Louisa Simmonds

Real men go commando!

So everyone knows that maintaining a level of intimacy in our relationships with teenagers around is even harder than when the kids were little.

For lots of reasons, but mainly because they go to bed later, become aggressively interrogatory when doors are locked. If there is the mere suggestion that we have had sex since they were conceived, they make us believe that we have mentally scarred them for life.

The other problem is that after those first few torrid years of lust, and early days of feeling hot and bothered at the mere touch of our partner, menopause dictates begins to dictate our moods and needs and there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to fit everything in, and still make it to bed with Pinterest by 9pm.

I’m not suggesting that this is a definitive end to intimacy in our relationships, but it’s a stage where it takes a measure of stoicism discipline to keep it going.

Having said that, the old man managed to surprise even me the other night. But before you rub your hands with glee at the prospect of some uncharacteristic midlife romance, or squirm uncomfortably in your chair, let me remind you that you should know the old man a bit better than that by now.

Getting the old man out of the house these days can be almost as difficult as prising the lid off a jar with wet hands, unless it’s marked in the calendar weeks beforehand. But somehow, I managed to persuade him to come out to the pub with me last Thursday night.

So we shared a couple of nasty wines and made our usual drunken promises of finding some ‘quality’ time over the following holiday week.

And as we left the pub, ‘connected’ again for a few precious minutes, having been little more than ships in the night for the past few months, he bent down in a rare moment of intimacy and whispered in my ear, ‘I’m not wearing any pants!’

‘What?’ I said.

‘I’m not wearing any pants!’ he repeated.

Well, I haven’t laughed as long or as raucously for a long time. In fact it reminded me that I really do need to focus on my pelvic floor exercises a bit more intently now

And when we got home, we poured ourselves another drink, still laughing, and promptly fell asleep on our respective sofas to ‘House of Cards.’

#middleage #Humor #teenagers #Marriage #Sex #Parenting