Sleep is the new sex

“I’ve been sleeping around.

I’m married, with three young children, so it’s not easy to find the time, but when you make it a priority and you’re prepared to compromise, it’s amazing the opportunities that present themselves.

I’ve slept with a variety of people. I’m really pretty easy, although I do prefer to have a degree of intimacy with the other person. Most recently I’ve slept with my best friend, my aunt, my mother, and all of my children. Obviously, I sleep with my husband, too, but he tends to keep me awake with things like conversation and sex, so it’s not quite as satisfying.

I’m great in bed. Phenomenal. I can be asleep within a minute of my head touching the pillow. But I’m great in all sorts of places. On the couch. At my desk. In the car. On the floor. I don’t even have to be horizontal. I’m really very flexible.

I read once that sleep is the new sex, and I couldn’t agree more. It’s tragic, but it’s true. For me and for many other parents sleep has become our delicious, guilty pleasure. We crave it, often from the moment we get up in the morning.

We plan for it. We look forward to it. We hide evidence of it. We feel resentful when we are deprived of it (by work, crying children, or partners wanting to have sex). We steal naps whenever we can, when we should – or at least could – be doing other, more productive things.

Sex isn’t the same when you’re married with children, because it ceases to be a guilty pleasure. It can still be pleasurable (when the children are out, the washing is done and you’ve had enough sleep) but the only guilt associated with married sex comes from how little of it you’re actually having.

As for married sleep, well, have you had any Afternoon Delight recently? When you close your eyes – for a minute – and you wake disoriented an hour later with the phone ringing, the washing in the machine and the bills not paid, and your husband asks why you sound funny.

And have you noticed how sleep is taking over from sex in conversation. My girlfriends and I talk with relish about sleep, in particular, its length (“10 hours – the longest I’ve had”), its quality (“No good. Just up and down, up and down, all night”) and the gratification it affords (“After two hours in bed I felt like a new woman”). It’s sad, I know.

Sleep isn’t just the new sex – it’s also the new food. (Food isn’t the new sex because half the time we mothers are too tired to eat.) You know what it’s like when you’re on a diet and you’re craving chocolate but you think that’s just too indulgent, so you settle for a piece of carob instead? And then, of course, the carob is unsatisfying, so you end up eating a block of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk too?

That’s what sleep has become for people like me. We feel too guilty to actually hop into bed in the middle of the day, so we lie on the couch, fall into a deep slumber, wake after 10 minutes with a neck spasm, and stumble through a delicious fog into bed, where we spend the next hour and a half. Then we awaken, feeling spiritually and emotionally recharged, not only by the sleep, but also by its illicit, secret thrill.

As with any other indulgence, however, sleep can get in the way of relationships. I frequently go to my mother’s place for some mother-daughter bonding and instead we both fall asleep on the couch. I’ve been away for a weekend with my girlfriends, where we’ve spent half the time napping.

I’ve even neglected my children; on more than one occasion I have got down on the floor to play with my daughter, stretched out for a moment, and woken 20 minutes later with an anguished “Mama, geddup” in my ear and a tiny finger prodding my eye.

But I’m not ready to give it up. As tragic as it is, sleep is the one guilty pleasure still available to me. Sleep is blissful, refreshing, portable, inexpensive, non-political and non-fattening. Besides, I can stop whenever I want to.

I just need to stay on my feet.”

You can read Kerri’s blog here or follow her on Twitter here.

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