We Forgot How to Have Vanilla Sex...

Something happened in my house on Sunday night. We had terrible sex. It could have been the culmination of a lot of things and I guess when you are in a relationship for a while every single time you have sex won't be a knock out of the park home run. But, it was particularly bad.

The last few times we decided we were going to fool around, something seemed to happen. I had a migraine, my husband tweaked his back, we both ate too much at a barbecue-- you know, just unsexy everyday life things that can put a damper on the sex life.

I am always horny and ready to go (I think it's an occupational hazard with what I write), so I usually initiate. It is a rare occasion that I am not in the mood and my husband is. Sunday was one of those days.

He had just gotten into bed and I had only been laying there for about ten minutes before him, but I was already well on my way to sleeping. He reaches under the sheet and strokes my thigh-

"You have pants on?" (A rare summertime occurrence, as I get hot and sleep in my underwear most nights)

"Mmrph," is my response.

"Are you asleep?"

"No." (Lies all lies.)

"Can I take your pants off?"

Now I'm awake! My eyes pop open at that and my husband proceeds to go down on me and give me an earth shattering orgasm. The poor guy had to work for it too, because like I said, it was that rare occasion I wasn't already in the right mindset.

I proceed to collapse back onto the bed like a pile of goo and my eyes start falling shut.

"You going back to sleep?" he asks me, sounding mildly amused.

And here is the thing about my husband, and maybe perhaps why I love him so much-- if I had said, Yes, I am going to sleep now, because you woke me up and started this and I am tired. Goodnight. That would have been the end of it. He would have kissed me and told me he loved me and let me go to sleep.

The tiny, selfish part of me wanted to take my orgasm and go directly into a restful slumber. But the rest of me rallied to wake back up and see this thing through.

I raise up on my knees, ready to return the oral favor, but my husband takes a left turn and pulls me on top of him.

Oh? Actual sex? Like vaginal intercourse? For some reason this has fallen out of our sexual routine. We're usually trading oral pleasures, or we go at it doggy style- bent over the arm chair in the living room, or bent over the bed for some anal action. But just straight up intercourse? A rarity as of late.

Now I am on top, looking down at my husband and I'm trying to remember how to do this. Is this all I do? I know- this sounds kind of ridiculous, but I couldn't even enjoy myself because I kept thinking I was doing it wrong. And he clearly was not finding it too awesome because he was making no sound. Nothing. Our bedroom was filled with the sounds of the bed squeaking and occasionally smacking into the wall-- but no one making yummy, dirty sex noises.

I am transported back to when I was a shy and inexperienced virgin making love to my husband (my then boyfriend) for the first few times. I was self conscious, I was over thinking, I was obsessing so much about what was going on that I was not in the moment. And I was so insanely worried that I was doing it all wrong I was getting upset.

Hours later (okay, probably minutes, but it felt like forever) we are both covered in a sheen of sweat, my hips are aching, and I am not sure how much longer I can keep this up-- my husband taps the side of my thigh and goes "Oookaay."

Just like that. Like, this is not our night, we're good. I am done with this.

I climb off and lay beside him, looking into his eyes, "Was I doing something wrong?"

"No, no," he rushes to assure me, "It was me. I'm a little off."

We talk for a minute about what could have been throwing off our game. He admits he was thinking we were going to fall off the bed as we were very close to the edge. I kept thinking I was going to hurt his back as I was sitting on top of him. So neither of us were focused on the task at hand.

I also brought up the fact that there had been no foreplay. No spanking, no toys, virtually no lead up. We never let ourselves get hot and bothered, reaching a point of combustion. Maybe this is why married people sex is such a joke-- do people live their lives like this?

I'm not saying we need to break out nipple clamps and butt plugs every time we fool around. But apparently I need some sort of sexy lead up. Even if he's teasing me while we stand on line at the grocery store check out. Something to ignite the fire before we get down to it.

Here we were thinking we have awesome sex all the time, we can just skip the preamble and bang. Well, nope, that was a terrible idea.

There is a good ending to the story. I gave him a blow job and he achieved his screaming completion. We cuddled up and slept like logs and continued our conversation the next day about how maybe we just forgot how to have vanilla sex.

Maybe it wasn't the vanilla sex at all that was the problem. I mean I'm sure it hits the spot with millions and billions of people. But for now I will just say-- sorry Vanilla Sex, it's not you, it's us.