What’s the Difference Between S*x, F*cking, and Making Love?

Motherhood Edition

Some of you may be familiar with this project I did when I was 19 for a Human Sexuality class in college titled: What’s the Difference Between Sex, Fucking, and Making Love? The assignment was to write your “sexual autobiography” from birth to the present and it totally changed my life. It changed the way I think about sexuality, about my own needs, and why we do what we do sexually.

My life is very different now as a 37-year-old married mother of 2, than it was as a wild and free single 19-year-old. I’ve been thinking a lot about the role sex plays in my life currently and how important it is to my health and happiness. I’ve come to realize that having really great sex regularly helps me remember my own freedom, pleasure, and connection to myself, to my husband, and to the natural world.

Amazing sex, where I can drop out of my mind completely and enter the pure raw sensations of my body, wakes me up to my connection with the entire universe. Like my body bursts into a million stars and none of my silly human problems or thoughts matter. In these moments the only thing that exists is pleasure and star dust coursing through me like fireworks tickling my whole body, connected to everything.

Last night I made love with my husband and it felt like my vagina was filled with rainbows. So good! I have often wondered what would happen if we had a yearly “Orgasm Day.” An international celebration of pleasure! We could all agree on a day and time and find consensual pleasure, alone or together on this day. Can you imagine? I think we might feel a ripple of pleasure, like a butterfly affect of juicy orgasms cascading over the world. Maybe we would all get along better after this.

I know as a mother that if I don’t have sex or orgasms often enough, I’m less patient with my kids and my husband. I’ve heard this from other mothers as well. After 2 or 3 juicy delicious orgasms, it’s like the world has a sparkle to it, I feel more hopeful and at ease in my life in general and my body is able to relax and soften. Mothers really need this! We need to remember pleasure and value our own lives more, the enjoyment of ourselves just as beings on the planet, not as relational caretakers. The act of maintaining a healthy sexuality is also about stoking our life force energy, our creativity.

I love sex! I’m a mom and I love sex and I was not a virgin when we conceived! I might even call myself a slut, but currently only fucking myself and my husband. Can you be a monogamous slut? (Please advise in comments ;) Over the years of being a mother and getting to know myself and my body, I have discovered that to be at my best I really need to orgasm daily. I can miss a day or 2 but after about 3 days I start to get very cranky, stressed, and hate my husband. I’ve done some experimenting over the last 6 years or so of motherhood (almost 7 years if you count pregnancy).

I never noticed this intense need before having kids. I think partly this is due to the added stress of parenting and also the lack of other easily accessible outlets. My husband and I were both river guides before having kids and in our free time we were always out having adventures. Skiing, rafting, camping, climbing mountains, backpacking, jumping off waterfalls... You get the idea. These activities are not as easy with a 2-year-old and 6-year-old but having an orgasm brings me right to that sense of freedom and adventure in my body.

Sometimes when I’m fucking my husband it feels like we are wild wolves making love in the woods and I go somewhere on an epic adventure of pleasure without even needing to leave the house. It’s amazing! Sometimes I imagine a gushing waterfall of freezing cold water washing over me and it’s like my body becomes the river.

We just got back from a beautiful Lochsa River adventure without our kids. My parents had the babes for 2 nights so my husband and I could go out and rage on the river. This was a huge blessing and a little curse too because we got a delicious taste of how our life used to be. So much freedom, fun people, endorphins pumping, big white water, flipping boats, hooting and hollering. We didn’t even need to have sex! It was like sex was all around us and we just lived out this freedom and fun and our bodies melted into the adventure. We swam in freezing water and sat around fires making each other laugh.

Then we came home to a sick baby and the glass house of our old life shattered. We crashed right back into care-taking, up all night with a feverish baby who stayed home from school for 2 extra days after Memorial Day and it felt very clear that we are not river guides anymore. We are Mommy and Daddy. But fucking helps us cope with the stresses of parenting. It reminds me to relax my pelvic floor, to lean into pleasure, to find freedom right here and now, even in the middle of the night with a hot sweaty sick baby. It keeps me grounded and helps me be kind to my kids, my husband, and myself.

After we had our first baby we went for nearly 2 years without having sex regularly. I barely masturbated in this time, so I probably had 6 orgasms over the course of my first 2 years of motherhood. It was like my soul died and I was so stressed out and sleep deprived that I forgot how to take care of my body. I forgot to maintain my life force energy and how important healthy sexuality is for my relationship to myself, my husband, and my life. I knew going into this second pregnancy that I would not let this happen again. I would make sure to have regular orgasms by myself and with my man.

Orgasms have started to feel like taking my vitamins. I need them to be healthy and it doesn’t always matter if I want them or not. It’s like my daily meditation practice. I sit every morning to quiet my mind and find peace and calm in my body. I orgasm every day to orient my life towards pleasure, to release stress, and to create more love.

So what’s the difference between Sex, Fucking, and Making Love now as a mother? These labels don’t seem to matter very much anymore. I need all three. I used to think that “fucking” was the most fun term but I really love the term “Making Love” now. It reminds me that when we do this sacred fun whimsical act of coming together or pleasuring ourselves that what we are doing is creating more love. We are making the building blocks of love in our bodies, in our homes, and in the world. Let’s all make more love!

Love,

Carol