Dear John (or Jim, Jack, Jeff, Jeb...)
From: Moms and wives everywhere
To: All dads and husbands
Guys,
We need to talk. There are some...issues we need to go over.
Don’t get us wrong; we love you guys. Really, we do. But we’re writing you this letter in hopes of making a few minor changes to your, ahem...modus operandi.
You see, we like sex. Furthermore, we like having sex with you. But we’d like it a whole lot more—and want to do it a whole lot more—if you’d kindly take some of the following advice to heart.
Excuses, Excuses
First of all, there are just some times (and we realize that, occasionally, it is more often than not) that when you are feeling randy and virile, we have a hard time feeling like we’re sex kittens and more like we’ve been run over by a truck filled with stinky diapers, backing-talking children and dirty laundry. In those cases, each of us approaches this conundrum in a slightly different way. For your educational purposes, here we will break down each of these tactics so you know what they really mean, and you can adjust your reactions accordingly.
“Not tonight, dear, I have a headache.”
Sound familiar? This particular method goes way back to when the first cave-dad, all jacked-up on testosterone and bearing a hard-on from having just speared a particularly large boar, started groping his cave-mom as she sat in the cave, peacefully making cave paintings and exhausted from a long day of making fire and chasing the little cave-munchkins all over the joint. In order not to hurt her very sensitive cave-dude’s pride (because you know how those cavemen were), she made up the very first lame excuse to get him to put his boner away and let her do her cave paintings in piece (an artistic endeavor which the modern cave-mom has replaced through the evolutionary process with scrapbooking—or, in a pinch, blogging).
Now you might find us watching Grey’s Anatomy or The Biggest Loser, but it’s the same situation. Being a mom requires a lot of energy spent on the kiddos all day long, in addition to keeping up the house, ferrying the children about; and, for a lot of moms, working on top of all of that. Sometimes we haven’t showered for lack of time or from the children kid-grafted to our hip, leg, etc.—or were thrown up on or otherwise kid-soiled at multiple points in the day, leaving us, let’s just say, feeling less than attractive. And totally un-hygienic. Yeah—EWWW.
Whatever the era or anthropomorphological context, the end result is the same: WE DON’T WANT TO HAVE SEX.
For example, Julie, a mom of two young children, said:
“By the time the kids go to bed and I finish my work, it’s 11:00pm or later! Sitting at the computer (a necessity with my work) for a long time gives me a headache, and the last thing I want when he asks for 'us time' is to say yes.”
But it’s not easy for all of us to just come right out and say this to you and your fragile male egos, so out come the lame excuses. Or pretending to be asleep. Some of us even add snoring for effect. Don’t be offended—feel free take care of it yourself, or try again in the morning. Our vaginas are not open for business 24/7; and once we become moms, sleep and the boob tube often take precedence over, well, having our boobs pawed—it’s just a fact of life. And although we know you want to get right back to business after our monthly visitor has vacated the premises, sometimes we might just need another day to get over it and want to re-open for business. Such as Katie, who said:
“Sometimes when I have my period, the day after it ends, I will flush a tampon down the toilet and throw the wrapper and applicator in the garbage. That buys me at least one more day.”
So when you see that tampon wrapper in the trash, fellas, don’t even think about it!
One for the Gipper!
Not all of us do the brush-off when we aren’t feeling sexalicious, however. Some of us, in this situation, choose not to refuse to participate but instead we dutifully take one for the team and allow you to do your business, a.k.a. pump away on top of us or behind us while we yawn and go over the grocery list in our heads. Now listen, because this is important. In this situation, do not mistake the rolling of our eyes for our eyes rolling back in our head with pleasure or the blank look on our face for being in some state of euphoric shock from your sexual prowess haphazardness. These are the times when we would like you to realize that this is a Pity Fuck—not a Sport Fuck—and there will be no going for a new long distance record. Let’s keep it more like a one-minute mile and call it a day. ; fill out the questions, and your responses might be featured in an upcoming column! (All responses are completely confidential.)
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Which brings me to the next order of business: The Shoulder Tap.
When you’re hammering away during those moments when we’re kind enough to allow you your fun when we are not in the mood, and we tap you on the shoulder or give you some other subtle hint, that is the equivalent of the signal they give at the Oscars for Cuba Gooding Jr. to wrap up his speech that has gone on too long. So take the hint. Show me the cummy. Otherwise, the tapping will quickly turn into a repeated pat, then a good ol’ whack—and then you think we’re getting rough, and the cycle continues. Watch for the cues, and know when we have had our fill—then get ‘er done.
Or, for those of you who respond best to man-speak: the Shoulder Tap is the sexual equivalent of a tapout in a UFC match. When Silva taps, the bout is OVER. And you’ve got to admit—it’s a lot nicer than saying, “wrap it up, fucko!”
Okay. So maybe, by this point, you are wondering if we really do like you and want to have sex with you, since perhaps twice (or three or four) times last week you got the headache brush-off, the sleep fake-out and/or the bored pity fuck. Well, here is where we can give you some really valuable advice that will benefit both of us in our quest for more nookie.
Make us feel sexy.
It is a Woman’s Prerogative to Change Her Mind
I can’t guarantee that this will work 100% of the time, but I’d say at least a good 7 times out of 10: if you really turn on the charm (charm in this instance meaning FOREPLAY—and yes, FOREPLAY in this instance requires full caps-lock), we will get in the mood and end up blowing your mind (and possibly other organs)—even if we weren’t planning on it in the first place. ‘Cause, let’s face it—jamming your hands between our legs or boob-pawing us doesn’t quite get the juices flowing—especially if we’re already in “off” mode, or in the middle of something else.
Instead of pinching our nipples through a cotton sweatshirt (which hurts a LOT, by the way—cotton has a tendency to DRAG), consider planting a kiss on the neck. Tell us we are a sweet delicate flower. And get your hand out from between our buttocks while we are cooking dinner. Ryan Gosling, in The Notebook, (which you slept through at the local gogoplex), did not jab Rachel McAdams’ butt-crack when he was feeling amorous. Perhaps a little inspiration is all we will need to jump on the love train and be jumping your bones.
Or not. Sometimes we are past the point of no return and just can’t get our swerve on at that moment. Sometimes we’re just too exhausted, too stressed out or too bloated to even consider the physical exertion and mental concentration it takes for us to have sex. So instead of screaming “Don’t even think about coming near me with that thing!” we send you more subtle hints that now is not the time. But that does not mean that later won’t be. Or tomorrow after a hot shower and a glass of wine. But please be cognizant of the butt-crack rule.
(Also, most moms keep their DVD copy of The Notebook tucked away in our panty drawers, much like the way you think you hide your porn—consider watching it once.)
Maybe, just maybe—we need to make sex more of a priority and try to leave behind the stress of the day or ignore the nagging headache and need for sleep. But, on those days that we just can’t get over our unshowered, unshaved, stressed-out selves, don’t take it personally. That’s why evolution gave you a right hand (or left hand; whichever applies to you).
For The Love of Anal Sex
To sum it up, guys—please learn to take the hint, choose more opportune times to waggle your boners at us; and if you really, really want to get laid, make us feel like the sexiest woman on earth—even if we may be feeling like an asexual, dirty mess of a mommy. And if we just can’t bring ourselves to rock your world, we promise that next time, we’ll take care of you good. Maybe you’ll even get a blow job. Or some butt action.
But don't hold us to that last one.