Strikes, sex and saving your marriage

Strikes, sex and saving your marriage

Strikes, sex and saving your marriage. When it’s strike season in South Africa and in one way or the other your relationship will be affected.

Rubbish! I hear from the chorus line…

I have been intimately involved in strikes and sex during the years. Strikes affect the economy – and I’m not arguing for or against them, but it is the economy that impacts on sex.

In South Africa we have the added stress of violence and loadshedding. No power, state capture and a looming increase in tariffs.

I don’t know about you – but I’m feeling the stress.

We all know the adage – when financial woes walk in the front door, love races out the back.

When you’re financially stressed it impacts on the libido – his and hers.

You’d rather toyi toyi than be naked.

The children need food, education and shoes. Your electricity bill resembles the GDB of a small country and the cats have developed an appetite, and on that note – did you know that a can of tuna costs less than a can of cat food?

The news is bleak with no indication of recovery and you’ve started to fight about who replaces the toilet paper.

To top it off you’d rather stab your partner than have sex and if one more article insists on date night you may really go out there and machete someone.

So how do you save your relationship from becoming a divorce statistic?

And this is where it gets hard, because it’s the last thing you want to hear or do – you have to have sex and not your common garden variety, let’s get it over with romp.

Keeping your sex life alive is the one thing that is going to see your relationship through strike season.

The only thing you really need is some time and the will to survive.

You need to start slow, simple touching is a great start. Cuddle and kiss, not that peck kind but the kind your relationship started with. Try to remember.

I recently discovered the de-stressing properties of having my partner give me a genital massage. It took 10 minutes tops and released a knot I had in my shoulder I’d had for a month. It’s his turn next.

We learnt these new techniques by watching an educational sensual massage, which cost substantially less than a night out and all the muscle relaxers and painkillers I’d tried.

I could also suggest massage oils and blindfolds but that seems like just too much of an effort at this stage and if you can muster up the energy go ahead, it can only do you good.

I will suggest a pair of Fluffers. Not the porn movie type although the outcome may be the same. Fluffers are fur mitts used to stroke the body in slow sensual motions. I can almost hear a purr.

And then let’s not forget a bottle of lube – you can get some for as little as R100. Lubricant is the most underrated relationship enhancer of all. Use it for the genital massage I mentioned earlier.

It doesn’t matter if you need it or not – you can never have too much lube.

This increased intimacy will keep your relationship on the right track and not marching towards the back door.

It is absolutely essential.

I know it sounds like the last thing you feel like doing tonight but as a wise woman once said –

Force yourself my child – force yourself!