Thank god for weekends (it's the only time we get to have proper sex).

It’s Saturday morning. My two sons are eating cereal and watching morning cartoons. The dog has a bone and the mobile phones are somewhere in the kitchen, recharging or turned off. The door is locked and Mummy and Daddy are having their Saturday morning ‘sleep in’, which the kids know lasts approximately one episode of Almost Naked Animals and most of Penguins of Madagascar.

The same thing happens Sunday morning. My husband gets up early to make bacon sandwiches or pancakes for the kids and then retreats to the bedroom and locks the door. One episode of Dragon Riders of Berk and potentially Operation Ouch and we emerge again.

It's become our routine and it's the only way we can manage languid, uninterrupted sex. It happens twice a week (there might be a rushed encounter during the week, but there's no guarantee of that).

And that figure puts us ahead of most Australian couples. The last Australian Sexual Health Survey showed that, on average, people in regular relationships have sex about 1.4 times week. And on average, I reckon with most long-standing couples, Sunday is the 1, Tuesday the 0.4. 

Like any busy family with parents working, weekdays are a blur of activities, tasks, barely intersecting schedules and endless pleas for cooperation. My boys are 5 and 8 and still need to be coerced in and out of pjs and force fed dinner. Between washing up and clearing emails before bed there is just no time for foreplay from Monday to Thursday. It’s a 5 minute quickie in the shower or - if we are really keen - a 7 minute quickie before I (a morning person) drift off and he (a night-time person) heads off to finish that last minute report on the laptop.

I don’t subscribe to the ‘sex is a chore’ or ‘always say yes even if you aren’t in the mood’ theories about sex and long term relationships.

But there is no doubt that after the limerence phase (that hot-to-trot 24/7 period in an early love affair that can last anywhere from six months to 2 years) is over, you need to make time and space for sex to happen. It’s like anything that’s important to quality of life, but not essential to staying alive. 

And so my sex life follows a pretty predictable weekday / weekend pattern - like so much else I do.

Tuesday night is a quick pasta or stir fry and maybe even take away. Sunday is a roast and maybe even a cake or pudding. 

Wednesday I walk the dog around the block. Saturday I run him around the park.

Thursday is a 20 minute swim at the local pool. Sunday is a 1 hour yoga class.

Monday in the shower he is lucky to get an open-mouthed kiss. Sunday he can expect at least 3 minutes of oral sex.

Is sex really so different to anything else? I don't think so. All the activities that take a bit longer, a bit more effort and focus are reserved for the weekend. We snatch bits of news on the iPhone during the week. We leaf through the newspaper on the weekend, or read more than a few pages of our book.

I have friends who complain that weekends are as busy as weekdays, filled with chores they were too busy to do during the week, social activities, kids’ parties and sport, shopping and catching up on work. Maybe this can account for the Australian Sexual Health Survey finding that we are having slightly less sex than previously (1.8 times a week in 2003 compared to the most recent finding of 1.4 times a week).

Maybe it's the intrusion of devices into the bedroom - tablets and smartphones are regular bedside companions these days.

I have a few friends who find it hard to have sex if their kids are awake somewhere in the house. Others who believe desire shouldn’t be timetabled.

But this works for us. We are both more relaxed, less time pressured on the weekend.

I don’t think I’ve had a decent orgasm on a weekday since we were first married.

And that’s ok because Saturday I get at least 30 minutes of Almost Naked Animal sex.

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