks without sex.  When he came home, we could hardly get the kids into bed before we attacked one another.  It was tortuous. Two weeks – that’s a blip in the calendar.  I would make a terrible military wife.  

 

I actually had a little fertility scare.  At age 43, blergh.  No, NO THANKS, that is SO not happening.  

I’m not on birth control and we don’t use condoms.  Say what you will, and I’m not advising it for anyone else, but it works for me.  I was on the pill in my 20s, but we haven’t used birth control since my daughter was born = 11 years.  I’ve only ever been pregnant twice – no miscarriages (that I know of) and no abortions, just two planned pregnancies that resulted in two kids.  But he came back from China, sex-starved, and at the exact right (or wrong) time in my cycle and we had sex about 8 times in one week… and then a couple of weeks later I was late. Like, a whole week late. And I am NEVER late.  I am by the clock, and always have been. The only thing I kept telling myself is that I *have* had some strange signs of peri-menopause. I have had a few extremely long and heavy cycles, a few extremely short almost non-existent ones, but usually *something* happens and on the exact right date.  Still, in the back of my mind I know that my cycle could go wacky at any moment.  

But I was late and then another day late and another and so I finally got myself so worked up that I went and bought a pregnancy test. And it was negative. And of course I started my period that night.  And then I felt really lame for having a pregnancy scare at age 43 (husband is 47).  Which I know is not OLD-old by any means – I have plenty of friends starting, or continuing, their childbearing well into their 40s and plenty of friends with “surprise third” kids.  But it’s old for us.  For being married 23 years and having two preteen/teen kids and just being DONE-done. And being someone who does not like surprises.

So, no more sex for us!   

Just kidding.