It’s every parent’s nightmare: Your child walks in while you’re “wrestling” with your spouse. Has it happened to you?
My mother-in-law had moved and her house was empty, so our family stayed there during a brief vacation. Hubby and I took the master bedroom and sacked out on an air mattress, while the kids snuggled into sleeping bags in a bedroom on the other side of the house.
Unfortunately, in order to get the house ready for sale, all of the doorknobs had been changed and the master bedroom no longer had a lock. Now do you think that being in his parents’ house, with no comfortable bed, and a missing door lock stopped my husband from proposing morning maneuvers? Absolutely not!
One might suggest that I could have pointed out the difficult circumstances in which we were operating, but it was early morning, the house was quiet, and I figured the kids were asleep. Right? Wrong!
At an integral moment, shall we say, the knob jiggles, the door swings open, and my husband and I cease all movement. (Thank heaven the covers were completely over us.) My sweet child pops in and asks a question. With me on my back and my husband hovering over me, we calmly responded and said we’d be out in a moment.
Child closes door.
Parents breathe.
Wife shoves husband off.
Intimate moment over.
I don’t think my kid knew what was happening, but someday he may find himself in a conversation with teenagers about whether their parents have sex and it will suddenly occur to him what he witnessed as a child. His blood pressure will rise, his face will flush, and his brain will come close to exploding from the very thought of it.
I know mine did — when I realized years later that I had come into my parents’ room after something had happened. Several of my friends had similar revelations (or even eyewitness testimony, bless their hearts) they could recount in their teen or college years.
Suffice it to say that parents have sex. Thus, the children.
I want my children to know that their parents are intimate. I want them to understand that God has blessed married couples with this beautiful way of expressing committed love. But I definitely don’t want them to think about it too much. No visuals, please.
So for the rest of our marriage, I am insisting that the door be locked! In fact, now that my oldest has figured out where the key is and can reach it, I may need to go further. A dead bolt? A portcullis? A retinal eye scan lock? There must be some way to make sure no kid ever enters the inner sanctum during our hot-and-heavy moments.
What are you doing to convey to your kids that you express intimate love with your spouse? Or to prevent them from knowing exactly how?
LOL With the youngest ones it hasn’t really been an issue yet – they are just preschoolers and the days when we were having sex with them in the crib 3 feet away are not long past – but there has been at least one instance of a little voice calling from the next bedroom, “Mommy, are you okay?” 😉 In any case, they see lots of kissing and physical affection around the house, and thankfully when it comes to the bedroom they can’t get out of their room without us letting them out. (Yay for child locks!)
The teenagers, however, have to put up with a few sly sex jokes between parents, and have been explicitly warned not to come upstairs when Dad & Mom are having “private time” together. In fact I have occasionally suggested they stay in their rooms for an hour or so and listen to music with their headphones on. Without having to go into details, they get the point!
That teeny-voiced “Mommy, are you okay?” really dampens the mood, doesn’t it?
I love your approach! In fact, I think if our kids get the message that Mom and Dad are happily intimate, then we convey to them the beauty and blessing of marital sex.
By the way, at this point, you probably don’t have to suggest the headphones to your teens. At the very thought of their parents having sex, they’re grabbing for those headphones faster than they can text OMG.
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