But, mrsfollowill, surely part of 'what you are like as a couple' is about learning to be parents together, it's not an interruption it's a fundamental part of the marriage?
I remember someone saying once that the importance of sex was that it was 'the only thing' that only you could do with that person e.g. other functions could be fulfilled by others outside of the relationship. But I wonder. I wonder why sex is the 'glue' that holds a relationship together when you are building your world around one another in so many different ways.
My dh and I are together 12 years, so we've had ups and downs many a time - my finals, his finals, a period where we lived in different countries etc. There are high points and low points sexually but also in other areas.
What I don't understand is the fact it is pathologised as 'not normal' to have a 'reduction in libido', why people have to discuss going to sex therapists when, really, it's because they're tired or depressed or have too much on their mind to commune in this particular way with their partners. Why people have sympathy for bad behaviour in response to a change in frequency of sexual intercourse e.g. 'well what's he supposed to do when he's not getting any?' kind of thing. Because surely, sex is just like anything else.. so what you're 'supposed' to do if you are unhappy with this ONE aspect of your relationship is talk about it, problem solve, find a way around it together, not beat yourself up for being a "bad wife" or see it as the most important fuel to your relationship.
In the magazines, it's all about 'spicing it up in bedroom' as though it were a chore that needed tending to. There's a 'just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down' flavour to some of this that is just a variation on the 'lie back and think of England' theme etc. As though it were imperative to keep your sex life at the level it was when you first met or face Certain Relationship Doom. I think there are an awful lot of people who are seriously concerned if they don't meet a 'three times a week' quota and I just wonder what it was like before this number was arbitrarily imposed on the expression of human love.
To me, if you need to reassure your partner that because you hadn't done it that week you still loved them, that implies that sex is the sole conduit for love and that there's very little meeting of the minds happening in other areas. There's also something in all these discussions that seems to imply that keeping the fires burnin is a woman's work, as though it weren't something you both could talk openly about and reach your own solutions about etc. Ah, just do it and you'll get into it. When you only have 10 minutes between getting the laundry on and clearing up after dinner and tending to the screaming teething infant and fixing the dodgy light switch in the kitchen and sending those crucial emails and phoning your old mother to see that she got home alright and, and, and? You should just have a jolly old poke in the utility room and 'unload the gun' because otherwise you might have a sulky partner with a roving eye?
I think it's just unrealistic to think that over an entire lifetime there won't be very, very normal (and possibly, in the early childrearing/careerbuilding years, quite frequent) periods where sex is not THE priority... and that turning it into a chore or something that you need to worry about really doesn't help most people get in the mood.