In the Passion Pit
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West Magazine
Published February 9, 2013

Power is still the best aphrodisiac. That’s why I get all atingle at the sight of my husband brandishing an electric drill or a whipper snipper. The mere suggestion that he has forsaken the cricket, the newspaper and his children to do a job that lessens my domestic load is guaranteed to earn him an afternoon delight. And I don’t mean a visit from my mother.

Sometimes I fantasise about my bloke leaning over the kitchen sink. I like to imagine him up to his elbows in suds teaching that saucepan with the scrambled eggs burnt into it a lesson in brute force.

I can also get steamed up watching him iron a shirt. He likes to do his ironing after a shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. I’m always captivated by the way he moves from cuff to collar instead of the other way around, though really I’m just excited that it’s not me taking the creases out. Just once, I wish the towel would drop to the floor. Instead, his belly works against gravity to keep it firmly in place. (Ironing has always been a wrinkle up the sleeve of fun.)

Foreplay in a marriage is a dance of many complicated steps. It’s not like the  hokey-pokey we did in our single days. Back then, shaking it about after a couple of shandies at the pub was all it took to get propositioned. Now, in a long-term partnership over-run with children’s swimming lessons and endless cut lunches, the matrimonial polka comes a sad second to wakeful toddlers and 12 year olds who can stay up later than I can. Even when the kids are finally asleep, I find it difficult to read the signals coming from the man on the sofa. If he’s engrossed in the latest Economist magazine, I never know if my fortunes are looking up, or if Greece has killed off any hope of a stimulation package: Mine.  

A girlfriend says her husband needs to understand that foreplay starts three hours before bed-time. For her, it involves curling up on the sofa with him while they watch Stephen Fry on QI. During the show, she likes to talk about subjects that have been troubling her during the day. Vexatious questions like whether the dripping laundry tap might fix itself. After that, my girlfriend likes some hand-holding (her hand being held) or foot massaging (her feet being massaged) while they watch re-runs of his favourite show The Sopranos, and she asks him repeatedly whose hit-man is whose. Maybe he gets up to make them both a cup of tea because ‘togetherness’ is all about connecting in ways that make her the centre of (his) attention’.

If he’s perfectly content watching a mob hit without her, having baggsed the comfy arm of the sofa after leaving the dishes for the maid, then she’s not hitting the sack with him later on. Any hopes he has of making faces with her at 10pm sink faster than a Mafia victim in New Jersey habour.

I’m going to make an educated guess here and say most blokes don’t need foreplay. In fact, I’ll take a stab in the dark and say that leaving a man in peace in front of the telly is foreplay in itself. In our house, I have learnt the Golden Rule of obtaining amorous congress: Silence. Sometimes I give myself an extra challenge and see if I can remain mute even during the ad breaks. (No success yet.)

The only trouble with pandering to my man’s love of quiet is that some nights I have no idea where I stand. He might be a prized stud, but occasionally, I like to imagine I am queen of the Stepford wives and can expect certain reward for my verbal restraint, only to discover that while I was loading the dishwasher he has hit the hay and any pleadings for a roll in it are met with: “Go to sleep please Blossom, I have a 7am meeting.” (Business and pleasure are mutually exclusive in our house.)

As far as I can tell, men don’t talk with other men about their sex lives. If they did they’d have worked out that women like to use sex as a reward for good behaviour. A husband who takes the kids out and leaves me in my house alone for an afternoon is in for some conjugal happiness. On the other hand, any husbands who take the rubbish out then act as though they’ve cleaned both toilets are likely to be going to bed alone.

Men should talk more to each other – that’s what the phone is for. Commiserating with mates over the mysteries of the female libido might unravel why it blows cold even after you’ve taken the bins out. Women, of course, are enlightened about what men want because they discreetly share the details for the greater good of womankind. These are the kind of private conversations best saved for fifteen of your besties at book  club.

If men had book clubs they’d have all the answers. Instead they’re doomed to pub get-togethers where the talk rarely ventures outside the cricket or the nags until some bloke, half-polluted, asks wistfully: “You know that look women get when they want sex? Me neither.”