Nicole McNichols

where you have young kids and you're just so busy and exhausted and managing calendars.

And it's like you just want to put something on the back burner and too often sex is it.

And so the thing is, usually, I mean, of course, in the first couple months after intimacy, most doctors say at least six weeks, you're letting things heal.

I'm not encouraging you to go be like a

make sure you're having sex the minute you get home from the hospital.

But at a certain point, you do need to understand that nurturing that relationship between the two of you is critical.

And you're actually going to be better parents if that relationship between the two of you is more intimate and connected and strengthened the way it will be with sex.

And so anyway, this research study looked at couples with young kids and found that

couples who planned sex had first of all more sex so it actually worked they increased sexual frequency but they also incre but they also reported increased desire in other words it's not that the planning the sex made them completely just wilt and think oh god another thing on my calendar it built anticipation right and it also led to this really interesting effect which is that

Sometimes sex begets sex, meaning if we, you know, I remember hearing someone speak when I was younger.

It was like a nutrition talk, and they were telling me about how when you stop drinking water, your body kind of goes through this process where you start, like,

craving water less right you almost become just chronically dehydrated and you just sort of assume that's your natural state and so you have to be sure to drink a lot of water because actually it's staying hydrated that makes your body feel like oh that's how I want to feel so I'm going to keep drinking water and sex can be a little bit like that right I mean to a certain extent

we have to kind of get ourselves to go there by creating these moments of intimacy.

Because when we're having sex, it makes us crave it more, right?

It's like any other exercise or eating well.

You get into these habits and it just makes you want more of what's making you feel good, right?

It's the same type of inertia that really guides all our other health habits.

Yes.

Exactly.

Yep.