Too tired for sex?
Read about the author Samantha Evans
A National Sleep Foundation survey (2010) found that nearly 25 percent of respondents who live with a partner report often being too tired to have sex with that person. Once you have fallen into a rut of having no sex, it can be hard to get back into the routine of having regular sex. Tiredness, rather than a lack of attraction is a legitimate excuse for sex avoidance.
Here are a few ideas to help you to break the cycle of tiredness and start enjoying having sex more frequently. Sex offers so many health giving benefits, such as improving your mood, helping you to have a deeper sleep, lower your blood pressure, and reduce stress.
Stop burning the candle at both ends
Many people lead busy lives that sometimes feel overwhelming. We need more than 24 hours in a day to fit in all we have to do or think we have to do.This constant pressure to get stuff done can take its toll on our health and mental wellbeing.
Instead of continuing in this manic way, stop to recharge your batteries as we all go flat time to time.
“ME” time
Take time to meet with friends over a leisurely coffee rather than snatching 5 minutes, be selfish and lock yourself in the bathroom for a long soak in the bath while your partner does the bedtime routine for your children or cooks the evening meal. Take a walk in the day to invigorate yourself and allow time to process thoughts in your head.Enjoy an all over body massage.
When you have free time in the day, don’t fill it with more stuff, take time for yourself.
Stop saying YES
I don’t mean to sex, but to all the things you agree to do from work commitments to the requests from school, your children’s’ hectic social lives filled with hobbies and play dates and family demands.
Go to bed at a decent hour
Having spent your childhood resisting going to bed, as an adult we often delay our bedtime to get everything done or spend our evenings slumped in front of the TV or computer rather than getting comfy in bed. If you need to get up at 6am, then you need to go to bed by 10pm to ensure that you get to sleep.
A good night’s sleep, more so than exercise and a healthy diet, keeps our sexual engines humming, says Washington, D.C. sex therapist Barry McCarthy, PhD. “Healthy people who have good sleep patterns are going to be more open to being sexual” .
If you want any chance of having sex, you need to go to bed earlier to avoid feeling under pressure to have sex when all you want to do is sleep.
Having sex before bedtime can help you sleep better too.
Children need to sleep in their own beds
As a parent of three children, thankfully all in their teens, I know how annoying it can be to have a child in bed with you. As a new mum, I developed a 6th sense when they were younger when they made a noise or needed my attention at night and would jump out of bed at the slightest noise, disturbing my partner in the process.
We’ve all heard the stories and witnessed the parents who don’t set bedtime routines, whose children slept with them or Dad being pushed out to sleep in the child’s bed, but children need to get themselves to sleep. I’ve lost track of how many hours we spent doing controlled crying and putting a child back into their own bed, but it worked because our children never shared our bed unless they were ill.
Some parents, especially mothers, use the child as an excuse for not sharing their bed with their partner to avoid sex which is sad but there may be underlying reasons as to why they are doing this, such as low libido due to hormonal imbalance, bodily changes which make sex feel uncomfortable such as vaginal dryness, tightness or scarring after childbirth or even body image issues.
Share the chores
Often people use the excuse of having too much to do for feeling too tired for sex. If you feel like you are the only one doing anything around the house, enlist the help of your partner or children to share the workload. Get children to unload the dishwasher or do the washing up. Teenagers can be taught how to iron and put their clothes away, so stop running around after them. Get your family to tidy up after themselves or just gather their stuff up and put it in their room.
Sharing the work will make you feel less resentful and tired at the end of the day and more willing to go to bed and enjoy sex rather than collapse in a heap under the duvet.
You can have sex any time of day or night
Night time may simply not be the right time for sex for some people.
Often, when we fall into bed after a tiring day, sex is the last thing on your mind so try changing your routine to accommodate meaningful sex and sleep. Some side effects of medication taken before bedtime can make you feel sleepy too.
If you are an early riser, take advantage of this and have early morning sex a way great to starting your day or set the alarm for 20 minutes earlier, just before your children wake up.
Take advantage of children being at school, at parties or doing their hobbies and nip into bed then. Even if you don’t have sex, you can still enjoy cuddling, kissing and enjoying foreplay.
Whatever you do, don’t use feeling tired as an excuse. Often we feel exhausted as a result of the chatter coursing through our minds telling us what we need to do so stop the chatter, switch off that part of your brain telling you to do more and concentrate on slowing down.
Sex should be fun and pleasurable so even if you just implement one of the ideas above into your daily routine, you will hopefully be enjoying sex more often and once back in the swing, you probably won’t want to stop!!!