Now you might expect that Mrs. Hot, Holy & Humorous is always ready for a midnight romp or an early morning roll-in-the-hay . . . but sadly, no. I am squarely in the “do not deprive each other” camp regarding marital sexuality. (See Sheila Gregoire’s great article on what that really means.) However, I am not among those who believe that every single attempt at lovemaking will result in actual lovemaking.

Because life interferes.

For instance, in my above example, someone might make the case that I denied my husband sex by refusing his 1:00 a.m. advances. But, for the sake of argument, let’s just assume that my moniker “J” actually stands for Jekyll. If you wake me in the middle of a deep sleep, you get Mrs. Hyde. While I know I am ultimately responsible for what Mrs. Hyde says and does, it’s a little hard to get a grip on that when Mrs. Jekyll doesn’t even know what Mrs. Hyde is doing!

Honestly, I was barely aware of what had happened the next day and said something to my husband like, “Did you come on to me last night around one o’clock?” I half-wondered if I’d dreamed the whole thing.

I’m a believer that in the long course of your married life, you will be met with various interruptions to your plans to have sex. It might be . . .

• inability to arouse yourself from a really deep sleep
• your child awakening from a bad dream just as you and your honey were about to live out a good dream (Seriously? Couldn’t the Bogeyman wait 15 minutes?)
• getting called into work or an emergency
• your period arriving a day early (for which “Aunt Flo” should be made to leave two days early)
• a myriad of other reasons

So if we are indeed supposed to fulfill our marital duty and not supposed to deprive each other (1 Corinthians 7:3-5), then what should we do when sex just isn’t fitting into that moment you anticipated it would?

Rain Check Sex.

This is important, so listen up. If you cannot engage in sex at that moment, it is important to reschedule and then follow through. (See Should You Refuse? Part 2.)

Proverbs 13:12 says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” I think this is true of marital intimacy.

When your spouse makes sexual advances, they are hoping to engage in physical intimacy with you. Having that hope dashed doesn’t just frustrate their physical release; no, it saddens their heart. Most men in particular would have a hard time putting that feeling into words, so they may end up claiming “blue balls” or pent-up sexual frustration. However, when you interview husbands and get to the core of it, their hearts are sick at the thought that their wives don’t want them. And that’s also very true of wives whose husbands turn them down — perhaps even more so because women constantly hear that it’s the other way around.

But the second half of the verse is so important: “A desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” That sickened feeling in your heart doesn’t have to happen . . . if you know that your desire will be fulfilled.

If you make a habit of giving rain check sex, your spouse can hold on — knowing that sexuality is a priority in your marriage and, even if this moment didn’t happen, sex is on the calendar very soon. Their desire will be fulfilled.

Looking at my tweet again, you’ll see what I mean:

I immediately offered to my husband “Tonight?” My no — even if delivered by grumpy ol’ Mrs. Hyde — was never really a “no.” It was a “not now.” Given the regularity and reciprocity we have in our sexual relationship, my husband knew with certainty that he would get a rain check.

Did I deliver on that promise? You bet I did! No way was I going to defer that hope until his heart felt sick. Not to mention that when awake, I’m rather excited to be physically intimate with him. I can’t say that a tree grew in our bedroom afterward, but our desires were definitely fulfilled.

If your lovemaking gets interrupted, welcome to Life. It happens. But don’t just leave it there. Reschedule. Give your spouse a rain check. Then make sure you follow through!

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This morning, my husband tried a couple of times to awaken me, to no avail.  Then he stood over me and said (rather loudly, from my perspective), “I want you to get up.”  You might think that I responded sweetly with, “Oh honey, I’m so glad you want to spend time with me!”  But alas, in between my growls and snipping, I bellowed, “What’s your problem!”

As it turns out, he really did just want me to be with him.  He wants us to have relatively matched schedules — going to bed and waking up around the same time.  And he’s got a point.

Some of you are married to night owls who come alive at the stroke of midnight, while others have spouses with that annoying habit of waking up early, throwing open the curtains, and greeting the morning with songs whistled at the highest decibels possible.  (Can you tell that I am not a morning person?)  And very often, a night owl marries a morning person.  As if you didn’t have enough to work through with the family backgrounds and gender differences!

I chalk it up to another humorous part of marital sexuality — trying to get those schedules matched so that we can both enjoy some face-to-face, body-to-body time.  Sometimes what gets in the way of getting it on is simply that you are exhausted by 11:00 p.m. and he’s raring to go.  Or you’re up at the crack of dawn and have plenty of early-morning energy to make love while you she’s sprawled across the bed snoring and drooling into the pillow.  What to do? What to do?

Perhaps you should benefit from my years of experience on what doesn’t work:

Cupping your morning beast’s lovely breast and squeezing at 5:00 a.m. is not the best signal that you adore her and wish to be intimate.

Straddling his sleeping body and bouncing may arouse his little guy but the big guy is still pretty dang tired and not so happy that he’s awake.

Demanding in a hostile tone that he stay up later or she wake up earlier is not likely to lead to a morning/evening of memorable lovemaking.

Trying to get the kids to bed earlier so you can enjoy time before one of you dozes off mid-sentence will work for one or two nights.  Then, the little knee-biters will consult their union manual and stage a rather effective protest.

What does work?  Negotiation.  Compromise.  (Don’t we married people LOVE those words?!)

The truth is that keeping similar bedtimes will indeed be one more thing to foster opportunity for sexual intimacy in your marriage.  It’s a great idea!  Waking up together also encourages time together — for physical and emotional connection.

Maybe your compromise is that the night owl goes to bed to earlier and then gets back up after his/her spouse falls asleep.  Maybe you negotiate days of the week to go to bed early and days to sleep in.  Maybe one of you simply shifts the schedule to match the other for now, knowing that it can change in the future.  (For instance, a stay-at-home mom might shift to her husband’s early schedule if she can manage a nap sometime in the day.)  It’s worth discussing your mismatched schedules to find a solution so that you can spend more time together.

Too many couples have one spouse crawling into bed early, while the other stays up watching television late into the night.  In the morning, the early-to-bed one is indeed early to rise, and the night owl wakes long after.  And before you know it, two people vowed to love and cherish, be there for one another, and grow in intimacy daily pass each other like ships in the night.  You lose your sense of emotional closeness, and the physical closeness fades as well.  That’s not the way it’s meant to be!

Make it a priority to be IN BED WITH YOUR SPOUSE at times when you are both awake — morning or night.  It will give you a chance to talk and spend time together.  And that will cultivate those moments of “Hey, while we’re here, honey…”  Then enjoy!

“All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves;

I looked for him but did not find him.”

Song of Songs 3:1

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