We’re staying in this Valentine’s Day, and it has nothing to do with COVID.
I’m not saying that I didn’t do a little intimate apparel shopping in advance (I found a particularly saucy set from from Adore Me that’s comfortable to boot!) or that PM didn’t go ahead and get us our Liberator Wedge Ramp Combo. What I’m talking about is making plans. And we’re not doing it.
I’ve never been very good at doing Valentine’s Day, even before kids. The whole thing stresses me out. If I’m to believe popular culture, we’re supposed make plans to do something special with our special someone.
Consider Exhibit A: the Valentine’s Day dinner date. We get dressed up (which for me also means spending time on my hair and makeup) to go out for few hours, during which we have a beautiful meal that obviously has to include wine or a few cocktails and dessert. During this dinner, we attempt to make conversation, otherwise, I feel like we’re the weird couple just eating our meal in silence. (Not that we don’t normally talk. We talk all the time, which is exactly why the whole thing feels so contrived.) And then afterwards? I guess, after dinner, we go home and I’m supposed put on my sexy lingerie (or do I put it on beforehand under my fancy clothes??) and then we have hot Valentine’s Day sex. I don’t know.
Is this what real people do? Or is this just an unrealistic fantasy, propagated by Hallmark and candy stores and special holiday menus and lingerie companies and anyone else who can get in on the action, reinforced by Hollywood, and finally, as the ultimate proof of how much we have bought into this ridiculous fantasy (that almost always leaves us feeling that we’ve come up short), it’s wielded by us as a measure of how romantic (or unromantic) our partner is when we ask one another, “So, are you guys planning anything special for Valentine’s Day?” Ugh. It’s the worst. End rant.
The whole Valentines’s Day date night thing never worked out all that well for us. Sure, maybe it’s my attitude. 😏 But, I mean, who feels like having sex — or any kind of intimate contact, for that matter — after you’ve just had a big meal and a few drinks and you need to be asleep in a couple of hours so that you can actually function the next day?
And for the last decade and a half of our relationship, all these expectations that I had created in my mind about Valentine’s Day and romance had generally made me stressed and anxious every time the holiday approached. And it only got worse after we had kids. I still felt this pressure to do something, but day to day life left me with little energy. Afterall, this holiday only falls on a weekend every five years. Who wants to go out and do something on a Monday night? (That‘s where the blasted day falls this year, by the way, in case you hadn’t checked the calendar yet.) And why do I feel the need to do anything anyway? Why am I letting TV shows and movies and commercials and mall shop window displays and Victoria’s Secret mailers set my expectations and stress me out?
Turns out PM hasn’t been immune from a sense of Valentine’s Day expectations either, though in a slightly different (and IMO, more obnoxious) way. According to him, no matter what he does for the holiday, I’m only going to be so happy with him. He sees it as a law of diminishing returns, really. Since there’s a limit to my level of happiness, so says he, he doesn’t want to do more than what’s necessary. So, his goal? (And he insists that this is what most men are thinking, btw.) “How do I do enough that my wife isn’t going to get mad at me?” 🤨 He’s sexy as hell, but I never said he was the king of romance. *shakes head*
I asked him if he expected sex by the end of the night, what with his shooting for mediocrity and all. PM’s response? “I don’t want to get anything out of it. I just don’t want you to be mad.” Right. According to him, I sound like a friggin’ lunatic.
But whatever. Ultimately, I blame our culture’s obsession with romantic gestures as a gauge of the health of one’s relationship.
My older, and perhaps wiser, self has little interest in trying to force a romantic evening to happen on one specific night of the year, a night to which we have no particular sentimental attachment. I know. I’m a bit if a buzzkill. But what can I say? In regards to made-up holidays, Valentine’s Day is the worst.
So over the last few years, we’ve basically said to hell with it. Neither of us particularly enjoys the typical date night activities anyways, and they never really go the way I imagine they‘re supposed to. We both enjoy good food, but we’d much rather get our favorite take-out. So this year, it’s Netflix and Chill for us.
Now this is actually something that we do together almost every night already and have been for over a year. I guess it’s a nightly ritual of sorts for us. Like my smut reading habit, our evening Netflix and Chill routine is one of the activities that we’ve found keeps things steamy between PM and me. So what do these typical nights at home look like? And why are we giving up a special night out to stay in on the couch on Valentine’s Day?
Remember when you were dating as a teenager and you used almost every opportunity together to grope one another? Watching television on his parents’ couch? Yup. There was an arm around my shoulder and down the front of my shirt, in the very least. Even better was a hand actually down into the bra, and a second hand up the other side. Mmhmm. In a dark movie theatre? Hell, yes. Definitely some petting of genitals going on, often with hands sliding down one another’s pants. Ah, memories.
And while some of the steamy experimenting we used to do as teenagers is not unlike where we sometimes start in the bedroom now before getting down to business, there’s something different about touching and petting when it’s tangential to the activity you’re otherwise engaged in. When your eyes are fixed straight ahead but your hands are wandering, and there’s no real plan to have sex — you’re just going where the wind takes you, or in this case, the hormones.
Were any movies or television shows actually watched during this time of roving teenage hands? Sure. A bit. But it didn’t really matter. That wasn’t the point. We were living in the moment, basking in a new sexual euphoria, which was really friggin’ exciting. And at the same time, we were learning something about another person’s body as well as our own. Good times.
Fast forward twenty-five years later, and PM and I are rediscovering the fun of feeling each other up — just caressing and touching one another while lounging on the couch together, with no real agenda except to enjoy one another’s company and make each other feel good. It doesn’t have to lead anywhere, although very often it does. But it is precisely the lack of foregone conclusions about where things are headed — to stroke and caress without sex being the endgame — that makes it so wonderful. We’re relaxing and reconnecting.
And at the end of a long day, after finally getting my three mini-hellions to sleep, that’s all I really want. I don’t want to think about whether PM and I will feel up to getting busy or not before we go to bed. In fact, sex is often the last thing on my mind. I just want to chill and see where the evening takes us.
And what’s better than sitting down on the couch with my partner and being on the receiving end of a soothing scalp rub or maybe a hand massage? I’ll tell you what’s better. When a foot massage turns into a neck rub, which has me snuggling up against him or even lying halfway in his lap so his hands can caress my breasts and his fingers can roll and tug on my nipples, all while I mindlessly watch television. Pure bliss is what is.
Most nights my hand inevitably migrates to his crotch, all while he continues to work his magic on me. I’ll massage his balls through his pajama bottoms until I slide my hand through his fly, so that I can better roll and tug. This sort of absentminded touching takes very minimal energy and effort, but it’s intimate and sensual and so damn relaxing, all at the same time. And unless we’re really dead tired, it’s also arousing AF. We may or may not transition to some slow, deep kissing — tongues lazily stroking one another, reminiscent of tongues stroking elsewhere.
More often than not, roaming hands lead to PM getting me off with his fingers or mouth. (Ladies first, after all.) And once I’ve peaked, I’m usually more than happy to return the favor. This might be with my mouth if I‘m feeling it and have the energy, or it might take the form of the Prone Bone right there on the couch. Or maybe we’re both just ready to sleep at this point, and I make a mental note to reciprocate the next day. (I’ll talk more another time about how a climax scoresheet of sorts helps keep us both feeling appreciated, motivated, and satisfied.)
But no matter what, because there are no prior assumptions about how things will play out, we can just enjoy the couch time together for what it is, the two of us enjoying each other. Climaxes as a result of all this are always a plus, of course, but even without them, a nightly routine of sensual touch reconnects and reorients us as partners and lovers.
You may have noticed that I failed to mention booze as playing a part in our Netflix and Chill routine. I know that many folks find that wine or a drink or two helps them wind-down for the night. And indeed, in the past, PM and I did like to have a few drinks before bed. Now, we substitute weed (especially in the form of edibles) for booze. There are two reasons why we have made the switch from alcohol to weed in the evenings. First, we have discovered that, while I do feel frisky when I'm slightly tipsy, alcohol has proven counterproductive to my having an orgasm. Try and try as we may, I just can't seem to get there when I've had a drink or two. A small amount of weed, on the other hand, has the opposite effect. I'm relaxed and uninhibited in such a way that I peak quicker and easier.
The second reason we forgo booze in the evenings relates to our overall health. With three kiddos who are up at the crack of dawn, we absolutely need a good night's sleep, and we both find that we don't sleep as well when we've consumed alcohol. I'll talk more another time about how weed has amped up our sex life, but for now, know that when it comes to getting freaky in our house, we're a bake-and-bone couple, all the way.
Do we watch anything in particular when we Netflix and Chill? A peek at our put-Molly-in-the-mood watchlist will have to wait, but I will say that we avoid intense and/or disturbing content during this time together, as I, in particular, find it counterproductive to relaxation and arousal. *shrugs*
Now does all of this mean we never go out and do anything special? Absolutely not! PM’s rule of thumb for making his sweetheart swoon? “If you really want to get a big response, you do something on a non-holiday day.”
So, we’re saying “Screw!” to the ridiculous expectations put on one stupid day a year, and treating ourselves to a lazy, sexy night-in.
And I’ll find some other random night, when my partner least expects it, to show the one I love that he’s still the One.
Until next time, stay kinky 😉
Comments