Do you hear yourself saying things like:
“I just don’t have time for anything.”
“I just don’t have energy at the end of the day.”
“I am always so tired.”
“I can’t get it all done.”
“I have nothing left.”
Sound familiar?
It sure does to me.
Or maybe this applies to your spouse, and you’re asking yourself:
“Why is she always exhausted?”
“Why is he always cranky?”
“Why can’t he relax?”
“Why won’t she have sex with me?”
We are all Burnt Out
It’s never good to make generalizations, but I’ll make one anyway.
We are all exhausted and stressed.
We are trying to fit a gallon of milk in a quart container. And it’s not working very well.
We’re trying to be good employees, spouses, parents, and children to our own parents. We are trying to hold on to our jobs in an economy that’s increasingly competitive and unpredictable. We’re trying to prepare our kids for their own careers and lives. We’re trying to provide care to our rapidly aging parents.
And somewhere in there, we’re trying to have a relationship with our spouse, including a sexual relationship.
It sure ain’t easy.
Oh, and then there’s one other forgotten person we’d also like to give some attention: ourselves.
It doesn’t all fit!
No, that’s not what John Hamm’s girlfriend says.
Well, okay, maybe it is.
But in our case, we’re talking about our ability to do everything we want to.
In our case, we had kids, with each additional kid we jettisoned more of our lives.
Hobbies. Reading. A clean house. An attractive yard. Elaborate home-cooked meals.
And we have to be realistic: there are trade-offs for everything. I don’t care what some book-writing Fortune 500 COOs are saying: most of us can’t have it all. Frankly, not all of us can be at the c-level, with multiple nannies, a personal chef and personal trainer.
And it’s fine. Really, it is.
“We Need to Talk.”
Those words that scare the sh*t out of anyone hearing them. But that’s what you need to do if you’re going to address these issues..
You need to sit down with your partner and talk about priorities, both for your lives as well as for any given day.
When we haven’t done that, and we are dissatisfied with our relationship, then we have to figure out what’s going to give, and how we’re going to change.
And if our sex lives aren’t working, we need to talk about that, too. In the next post, I talk about sexless and sex-starved marriages. stress killing sex lives
Read the next post in the Keeping the Spark Alive Series: Sexless and Sex-starved Marriages
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