Struggling to feel sexy this Valentine’s Day? This long-married mum shares the six secrets that keeps her marriage hot… most of the time.
He pulled me into the closet and closed the door. I could hear kids calling. We ignored them.
He whispered, “I miss Hawaii. I miss you.”
We promised each other last summer, loving and living a carefree togetherness we hardly recognised, that we wouldn’t slip back into the hurried routine and forget each other. My husband won a free trip with his job and this break in paradise was one of the first times in our nearly 19-year-old marriage that we had taken a trip without our kids.
But it’s easy to make promises when this is your view:
And it’s easy to forget them when this is your view:
Promises are much harder to keep in the making-breakfast-doing-laundry-paying bills-and-work-filled days. I believe it’s called monotony. And it can kill your marriage.
Nearly two decades later, we are still each other’s favourite person. Most days. We miss one another when we’re apart and can’t get enough when we’re together. Usually. But we also let a messy house, a cold dinner, a parenting dispute, that unexpected bill — you know, life — come between us.
And our whispered white-sand promises are lost in the busy monotony of our lives.
Yet we still vie for a hot marriage. I actually think about it. I see him through the kitchen window mowing the lawn, shirt off, hot and sticky, flecks of mud and grass stuck to his chest. And I think “hmmm….” He walks in from a long day of work, tie loose at his throat, and sits with our little girl and reads with her. It’s just plain sexy.