real life

Not tonight, honey, I have a beer gut

Men rarely feel too fat to have sex. Men rarely feel too anything to have sex. A survey this week revealed one in four women won’t have sex if they feel bad about their body but only one in twenty men would turn down sex for the same reason.

“My wife is sexy and beautiful and a size 12,” one man said in the
survey. “But she’s constantly complaining that she feels too fat to
sleep with me and there’s nothing I can say to convince her otherwise.”

A woman in the same survey had the reverse problem: “My husband
weighs 168kg. The only sex position he can do is lying on his back.
I’ve tried to tell him that it’s hard on his health –not just our sex
life. He tells me he’s happy and if I’m not, I should find a new man.

Bad body confidence doesn’t usually impede the male sex drive, does it? Because as hard as I try, I can’t imagine a conversation like this:

Woman: (snaking her hand along Man’s hip as he reads a car magazine in bed): Babe?

Man: [edging ever so slightly towards the edge of the bed and sighing deeply] Oh, honey, not tonight…I’ve had so many client lunches this week and I’m just feeling really, you know, beer gutty. Can we just spoon?”

Yes OK, I know men wanting sex all the time is a generalisation. I’m sure there are many men who have headaches or back pain or just couldn’t be bothered.

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But for every guy who’d pass up a leg over in order to roll over and sleep, there are ten who’ll give it a shot. As one male friend puts it “Now that I’m 38 with two kids, saying no to sex would have to mean I was near death and suffering from a broken penis.”

But gentlemen, why wait for an invitation? Why not just initiate sex more often? Go on! You know your wives and girlfriends want it all the time! All the time! There’s no such thing as an inopportune moment to try and get jiggy with us! Hell no!

Like when we’re sick. Women love having sex when we’re sick! Flu, migraine, gastro, Ebola….any illness is a turn-on! My friend Angela’s boyfriend understands this. That’s why he initiated sex with her the first night she came back from hospital. She’d been admitted three days earlier with an agonising bladder infection, caused by – say it with me – having too much sex. So of course more sex was what she’d want when she got home. He was wise to guess that. Although he needn’t have waited so long. She would’ve been fully up for a quickie in the shared bathroom in her public hospital ward.

Angela’s boyfriend is not the only smart and sensitive man. Oh no. Thankfully, there are so very many more like him. Like John.
John is married to someone else I know and has cleverly unearthed a secret: women are simply gagging to have sex as soon as possible after giving birth. It doesn’t matter if the birth was by caesarean or vaginally. Stitches? Pah! It’s never too soon to revisit the very act that got you knocked up in the first place.

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“He actually wanted to have sex in hospital four days after the birth of our first child,” recalls his lucky wife fondly. “I was still hooked up to an intravenous drip! He did promise to be quick and quiet. And I don’t even think he was joking.”

It’s not just our own illnesses that turn us on. We’re also particularly amorous when our children are sick. There’s nothing like getting up to mop feverish brows and clean up vomit at 3am then stumbling back to bed for a fabulous quickie before the next round of “Mu-um, I think I’m gonna be sick again!” echoes down the hall.

Another terrific time for sex is when we’re asleep. It’s a rare and selfish woman who doesn’t enjoy being woken up for sex. That hand that creeps over to our side of the bed just as we’re falling off to sleep is always welcome.

Back to my male friend who claimed nothing short of a broken penis would prevent him from trying to put it to good use. I asked him if he ever tried to put a lid on it. “Sometimes if my wife is upset – PMT, bad day at work, fight with her mum – I’ll give her a cuddle to try and comfort her,” he says. “I really try to leave it there but being close to her and she’s all warm and maybe a bit vulnerable and well, you know, I’m not proud that I get turned on and try to have sex with her but I do.” Of course you do. Desperate Husbands unite.