“I’m fine.”
But this time, I’m not sure I am.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
EMMA
It started off so well.
The chemistry was back, the tension between us shifting from frustration to something playful, electric even. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. The sex was incredible, not just physically, but emotionally. It felt like we were reconnecting in a way we hadn’t in years, rediscovering something that had been buried under schedules, responsibilities, and exhaustion.
For a while, it was effortless. The cheeky touches in the kitchen, the stolen kisses in the hallway, the whispered innuendos while the kids were in the next room. It was fun. Exciting. And for the first time in ages, I felt like more than just a mother, more than just the person holding everything together. I felt wanted.
But then… life happened.
Weeks, months even, went by, once again, with not much more than a peck of a kiss here and there.
The late nights. The early mornings. The endless school emails, the meal planning, the unexpected tantrums, the sheer exhaustion of managing a house, kids, work, everything.
Somewhere along the way, we started slipping back into old habits.
Sex became something we had to schedule again, something we’d talk about like an item on a to-do list. “Maybe tomorrow,” I’d say, rubbing my eyes, barely able to keep them open after a long day. And tomorrow would come, but then someone would get sick, or the dishwasher would break, or I’d collapse into bed before Dan even had a chance to kiss me goodnight.
I’d feel guilty. Frustrated. I knew Dan missed the intimacy, I missed the intimacy, but the mental and physical exhaustion always seemed to win. And slowly, that playful, effortless chemistry we had rediscovered started to fade.
I could feel the shift.
The way Dan’s lingering touches became fewer and fewer, how the flirty comments turned into simple goodnight pecks. It wasn’t that we didn’t love each other, God, I loved him. But once again, life had taken over, and sex had become… another thing to do.
And deep down, I was scared.
Scared that we were slipping into old patterns. Scared that we were losing that spark all over again.
I don’t know exactly when it happened, but somehow, sex became less about passion and more about fulfilling a quota. It’s like we’re running a small business, except instead of handling invoices and logistics, we’re trading household duties for orgasms.
It started subtly. Dan would toss out comments like, "Hey, I unloaded the dishwasher today," and give me that look. At first, I thought he was just being cute. Then it escalated. "I bathed the kids. Just saying." "I took the bins out without being asked. Pretty sexy, right?"
I’d laugh it off, but then one night, after an exhausting day of refereeing the kids and trying to find the motivation to cooksomething other than pasta for the millionth time, Dan slid into bed beside me and whispered, "So, you up for it?"
I stared at him, genuinely baffled. "Up for what?"
He waggled his eyebrows. "You know. A little something? I did put the kids to bed."
I blinked at him. "Wait. You think putting the kids to bed is foreplay now?"
He grinned. "It’s a good deed. Shouldn’t I be rewarded?"
I sat up. "Dan, that’s called parenting. You don’t get a gold star and a blow job for parenting."
But he just chuckled and tried to kiss me, which resulted in me kneeing him in the groin completely by accident. (Okay, maybe not completely.)
And that’s when I realised: we’d fallen into the passion pitfall.
Sex wasn’t about desire anymore. It was about him feeling entitled to it because he emptied the tumble dryer or didn’t leave his socks on the floor. I wasn’t his wife anymore, I was the household manager, and sex had become an expected perk of the job. And suddenly, I wasn’t feeling it. Not even a little bit.
Worse, our day-to-day communication had been reduced to purely transactional conversations, again.
"Did you buy milk?"
