LRLRL
January 13, 2026, 9:43pm
33
A reply comment I posted on my annual sexy year in review got me curious if there was an existing thread on this larger topic already. Here’s my full comment from that post:
It does make me wish I had more information for the whole duration of our relationship - either continuous or intermittent - to confirm the sense I have that our sex life is better now, not only qualitatively but also quantitatively:
To start with, we did wait until we got married for intercourse, but we did engage in all manner of oral and outercourse (but no oral or anal penetration). We did get married just a few weeks after graduating college, so our whole dating relationship we had roommates or were home with family for breaks. We couldn’t have been orgasming together more than a couple times a week. Though when we did have a weekend with a roommate away or visiting each other at home it regularly looked like morning, noon, or night O-fests together, such as they were. I wish I had that 20 year old stamina, but man we’re better now.
Wife went on hormonal birth control before the wedding and though we didn’t really identify it until later it did really curb her libido. We still had plenty of fun, lots of playtime discovering the new range of our experience, but definitely a lot more nights going to bed without sex, definitely not an assumption, I wasn’t allowed to initiate on her period, etc. But still plenty of fun buying our first sex toys and bondage implements and fun weekends away.
She was only on the pill for three years and when she came off it was a like a switch had flipped. Definitely more attuned to her cycle and when ovulating we could set aside a Saturday for repeat performances or hours of teasing and multiple O’s frequently for her. It was also a really stressful period of our life with some work and personal circumstances, adding professional travel and time away, and just some life growth through our twenties so not perfectly rosy. It was the season we really started having loads of fun with role and kink play as young homeowners without kids. This season lasted about 4-4.5 years before moving into pregnancy and parenthood.
Biggest change, initially, with the parenting years was the exhaustion and most things just felt like maintenance. We did have a miscarriage before our first was born, so the second pregnancy was a lot more anxiety on the front end but once made it to 12 weeks started to relax and find more joy and fun in not having to cover up or pull out! I found wife incredibly sexy pregnant, and as a mom. Babymoon included loads of great sex. Once baby arrived, less time for dedicated playtime just the two of us and mostly “maintenance” sex. He was a bad sleeper, too. However by the time we got pregnant with #2 he was old enough to nap for a few hours every afternoon and during that pregnancy weekend naptime really exploded our sex life. Second trimester wifey was super horny all the time and anal+DP became a regular thing. The last few weeks before birth she was waking me up every night - sometimes twice - for another round to try and fall back asleep after anxiety would wake her up. Once #2 was born it was back to largely maintenance style sex largely for a couple years.
The last five years things have continued to stabilize and our creativity improve. Kiddos got old enough that we regularly would have a good chunk of a weekend afternoon while #2 napped and #1 had some quiet play time or screentime to dive into our play. I’ve been clean from porn after everything got unhealthy at peak COVID - it improved some performance stuff and also really blew the door open on all the aspects of intimacy in our relationship. Kids finally started sleeping through the night consistently, so we more consistently get to sleep through the night. That’s about the time I started tracking our sex life in detail!
When I think about the totality of our relationship I’m very grateful for where we are. I know our bodies don’t do the same things they could when we were 19 or 20 (or newlyweds at 22, 23) but we weren’t having the kind of sex then that we are now. There’s a depth and breadth of our practice now that would have been almost unfathomable to us kids starting off together. Qualitatively I know
We’re now 40ish, have been together our whole adult lives (met at 18, married at 22) and the sex (as well as our whole relationship) does just keep getting better. Like I mentioned in the final bullet point, stuff in 2020 kinda blew up and I knew I needed to quit using porn and started therapy to address all kinds of anger and depression and stuff that was messed up in our marriage and my parenting and my parents. The last almost 6 years has had a lot of breaking down walls and habits and just really reinforcing the depth of honesty and intimacy in our marriage that makes every bit of it that much richer.