The lovin' couple

Take a look at this couple. Don’t they look as if they are puppy-love happy? Doesn’t it seem that Michael is undressing Ayelet with his eyes and that Ayelet is about to return the favor?

Well, thanks to Ayelet, we now know they are indeed probably thinking about, well, boinking. They think about it a lot. They do it a lot. They do it with passion and inventiveness. They may even do it with sex toys, using the tips and tricks on vorgasms. Yipeee!

Why do I know this? Because I read the New York Times, and Ayelet decided to write a fun article for the venerable paper about a serious topic: the place of spouses and their love, especially physical love, after children are born.

But the real reason for this lack of sex, or at least the most profound, is that the wife’s passion has been refocused. Instead of concentrating her ardor on her husband, she concentrates it on her babies. Where once her husband was the center of her passionate universe, there is now a new sun in whose orbit she revolves. Libido, as she once knew it, is gone, and in its place is all-consuming maternal desire. There is absolute unanimity on this topic, and instant reassurance.

Except, that is, from me.

I am the only woman in Mommy and Me who seems to be, well, getting any. This could fill me with smug well-being. I could sit in the room and gloat over my wonderful marriage. I could think about how our sex life – always vital, even torrid – is more exciting and imaginative now than it was when we first met. I could check my watch to see if I have time to stop at Good Vibrations to see if they have any exciting new toys. I could even gaze pityingly at the other mothers in the group, wishing that they too could experience a love as deep as my own.

But I don’t. I am far too busy worrying about what’s wrong with me. Why, of all the women in the room, am I the only one who has not made the erotic transition a good mother is supposed to make? Why am I the only one incapable of placing her children at the center of her passionate universe?

Ayelet wants the world to know that it’s okay, and perhaps even better, when the couple loves each other more than they love their kids. That the couple and their love are the sun, and the children are the planets orbiting it.

It’s not a bad topic to discuss, and Ayelet should be congratulated for being crazy enough to go into this great detail about their personal life in a very public forum forthright and honest about her feelings, experience and passion for her husband. I don’t know whether she asked his permission before outing that he feels as she does, that the children are the moon orbiting him as Earth, but if she didn’t, I’m positive their strong love will overcome the hiccup.

In any case, the point is that author Ayelet Waldman (read an incredible blog entry of hers here) and author Michael Chabon are Jewlicious (she’s Israeli born, New Jersey raised, Harvard law school trained, author and mother; he’s suburban Maryland raised, pulitzer winning author, who belongs to a “Jewish Renewal” congregation), have sex a lot, and love each other in a way they do not love their children.

It takes some courage to make a public declaration that one loves a spouse more than one’s children, and it is an interesting topic. I’d like to relate it to my own experience but I have to do some deep thinking about it first.

Privately, if you don’t mind.

About the author

themiddle

20 Comments

  • I have three children and none of this seems so remarkable. Our family unit is a team and it’s in the best interests of the team to maintain a certain cohesiveness. If anything, with the birth of each new child, I made it a point to pay more attention to my husband. I am not just a baby machine after all. That tahart mishpachah thing helps too. We have great sex and I still love my kids. This is not such a great dilema.

  • I think Ayelet is pointing out that your circumstances would seem unusual at Mommy and Me meetings.

  • When a man has more hair on his head than his wife, do you think that means anything?

    Another question:
    Is it just me, or do they look like one half of any glam 80’s metal band?

  • Muffti think sthe guy kinda looks like Richard Marx, but it’s hard to tell from this angle.

  • Just had a conversation with a mother who suggested that Ayelet must have a nanny or regular caretaker of the children who might be freeing her up, or at least allowing her to go through the day unexhausted.

  • Janice, I assure you that once I begin having married sex, I sincerely hope to start posting positive things about it.

    And I actually submitted a comment that was lost earlier today, so I’ll try to recap: I do love Ayelet’s honesty, and I miss Bad Mother (the blog she started at the urging of Allison Kaplan Sommer). And I do hope to someday discover that although my children will be at my being’s center, that I’ll be sharing both heart and soul with my husband. That is, when he finally shows up. [Esther glances at watch. Shakes head. Glances at watch again.] That guy is always late to everything.

  • T_M, I’ve been on JDate for at least six years. I’ve pretty much ONLY heard of guys called Dave.

  • haha! All this JDate talk made me reactivate my account. Esther, if you’ve been doing this for six years, your strength amazes me! Kudos to you!

  • Kudos? More like chaos. Or Vicodin, if you’ve got it.

    If you love JDate, you’ll love today’s post at JDatersAnonymous. Someone wrote in with the transcript of an IM conversation with a boy who was, in a word, repulsive. And it’s conversations like those that make me reluctant to reup my membership…

  • When I first read this post before the weekend, I thought it was funny. Now I’m just pissed off. Why can Ayelet muse over whether she’s a bad mommy because she’s rather be doing her husband than doing dishes? As TM point out, Ayelet most likely has childcare, domestic help and enough disposable income to support a fancy vibrator habit. Michael and Ayelet can afford a babysitter any night of the week to have sex in wildly exotic locales, while the those of us less financially-blessed dream of one single uninterrupted erotic Sunday morning in our own bed. I’d love to screw my husband several times a day (he’s one hot Jew) but, like, we have to work. My point is that anyone’s libido could remain free after motherhood if it isn’t castigated by the endless run of exhausting chores that accompany it.
    So, that said, this mama of two would probably be in a better mood if I was gettin’ any.

  • LOL, TM. I guess I should be shopping online while I’m waiting for our server to get back up 😉

  • I can’t wait until Jewlicious is the #1 search result for “Jewish vibrators.” That will be a day of rejoicing and gladness and mirth. Especially mirth.

  • Esther, I suggest you google “Jewish vibrators.” 😀

    This is a day for rejoicing and gladness and mirth. And it has taken less than a week to achieve. Jewlicious indeed.

    By the way, we’re on the second Google page of “Michael Chabon sex” and top page of “Ayelet Waldman sex.” I can’t imagine why. 😆

  • Hmmm, “Jewish vibrators” still brings us up at #1 but we’re nowhere to be found in either Waldman or Chabon listings. The Internet is a cold and brutal place.