We live in a culture that moves a mile a minute. While you may rely on schedules to get through your workday, stay on top of your social life, and not fall behind in your obligations, what about a sex schedule, too? If schedules make your day-to-day life easier, it should come as no surprise that schedules just might be the best way to stay connected in your relationships too.
A recent study found that, for some couples, scheduling a time to have sex is necessary. According to the study by Sleep Judge of 1000 people, 98% of sexually active adults say that they “at least rarely schedule sex,” but of those who do schedule it, 98.3% report being sexually satisfied. While scheduling sex might not seem very, well, sexy, sex is a major component to a healthy relationship and scheduling it, if you haven't had it lately, might be worth considering.
"[Couples who last] recognize that sex is something that may require scheduling and attention, but they make room for it," sex and relationship therapist, Cyndi Darnell tells Bustle. "They also talk about sex, what they like and want, and manage differences by listening and negotiating."
To quote Ferris Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." In other words, it might be time to stop and schedule sex so you don't miss out. Here, four women explain how it works for them.
1Jennifer, 39
“I don’t like to think of it as ‘scheduling’ as much as it’s ‘thinking ahead.’ If my husband is going to be out of town for work for more than a couple days, we’ll ‘think ahead’ to have sex before he leaves. Unless some drama or catastrophe comes up with the boys, we’ll make sure it happens. If we realize it’s been several days or even a couple weeks since we’ve had sex, we’ll ‘think ahead’ to a day in the near future that will work — even if that means going to a hotel for the night for fun and leaving the boys with their grandmother. I try to be mindful of the words I use and for me ‘scheduling’ feels a little constrictive, whereas ‘thinking ahead’ just means that: thinking ahead.”
2Alicia, 21
"My partner and I schedule sex all the time. In fact, we’re having sex tonight. We work a lot so sometimes we need to schedule it. It’s not a formal schedule but, for example, this morning I wanted to have sex, but he was tired and felt sick. So we were like, ‘OK, we’re having a lot of sex tonight because it’s been five days.’ Then we use it as foreplay. Since we know we’re having sex, we can say what we’ll do to each other tonight. It actually makes the leading up to the sex, as well as the sex exciting."
3Lyndsay, 41
"[Our sex schedule] isn’t like on the calendar or anything, but we definitely talk about it pretty pragmatically. Like, ‘maybe we can have sex tonight?’ as opposed to having the spontaneous sex we had in the beginning. We’re 10 years in and although we enjoy having sex with each other, there’s zero mystery left. The coy flirty aspect of sex is gone. But the upside is that we can just tell each other we want it later or tomorrow."
4Kay, 37
"I never thought I’d be one of those people who had to schedule sex, but here I am: a sex scheduler. Because both my partner and I work for ourselves and currently don’t have health insurance, we work more than we’d like to. Once you include the fact that we have a toddler, trying to find time or even the desire to have sex can be difficult, so we had to do something about it. We don’t have it on the calendar that every Friday we’ll have sex or something. But we do plan on a Monday or Tuesday what day we’ll have sex later in the week or over the weekend. We aim for twice a week, but nines times out of 10, it’s only once a week."
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Although scheduling sex may not be necessary for every couple, if you reach a point where you realize that both your lives have become too busy for it, scheduling sex is an option that you might want to put on the table. There's nothing wrong with, as Jennifer put it, 'thinking ahead'. And because sex is such an important part of a healthy relationship, it's worth the effort.
