BODY LANGUAGE
David Cohen
‘There were five of us, all first-time fathers, having a drink one night when a beautiful woman walked by. I looked up and mumbled ‘sex’. Then someone else said: ‘I remember sex.’ Then it came out. When did you last have sex? Four months ago? One father hadn’t done it in 16 months. It was a revelation to know we were all going through the same thing.”
Jonathan, a 33-year-old businessman from Brighton, says that since the birth of his daughter nearly two years ago his wife has had no interest in sex. “I lie in bed and say to her: ‘I know what it is you’re not attracted to me any more.’ She says no, it’s nothing personal, that she loves me, but there’s no demonstration of that fact.”
This tale of “the baby came but the sex went” will be instantly recognisable to many fathers. But the fact that it is still taboo for men to admit that they haven’t had sex for two weeks, let alone two years, means that it is rarely discussed openly.
According to Ann Herreboudt, a post-natal counsellor, nearly half of the first-time mothers she sees in her north London practice have no sexual relations with their husbands for between six months and a year.
“Most say their husbands are fed up, but only some are concerned by it,” she says. “That’s a big mistake, because more marriages break up in the first 18 months after childbirth than at any other time. And it’s safe to assume that sex, or the lack of it, is a major contributing factor.”
The modern child-centred approach to parenting, coupled with the fact that women are encouraged to breastfeed for as long as possible, often means that the sex life of the couple is put on the backburner. Is this an unspoken, yet thoroughly normal, phenomenon to which the new father should simply adjust? Or is it an issue, as Herreboudt suggests, that should be addressed before it gets out of hand?
The problem begins, say experts, with the unrealistic expectations that are nurtured in the months before childbirth. During pregnancy, partners often experience an intense intimacy. There arises what Christopher Clulow, director of the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute in London, describes as “the fantasy of fusion”, a belief that they will go through the parenting experience together.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Come the birth, mother and father are propelled into different orbits. In the post-natal maelstrom of breastfeeding angst, painfully engorged breasts and sleepless nights, sex for the mother becomes an expendable option. For the father, displaced from the centre of the family, sex may take on added significance.
“When sex becomes a problem over a prolonged period, women need to ask themselves why they’re not making space in their lives for their partner,” says Yehudi Gordon, a London consultant obstetrician.
But what is it about becoming a mother that puts sex off the agenda?
Certainly, say mothers, there is a physical component. “I am exhausted at the end of a day attending to the needs of my son, and the last thing I can think about is attending to the needs of my husband,” says Lauren (34) a first-time mother whose son is nine months. They also acknowledge a biological component: the release of prolactin while breastfeeding is said to depress the mother’s libido. For others, the response is intuitive. “I associate sex with pregnancy and the last thing I want is to fall pregnant again,” says Gill (32).
Some men make matters worse by coming on too strong, too quickly. Jonathan admits that his impatience to resume sex just five weeks after the birth did not help. But he questions the role played by society in fostering those misconceptions in the first place. “Why didn’t they warn us about this in antenatal classes?” he asks.
Antenatal teacher Ilana Machover maintains that sex, or the lack of it, is often discussed as a potential problem in antenatal classes. “But couples are so fixed on the birth, it’s difficult for them to see even five minutes beyond it. Later, they forget that anything was said at all.”
So how should men tackle the sex impasse once it becomes a problem in their relationship? Relate, a relationship-counselling organisation, suggests that the couple seek counselling if sex remains a problem for more than a year after childbirth.
“A significant number of couples trace their sex problems back to the post-natal period,” says Julia Cole, a psychosexual therapist with Relate. “We ask the couple to lower their expectations, to find ways of being intimate other than intercourse.
People need to tune into the ebb and flow of sexual intimacy, says Cole. “Many people believe it is something that is switched on at puberty and runs and runs,” she says, “but the reality is different. There are times in a couple’s life during stress, ill health, bereavement, and after childbirth where there is more ebb than flow. This is made worse when couples hold unrealistic expectations and put themselves under too much pressure to conform to a mythical norm.”
Jonathan has contemplated calling Relate, but he remains sceptical of the idea of “being intimate in other ways”.
“I don’t think sex is something you can half have,” he says.
“It’s hard,” he sighs. “Sometimes I feel like my wife is giving me a protracted goodbye. And even though I talk to my friends, and they tell me that, in time, the situation will correct itself, that I must be patient …
“And even though in my head I know they are right, it sits in my stomach, this feeling of rejection, and longing, and deep, deep loneliness.”