As a final note... I should have done a better job expressing that I wanted advice precisely because I don't want to act like a selfish, entitled husband in my desperation for relief to my medical condition. Obviously expecting my poor wife to have PIV every night for my insomnia isn't a reasonable solution. Your answer however, is.

WOES

After the jump: a straight married man takes the long view on his (currently) sexless marriage....

I've been appreciating the recent conversation about parents and sex—in your column, on your blog, and stretching back to your conversation with Esther Perel regarding the challenges of attraction in monogamous relationships. I just wanted to share my own thoughts regarding the primacy of sex in a long-term relationship that includes kids.

My wife and I just celebrated our twentieth anniversary. We have a fourteen year-old. We haven't really had any kind of sexy times for (probably?) four years. It's been a long time, let's say that. I'm not writing because this is a PROBLEM THAT MUST BE DEALT WITH. Instead, I'd like to explain how we, mostly deliberately, arrived at this place. First, it doesn't mean the desire is gone—quite the contrary—but we aren't leading the kind of life right now that lends itself to stress-free, unoccupied spaces of time. My wife travels for work, and is sometimes gone for two weeks in a month. My own job involves very little travel but can have weird hours, sudden deadlines, and other issues that could leave me up late. Intimacy, for the two of us at least, has always been a combination of being able to connect in a number of non-sexual ways before getting into fun naked stuff. Sure, we could eschew the talk and the cuddles and just get to the play, but frankly? That's not really as fun.

Second, I'd like to think that we do a decent job of dividing labor around child-rearing, household management, and other issues. It's not just that couples might be falling into traditional (read: sexist) roles at home; even divided "evenly," household roles are really hard. When you add a kid or kids to a household, you suddenly have a ton to do, all the time. And, if I may proselytize for a moment: it's not just through the toddler years that you are hyper-engaged. Kids are a decades-long commitment. Our daughter at 14 is self-assured, capable, independent, and not remotely done needing her parents. This is hard work.

Finally, from our perspective, our kid is cooler than sex. Vacation time is zero-sum, and at the moment we'd rather take a family cruise than arrange a quiet weekend for just the two of us. We'd rather spend all spring break crashing through D.C.'s many museums and governmental cool shit than taking a private vacation while the kiddo goes to her grandparents. Evening time is zero-sum, and we'd rather attend our daughter's play, or have a family meal, or read together, or catch up on DWTS. One-on-one time with our daughter is zero-sum (especially for my wife on heavy travel months), and so I don't begrudge the nail appointments or the shopping trips or other girl time, just as my wife doesn't begrudge the daughter-dad outings to Timbers or Thorns games, the movies, etc. Maybe that's weird? I dunno. I don't feel as though it's odd to want to hang out with your kid, but when you make that choice, there are trade-offs. And specifically with regard to travel, the kid's in the same hotel room on a roll-away. Neither hanky nor panky is on offer in that situation.

Let's be clear like Obama: we'd like to have more sex than no sex. I think things are looking up in that regard: our daughter is starting to see a lot more school trips, trips with her cohorts in extracurricular stuff, solo visits to family, and so on. We are going to be able to carve out spaces that we didn't have before. But for now, we have four years left before our daughter heads out into the world, and we are by-god going to maximize that. It's not perfect. We have big stressors that affect communication, positive feelings about intimacy, and so on. But we're working on it. And, most importantly, I'd like to stand for the proposition that a big long drought doesn't mean your marriage is fucked. On the other hand, if your only (or primary) marriage goal is "sex three times a week," then your marriage might be fucked in the long run. In the immortal words of Chance the Rapper, "we in a marathon we can build a marriage on."

Jugging All Balls, Balancing Every Requirement

There's a lot I could say here—most of which I've said before—but I'm going to let JABBER have the last word.