As we grow older, have kids, careers, responsibilities, and a million things to do everyday, it is bound to happen that you put your sex life in the back burner. If you are lucky enough, either you or your partner will remind you that you are still a sexual being even though you feel like a hibernating bear not wanting to get up and do the deed.
After all, getting all ready for sex is easier said than done. You have more pounds, wrinkles, and even stretch marks than you did in your 20’s and were carefree. Couples today complain that getting a little TLC from your husband or wife, err, lover needs to be pencilled in at the bottom of the list of the other things to do.
One woman, was determined to have sex everyday, 365 days no matter what.
Brittany Gibbons is a blogger and author of the memoir Fat Girl Walking.
She has been happily married with Andy raising three children together.
But she’s not your typical blogger.
While many women love to share their perfectly made Martha Stewart like crafts, their MasterChef style dinners, Gibbons is painfully honest about what life is like raising a family.
“I started blogging when I was a stay-at-home mom with really young kids. It was honest and crude, sometimes messy,” she told People.
“Everyone was being inundated with pretty things online, talking about how wonderful motherhood is, how great it is to be married and how fun fashion was,” she revealed. “None of this was true for me at the time.”
She admits growing up she struggled with her weight, following her into adulthood.
Her insecurities, inevitably made their way into the bedroom.
“I am horrible at intimacy. I come from a family of non-huggers and I sometimes hate my body, so yeah, recipe for Temple Grandin hug machine,” Gibbons explains.
“My husband is gorgeous and very, very sexy, but the issues we were having in the sack were all me. I could not shut my insecurity off, and sex quickly became a really anxiety-inducing experience that went one of two ways,” she says.
She came up with every possible excuse not to do the deed with her husband.
Everything from menstrual cramps, deadlines, and a kid having a nightmare.
“Yeah, I used a 4-year-old as the most adorable cock-block ever. You can’t be in sex mode after reading three Fancy Nancy books, you just can’t,” she admits.
Her self-doubt was creating a wedge between her and Andy. She pleaded with him to understand that it was her own body issues that caused the problem whereas he could not understand why she didn’t believe his praises.
Gibbons came to the conclusion she had to make changes in the bedroom.
“So after a lot of crying and shrimp curry, I came up with the plan to have sex every day for a year, barring any medical problems or logistical issues, and he seemed to be pretty okay with it,” she writes. “I wish it could say it was a profound decision, but the truth is, I was getting worried he was losing interest because I acted uninterested out of insecurity, and he was getting nervous about me saying things like, how awesome do separate bedrooms sound!?”
It wasn’t so much about getting sexually satisfied for her as much as it was accepting herself.
“A year of sex became less about getting my sex on, and more about getting my brain to stop being an a**hole when I took all my clothes off,” she explains.
Initially, sex felt like a chore rather than something fun to do with her lover/husband.
She also shared her sex journey with a couple of friends. They all said they could never have daily sex for a whole year.
Gibbons said that it wasn’t enough for her husband to compliment her, she had to like herself first and foremost.
To get there she had to invest in new pretty underwear. “Some were plain and some were lacy, and when I wore them they looked so pretty across my hips,” she recalls. “I’d even find myself walking from my closet to the bathroom wearing them, a stark contract to the primal run I did covered in a towel with my spanx shoved into a ball of clothes in my hands when I thought Andy wasn’t paying attention.”
That got the whole ball rolling for her.
“I went back to buy more underwear, and even some cute lingerie that I tried on in the store and sent photos of to Andy at work,” she says. “Needless to say, he was excited, but it was more than that. The effort I put into wearing the cute panties, even if they were under a pair of jeans or sweat shorts, made me feel insanely gorgeous, and my brain needed that.”
She is not judging or suggesting women stop wearing comfortable clothes.
“Seriously, I am not some bitch here telling you to wear heels to the grocery store or pants to school pick up when you aren’t even getting out of the car and it’s a total waste of clean pants,” Gibbons says.
She just realized all she owned were uncomfortable Spanx shapewear and cheap underwear.
Gibbons had a revelation; “No wonder I didn’t feel sexy, I had the undergarments of an incontinent nursing home patient.”
As the daily sex sessions happened, their intimacy grew.
“We were more romantic with each other, touching arms as we passed, kissing longer before work and not just the cold familiar peck. Our relationship was stronger and better when our intimacy was flourishing,” Gibbons noticed.
She also became less self aware and conscious of her body.
“Three months in, I found myself enjoying sex again, making a playlist of songs that turned me on and was no longer hyper-aware of the sounds my curvy body was making,” she writes. “Like the way my thighs clapped together or my tummy smacked his.”
By month six, she was truly enjoying the constant lovemaking and what it did for her self-worth.
“Six months in, I took off the cami I’d hidden my body inside of, not caring that my boobs plopped off into my armpits,” she admits. “For the first time, I was more concerned with every part of sex that felt good than finding a flattering angle to hide my stomach or back fat. My body was being enjoyed by the both of us, equally.”
Within the year, she came to love her body enough to stop hiding it.
“A year in, I stopped wearing clothes entirely. At least, I assume that is what my kids would say. I stopped that primal run from the shower, and now lazily walked to the closet naked,” Gibbons says. “I made school lunches in my underwear, and didn’t reflexively pull away when Andy came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. My relationship with my husband, and my body, had changed in amazing ways.”
It’s been three and a half years since Gibbons wrote about her sex-filled year.
“Now, three years later, we’re still having sex every single night,” she teased last summer. “Oh my God, I’m joking.”
“I totally don’t have sex with my husband every day, not anymore. Not because we’re sick of each other — although I’ll admit, my pelvis and thighs welcomed the rest,” she admits.
“— but because we’re humans, not robots. However, the effects and lessons from the experience are still apparent in our marriage even now,” she explains.
The writer says fitting sex in every single day is difficult and that is totally normal.
The stresses of work, life, and kids are bound to get in the way.
“Sex is what reminds us that we’re intimate partners and not just roommates in charge of keeping kids alive,” Gibbons points out.
The couple has also successfully figured out the amount of sex they need to feel connected, satisfied, and happy.
That doesn’t mean feeling connected equals sex every single time either.
“I no longer freak out if two weeks pass and we forget to have sex, because we work to connect in other ways. Intimacy doesn’t always mean penetration,” Gibbons reveals. “Sometimes it’s making out on the couch like teenagers, sometimes it’s Andy triple checking the DVR to make sure all my fall TV shows are set to record. We all get to decide what turns us on. The point is, the effort to show love to each other is there.”
Gibbons makes no mistake thinking she has a perfect marriage where nothing can go wrong because of the sex they are having.
“Having regular sex with my husband isn’t making my marriage divorce-proof or immune to infidelity or angst, but it is helping me feel confident enough in my skin to survive it if it does happen,” she explains.
“I used to joke that I never wanted to have to be in a position to date again, because my body wasn’t ‘showroom ready.’ While I naturally hope to stay married to Andy until the end of time, and should I die first, haunt him, I don’t have that fear anymore, because my definition of desirable has changed,” she admits.
“It was never about anyone wanting me, it was about me wanting myself. And it only took an entire year of getting laid to figure that out,” Gibbons concludes.
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