How do you make sex happen with older DC around?

[Dandeliony]

DH and I have never had a brilliant sex life by other people’s standards - we both have low libidos, a few other issues but it’s not been a problem for us as we’re both on the same page. However, since our DC have been older (12 and 14) and therefore around in the evening until we go to bed, there never seems the opportunity to DTD even if we wanted to. Whenever we have a night away it happens but I don’t really like the pressure of that kind of planned sex, and I know we could wait until DC are in bed but we’re both up very early for very demanding jobs and we always prioritise sleep! How do you make it work?

Either go to bed earlier or do it early mornings on the weekends? Most teenagers don't wake early on the weekend do they?

One of my ex's (we were late teens at the time) parent's used to be very open about their sex life with their kids - would just announce that they were going off to bed for some nookie, and they were all comfortable with each other knowing. I'm not sure if they started telling their kids as young as 12 though.

Noise cancelling headphones.

Just go upstairs while they're downstairs? Surely the children don't know where you both are in the house at all times? Or early morning sex..or while they're in their bedrooms? As long as you're not super loud, I don't get why they'd even hear you. I say that as someone who has three children between 5-10years old, so no experience with older children around but we never have an issue sneaking off 😂

My partner and I belong to the group that altmember describes. The children are now older, but when they were teenagers we would simply go to bed whenever the fancy took us. This was vital to maintaining some sort of sex life, as we worked differing shifts and time together was precious.

We never told them that we were off to bed to have sex, but it was not something that we tried to either disguise, or make excuses about. The children were aware that we were not to be disturbed unless the house caught fire and they certainly did not make a big deal about the situation.

We never paraded our sexuality in front of the children, but neither did we attempt to hide it. The consequence is that they now feel that sex is a part of normal life. They display a healthy attitude towards their own sex lives and have been able to discuss things such as contraception with us.

We made a decision that our conduct should be unlikely to embarrass the children, so we kept the noise down, etc., but we also made sure that we were not going to be embarrassed about wanting to have a sex life while teenagers were around.

I hope that the OP can navigate some middle way that enables her to have the kind of sex life she wants while still having children around - best wishes.