Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place. – Billy Crystal
My wife bought one of those inflatable fitness balls recently and last night asked me to pump more air into it, as it was pretty soft. I pumped it up after dinner and then started leafing through the March issue of Men’s Health magazine which had just arrived in the mail. The article titled “The Best Places to Have Sex” caught my eye and as I flipped through the article, I noticed that the third item on the list (after Hammock and Airplane) was Fitness Equipment, featuring the fitness ball.
She was on the computer at the time, working on the bills, so I nonchalantly placed the magazine in front of her and said, “Now I know why you wanted me to pump up the fitness ball” and I walked away to do the dishes. A couple minutes later, I peeked in the office and she was still reading. “Whadya think?” I said, flatly. She peered out from behind her reading glasses and with a sly gleam in her eye, said, “Pretty interesting” followed by a “Don’t leave this magazine laying around the house, ok?”
I chuckled and went back to the dishes. A few years ago I would have been euphoric about this. A few years before that, we would’ve gotten into an argument about it. These days, I’m just really pleased. Happy. Tickled. Grateful. We’re in a kind of comfort zone that’s reliable and still exciting. Our love life has been good-and-getting-better for so long now that I no longer obsess about sex. The feelings of compulsion and anxiety are mostly gone.
This didn’t just happen. It took a LOT of work. But we’re now reaping what we sowed, it’s great to be in love, and yeah, I now need more than a place to have sex, which is a fine problem to have.