Nicole McNichols

Right, exactly.

Gotta pee.

You're exhausted.

Exactly.

And then if you have kids, you know, especially if they're young, you know, you've got to get up the next morning.

I mean, this is why, and I know couples often cringe when I give this advice, but just hear me out.

It's so important to really put intimacy on the calendar.

And note, I'm purposely using the word intimacy, not sex, right?

Because I'm not encouraging people to schedule sex or plan sex because our brains tend to kind of

shut down when we hear the word planning and scheduling, right?

It's not very sexy.

But if you think about it, we

plan other things that we're excited about all the time on our calendars, whether it's a vacation or a dinner out or a massage or something that just involves a pleasurable activity.

So if we think about planning intimacy as this is just going to be a time when we're going to put our phones down and we're going to have a quiet evening, the two of us, maybe we go out,

Maybe we go to brunch, maybe it's going to just a walk around the park.

I mean, it can be small micro moments of connection, something where ideally you're engaging in some sort of non-sexual but physical touch, whether it's hand-holding, cuddling on the couch,

If you can sort of incorporate more of those times when you're just connecting and focused on each other, you're creating times when sex will naturally come from the event, right?

So it's really about planning intimacy, planning moments of connection that invite sex without feeling like either person is being put into like a hardbound contract.

And there's actually even research out now showing, literally last month in the Journal of Sex Research, showing that this can be particularly helpful for couples that have young kids, right?

Which is something, I have three kids, I've been married to my husband for 22 years, I have definitely been through that phase.