After 10 Years of Marriage, I’m Having the Best Sex of My Life

I thought familiarity would make sex boring - instead, it made it fun

Today is my 10th wedding anniversary.

In a way, it’s a bit surprising that we lasted this long.

When I thought about my type of guy, he wasn’t anything like the man I would eventually marry.

For one thing, my future husband was really dorky. I couldn’t always put my finger on why, but when he told me that he used to play Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering as a kid, let’s just say I wasn’t surprised.

He was obsessed with obscure music and movies and spent half his paycheck on records, CDs, and DVDs I had never heard of. And most of it was way too experimental for my tastes.

And I want to put this delicately, but he looked kind of weird. His hair was longer than mine had ever been. His wardrobe was basically just band t-shirts and a spiked dog collar.

But in another way, it makes perfect sense that we’d end up together for the long term.

That dork was also the sweetest guy I had ever met, and I could tell that about him as soon as we started spending time together.

He dipped into his music collection to make mix tapes of music he thought I’d like. He didn’t always hit the mark, but it showed me that he could be very thoughtful.

And when I looked past the curtain of brown hair, I could see that the guy behind it was quite cute. (Though I was really happy when he cut his hair. As much as I tried to get used to it, I was never a fan.)

Those great qualities drew me to him. We fell in love and things quickly got serious. I was only 18, though, and didn’t trust myself to know the difference between true love and the butterflies you get at the start of a relationship.

But after four months with him, I knew I was in it for the long haul. I realized it when I decided to write him an email but schedule it so that he would only receive it one year later.

(Okay, fine, he’s not the only dork in our relationship.)

I hesitated before finalizing this future email. How embarrassed would I be if he got that email long after our relationship had dissolved? But I only hesitated a second. I thought, “No, we’ll still be together a year from now.”

I was right. And here I am, 15 years later and happily married to him.

New Relationship Sex

For most of our relationship, I looked back on our first months together as the high point in our sex life, and I was sure we would never outdo our younger selves.

Things moved pretty slowly at first. Neither of us were virgins by any stretch of the imagination, and we both had our share of hookups and one night stands. But instead of tearing each other’s clothes off on the first date, we waited a few weeks before having sex.

Okay, full disclosure: I did pull his dick out of his pants the first time we met (with his permission, of course). But it was only because I had asked to see it and, to my surprise, he obliged.

But after that first dick touch, we spent a while with no sexual contact. We just got to know each other and made out a lot.

I really liked this guy and I wanted to sleep with him, but I’m absolute shit when it comes to initiating so I patiently waited until he made a move (and he patiently waited until he got a clear signal that I was ready).

And then he gave me mono. It didn’t affect him at all - he was just a carrier - so I got stuck with all the symptoms.

It took a big toll on me, and I spent the next few months feeling incredibly tired and sick. I was feeling so drained my doctor ordered me to take every afternoon off from school so I could nap and recover.

In the midst of all this is when we started fucking (I took those afternoon naps but I never told my doctor I was having sex before each one). And even though I was feeling miserable overall, the sex felt amazing.

Compared to everything I’d had before, this was some next level stuff.

He was tender and respectful while still being passionate.

He turned foreplay into an experience, not a formality.

And he had more stamina than I’d ever seen between the sheets.

I was supposed to rest, but I didn’t care. We were having sex multiple times a day. I was insatiable.

Because of the mono, I had to spend all day in bed. Because of a young Mr. Austin, I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

The Long Lull in Our Sex Life

All that sexual gusto didn’t last.

Eventually, my sex drive started dying down and then took a serious crash.

I’d say that we found ourselves in a sexless marriage, but we weren’t even married yet.

In fact, I couldn’t even bring myself to do it on our wedding night. I just stripped down to my underwear and knee-high rainbow socks and went to sleep next to my new husband. And we followed that up with a completely sex-free honeymoon.

We had sex every couple of months or so, but it wasn’t just the frequency that had gone downhill. How we had sex changed, too.

Instead of excitingly pawing at each other and then fucking with gusto, we were keeping things very minimal. My libido was a lot like a frightened animal - it rarely popped its head out, and when it did we had to make sure we didn’t spook it. So, we stuck to very simple, routine foreplay and then had penetrative sex in a comfortable position until we were done.

It took a while for us to work through all the (medical, mental, and emotional) obstacles that kept us from having sex. Once we did, we discovered that we hadn’t completely lost the magic.

We’re not as horny as we were at the start of our relationship, and we’re not having nearly as much sex as we did back then. Fucking once a day is too much for me - forget doing it morning, noon, and night.

But we’re not trying to relive those glory days. Because I was wrong about them. They weren’t the high point of my sex life. The sex we’re having now might be less frequent, but it’s definitely better.

I Didn’t Know Married Sex Could Be This Good

I used to buy into the idea that sex starts to decline soon after you get married and it just goes downhill from there.

When my sex drive hit its lowest point and I lost interest in sex, I thought that was just the natural progression of things. The more familiar your relationship gets, the less exciting it is. The less exciting it is, the less you can get it up for your partner (so to speak).

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Once we started having sex again, familiarity wasn’t an obstacle - it’s what made the sex so damn good.

After being married ten years, we’re super comfortable with each other. We can just be ourselves.

We can reveal our dirtiest sexual fantasies without feeling any shame at all. We can speak openly about what we want, knowing that we won’t judge each other for it (not even a little bit).

We have built so much trust over the years that we can feel safe without having to play it safe. I can feel him place his hand on my neck during sex without worrying that he’ll try to choke me or do something else he saw in a porno. And when he says some really dirty stuff he knows I love to fantasize about but would never do, I can just feel aroused by it instead of having to call a time out.

All that can happen because after all these years he knows my limits and boundaries intimately, and I know - not just hope - that he will respect them.

And we’re a lot more chill with each other. There’s no more pressure to perform, no attempts to flatter and protect each other’s egos, no guilt about what we don’t want to do. Instead, it’s just fun, enthusiastic, and uninhibited sex without all those extra hangups.

Being married to each other for ten years may not have made the sex more frequent, but it sure as hell made it better. I can’t wait to find out what it will be like another decade from now.

If you liked this article, you should totally check out the Will Separate Bedrooms Kill Our Sex Life? episode of my dirty and intimate sex podcast, Pillow Talk With Emma Austin!