Mummy Porn

For most married couples, being ‘creative in bed’ simply means taking up knitting whilst watching Lateline. There comes a time in every marriage when a slow drip sexual ennui sets in. It’s been so long since many married women had sex, they’d probably get motion sickness and would have to tell their husbands to pull the bed over to the curb.

So, what happened to those days where you took headboard divots out of walls, broke beds and ran up chiropractic bills? In the first few years of marriage, couples are at it like rabbits. So what’s with the marital myxomatosis?

Well, a woman’s sex life definitely deteriorates with the onset of motherhood. Despite the beanbags and the water births and the plinky, plonky harp music – giving birth still boils down to a doctor putting a knee on your chest, spreading your legs and diving in with a pair of barbecue tongs. While men want the tumbling in the hay to recommence six weeks after childbirth, mothers want to tie up the sheaves and put them in the barn.

There’s also no doubt that kids are a contraceptive. Every time you go to make love, the toddler toddles in or the teenager bursts through the door to borrow your best cashmere. (My top sex tip for parents – Vaseline… on the doorknobs. Sounds painful, but they can’t get in!)

But with erotic literature topping best seller lists , the pressure is on spouses to spice things up. Slipping between the covers of Mummy Porn is one thing. But trying to put that prose into practise is quite another…. My first discovery is that attempting new things sexually creates such terrible eye wrinkles caused by puckering up into a squint and shouting “You want me to do WHAT?” My second finding is that the only good thing about an orgy is that it does away with the anxiety about what to wear. (The very thought of group sex made me suffer from a performance anxiety I hadn’t felt since those hedonistic hours of enforced folk dancing in Primary school.)

I can also reveal that inflating plastic sexual pleasure enhancers causes the most awful migraines. And that fishnet friction can inflict a nasty wound on your groin area.  Not to forget the persistent pneumonia which comes from constantly slipping into something less comfortable. And, I’m sorry, but surely handcuffs are only acceptable if you’re an undercover cop. They look ridiculous dangling off the pyjama belt of your average hubby. Worst of all is the shaved pudenda. Sure, it may sound erotic, but when it’s growing back it looks like a shag pile that has been terrorized.

Mind you, my husband I did achieve some changes in the bedroom. We are now leaving the lights on… so we can read better… As for talking dirty? Well, we mothers talk dirty all the time, as we order our children to wash their hands before dinner and point out that their rooms are a pigsty. But you can forget  S&M. I feel sure I speak for all women when I say that we don’t like to be beaten – not even at Monopoly.

Sex therapists would no doubt diagnose an arousal disorder. What I diagnose is a demanding work schedule, two messy kids and an undomesticated husband. Boys, there are only a few basic ways to please a woman – stacking the dishwasher and not snoring. My biggest sex fantasy in the bedroom involves my husband picking his underpants up off the floor. In fact, if men did more housework, wives would have energy and enthusiasm for other things. Oh the orgasmic joy of being made love to by a man who has just hoovered your entire house!

Meanwhile, if your hubby suggests that you could initiate sex now and again and perhaps even swap positions occasionally, simply reply, “yes, let’s swap positions … You stand by the sink washing up and I’ll lie on the couch drinking wine and watching the telly.”