In Praise of Maintenance Sex

I've been meaning to write a paean to the somewhat subdued joys of maintenance sex for a while now, and it appears that tonight's the night: I'm in fine form for maintenance blogging.

In other words, I'm exhausted. I don't have an ounce of passion in me for sex or writing or anything else.

This morning, I woke up at 5:30, pulled weeds for an hour, made breakfast, and then sat down to do some editing. Unfortunately, all of my bread-and-butter editing clients are in dire need of my services THIS WEEK – my final week in this town, when god knows I've got other fish to fry.

Around noon, I discovered that the file I was working on was weirdly corrupted, and all of my changes disappeared. Three hours down the drain, in other words. And for some perverse reason, it took longer to edit the document the second time.

I won't bore you with the other details of my day. Consider my "woe is me" litany complete.

So. Maintenance sex. I realize that not everyone's a believer: the argument goes something like, “Why go there if I'm not really into it? Why take the trouble to wheedle/tipple/dazzle/patiently caress my partner into something s/he would just as soon skip?”

Why, indeed? Well...because it's kind of like saying, “Why write if I'm not feeling inspired? In my current frame of mind, whatever I produce is bound to be second-rate at best, and pure drivel at worst. I think I'll wait for the Muse to sprinkle her literary love-dust on my keyboard.”

That's what I said to myself for years – and guess what? I didn't do any creative writing in those years, except for one poem that Parker specifically requested as a birthday present, knowing that this was the only way he was going to get me to experience some semblance of verbal pleasure – to play with words for a change, instead of just working on them.

Recently, I was talking to a poly friend of mine who complained that he and his primary partner hardly ever had sex anymore. “Why not?” I wanted to know. “Well,” he replied, “there was a while when we weren't getting along, and we went so long without having sex that I think I just un-checked the box in my brain next to 'this is someone I have sex with' – I'm not sure I think of her as a sexual partner anymore.”

In other words, there's a habitual component to sex. Once out of the habit, it may not be so easy to get back into it.

In my view, if a couple wants to maintain a physically intimate relationship, maintaining their physical intimacy is a necessity. They ought to be sexual together – in some fashion, at least, on a reasonably regular basis. A once-a-month back massage isn't going to cut it.

Yeah, maintenance sex isn't anything to write home about. Er, I mean, it isn't anything to write erotica about. Compared to the kind of sex occasioned by knock-your-knickers-off desire, maintenance sex might not even deserve to be called “sex” at all. However, I think it keeps the door open.

People who don't ever write aren't writers. Couples who don't ever have sex aren't sexual partners.

***Addendum***
It appears that I failed to include a definition of maintenance sex in the above entry. So let me just say that I am NOT referring to a scenario in which partners lie stretched out at full length on the bed, staring at the ceiling, going, "Gee, do we HAVE to? I know we agreed to once-a-week sex, and that this week we blocked off Sunday afternoon from 3 to 3:30, but you know, the Home Shopping Network is on...."