Do childless couples have better sex lives?

[cjfrh1985]

…..because the woman’s body doesn’t change (assuming she doesn’t gain weight, and obviously ageing happens)?

I cant speak for all women but for me yes.
My body has changed over the years but im still in good shape i dont have to be quiet when i do it.
Im childless and single so no worries really.
I do 45 minutes work out a day with no one interrupting me.
My sex life is just ONS.

Both my sisters told me that having a child can change the vagina although it all goes back to normal it never goes back to what it was.

🙄

Well they can do it anywhere in the house whenever they want, so.....

I would think almost definitely yes. Couples with children are more tired for a start. They have a period after a birth when there is little or no sex and that period can, for some, last quite a while.

Also giving birth often causes problems which means the woman does not want sex. Having to be quiet when children are around,

A vagina is a muscle. So I think its a combination of what your vagina was like pre child. How many kids you have had because there's a big difference between 1 child and having 3 or 4. To be honest I'm not even convinced you would know it's quite an intimate area so not like asking to look at the muscle on your friends calf or something.

It's swings and round abouts. You could argue that having sex with a loving long term partner is passionate more so than a ONS. Fair enough not as often again this varies some prioritise sex.

What a thread OP!

Yes but it has nothing to do with the woman’s body!

Its not just the woman's body that changes with age; dangling balls can be a real passion killer.

probably yes although I would say the impact of raising children (energy, emotionally, financially, stress) are more likely culprits than body change

I assume so, yes. I can do it when I want, where I want, without worrying about noise, etc. We don’t have sex when my partners kids are here, no way, lol. I suppose you get used to it, but I’ve never had to try and have sex with kids in the house, and don’t want to start! I’m the size and shape I was when younger too, although menopause defo has meant a few changes, lol

Anyone else trying to work out if the OP is just goady or speaking from a place of pain?

But no OP, that’s not why.

I really need to 🤣 reaction back for this comment!

Deteriorating sex life after kids is not always because of the woman’s body OP, sometimes men gain weight as they age too, or become lazy and don’t help with their own kids which is a HUGE turn off to women and can the sex life. Women’s bodies can become better after kids in some situations. There’s a lot more to a bad sex life than a woman’s body changing.

Well perimenopause is like a never ending pregnancy and puberty rolled into one, so childless women's bodies do change. Mens bodies change too! Going to bed with a man you went to bed with when he was in his 20s isn't the same as going to bed with him in his 40s or 50s.

My body is changed 10 times more than perimenopause than it was by any babies.

Pregnancy and labour are relatively brief and the tropes of it "ruining" women's bodies, and specifically their vulvas, are dusgusting. It is unhelpful for the women who ARE left with lasting damage as it tells them it's normal, suck it up rather than demand healthcare for it, and it disregards the option of a healthy pregnancy, birth and recovery.

Other things that changed my sex life more than babies:
Medication
Chronic health conditions (that run in the family, childless family members develop them too)

So, no, probably not I would say.

Babies were a blip, perimenopause is a whole transformation which leaves few of us the same at the other side of it

More sleep
More disposable income
Skinnier wife
More spontaneity

So yeah

No, just more frequent. And louder.

I have 4 kids and have a great sex life. My body isn't as toned as what it was but I'm still in ok shape and I'm confident being naked in front of my DH. I have a mum tum but I also have big firm boobs and an hourglass shape. He loves my body and has no complaints. Of course kids add to tiredness and you have to make the most of when they're asleep or out the house but that's just normal, it ebbs and flows and changes over time.

I would agree that I felt like that "in the trenches",

But the trenches pass and the longer you're together the briefer a period they seem.

Trenches aside sex changes with age, maturity, and everything that goes along with aging bodies in long term relationships and, sure, our sex life when we had 2 year olds wasn't what it would have been IN THAT MOMENT if we hadn't had two year olds.... fast forward to the less intensive stages of parenthood and I really do not think that now our sex life would be any different if we hadn't had them. They really haven't been the reasons for any of the differences good or bad between how sex was in our 20s and how it is now in middle age.

This 100%

I mean yes, children can change your body but I don't think that's the main reason. I think it's more tiredness (both mental and physical), stress, worrying about the children waking up etc that contributes more. For what it's worth, DH and I have two young kids (both under 7) and have a great sex life. Children doesn't automatically mean your sex life is forever ruined. It ebbs and flows.

Tbh we do alright in that department, but we have family who are happy to take the kids and we are happy to hand them over, so we are alone more than most. We will soon have three children before 30 - which wasn’t exactly the original plan, but it could be worse. He is getting the snip STAT because my childbearing days are over. My body has changed but it’s not all bad - I have boobs now! After my first was born I was really depressed and thought I was fat and fugly, didn’t want to be touched. I really worked hard at the gym and worked harder on my outlook. For me a lot of my issues were in my head, but idk how it is for other women.

Whenever theres discussions about child free Vs parent lifestyles though, the young child period is so disproportionately heavily weighted

And as a parent who is long past that period, much as it felt endless and vast at the time, it was really such a short episode in our lifetimes (unless you have 20 kids!)

I think this when things like happiness is compared too.. are they comparing parents of 30 year olds to child free couples?

Financially YES you plan differently and live differently even with full grown adults children, but sex? Bodies?

Are we really claiming that childbirth is the only thing that ages a body, and child free 65 year olds are nubile slim and pert?

And that having sex as an empty nester is nothing like the sex child free couples of the same age are having?

So no, I don't think child free couples have better, or more sex over the course of their marriages and lifetimes

They might not have pregnancies and births, or toddlers or wayward teens.. but there'll be plenty of other ups and downs: times of stress, variable health, mental health, other life upheavals, aging, changing....

And I think that any long term child free couple that imagine children as a permanent passion duller, are going to struggle to overcome whatever else life throws at their relationship and sex life.

I have child free siblings and wider family and aesthetically/physically we have aged on the same tragectorty.

It's genes and a bit of lifestyle.

Not goady, no. I’m just a stage where I’m thinking about how children can affect a relationship. I don’t have kids yet, not sure I want them.

I’ve had 2 csections, so no change to my vagina for birth reasons. But children in the house is a dampener.

My eldest has now moved out and my second spends a lot of time at her boyfriends, empty house and things have picked up quite dramatically woo hoo!!!

Not for those reasons (for me anyway) but wouldn’t that be normal? I had a way better sex life before I had kids!