Who on earth has the time, or the energy for that 事柄, for 'gourmet sex'?

By LUCY CAVENDISH
Updated: 08:12 BST, 26 March 2009

At least in my mind's 注目する，もくろむ, my husband and I don't live in a cottage with children stuffed into every 考えられる space 絶えず clamouring for our attention.

In my ideal world, the one I wish we could いつかs 住む, we have space.

We have time and energy and priv acy. In this fantasy world, when we go to bed, we don't get 乱すd by one of our children (which we do on a nightly basis).

No one has a 冷淡な/feels sick/can't sleep.?

Gourmet sex: 'In my romantic dream world, my husband and I can go to bed at whatever time we want, make as much noise as we want, laugh, shout, giggle and whoop'

No one wanders in to our room, silently padding in and then standing at the 底（に届く） of our bed, 星／主役にするing at us in a wide-注目する，もくろむd fashion that 全く freaks me out.

No, in my romantic dream world, my husband and I can go to bed at whatever time we want, make as much noise as we want, laugh, shout, giggle and whoop.

When we get in to our bed, we will not have to 株 it with a child/ plastic car/squeaky toy that has been left there. No. In my dreams, we have all the time and space we want in which to do anything and everything we may want to do.

But the reality is, we have four children 範囲ing in age from two to 12. We live in an 古代の, rackety old house that seems to echo even when you are not moving a muscle.

If you make even so much as a squeak, everyone can hear you. We are the same as any married couple with children. We juggle our lives, our careers, our family.

My day, like that of most women, is taken up with アイロンをかけるing school uniforms, making packed lunches, doing school runs and fitting in work in the evening and 早期に morning.

My husband 作品 十分な-time and by the time he comes home we are both exhausted.

This is the same for most couples. So who on earth has the time, or the energy for that 事柄, for 'gourmet sex'?

It's a 称する，呼ぶ／期間／用語 coined this week by 専門家s who have said that, if women want to conceive a baby more readily, they should enjoy nights of 熱烈な sex, the type which they had when they first entered in to a 関係.

I imagine the idea of gourmet sex is that you feast on each other all night (remember those times?), that it 伴う／関わるs many different courses and that it is wild and 熱烈な and amazing and . . . 井戸／弁護士席, couples like us just don't get to do that.

When it comes to sex, there is something that all married people with children know - the 削減（する）-price Tesco value-範囲 見解／翻訳／版 is just as good and thank goodness for that. We don't get the space. We don't get the time. We don't have the staying 力／強力にする for gourmet sex. Imagine the hell of having to have 過度に amazing sex that lasts for hours, all the time.

I mean, it's 罰金 once in a while to have an impromptu more-than-ten-minutes-long ravishing, but imagine having to go through all that palaver every night? It might 井戸／弁護士席 be 罰金 for a couple who don't have children wandering in and out of their 私的な space, or couples who are in the throes of passion in an 早期に 関係, but we marrieds all know each other far too 井戸／弁護士席 to get 伴う／関わるd with all that.

What if energetic sex all the time means your husband 悪化させるs an old groin 緊張する? Or what if it creases the bed linen you spent hours laundering and putting on the bed?

This is how time-poor, sleep-奪うd, overworked marrieds-with-children think. What self-尊敬（する）・点ing person feels like having endless gourmet sex when they've had the day from hell?

All most women want to do at the end of the day is have a foot rub, watch something amusing on the TV and go to bed. And, once we are in bed, do we want to stay awake for the next few hours? No we do not! We want to sleep because in our world of wifedom and motherdom, sleep is a rare and precious 商品／必需品.< /p>

A Tesco value-範囲 cuddle and a loving quickie are 絶対 罰金. Welcome, in fact. A five-course meal is most certainly not.

How many times do I hear my friends 発表する gleefully that their husband is on a 商売／仕事 trip? 'My husband's going away,' my friend said happily the other day. She then went on to wax lyrical about how fantastic it would be to have the bed to herself.

'Three nights on my own,' she said, blissfully happy. 'No snoring, no 不平（をいう）ing and no 圧力 to have sex.'

It's not that women don't want to have sex per se. They just want to have sex that doesn't （問題を）取り上げる half the night and most of the 少しの small hours.

This is the marvellous thing about the Tesco value 範囲. It is 満足させるing, it does what it says on the label and it doesn't leave you exhausted.

When you spend your life Looking After The Children - which means, in this modern world, that you work 同様に - the gourmet 見解／翻訳／版 of anything is not an 選択.

The beauty of quick, 削減（する）-price sex is that it is possible to do it undisturbed, for even when I have managed to stay awake of an evening and am planning something かもしれない more exciting than usual, the children seem to have some innate instinct that Something Might Be Happening.

Let's say I've 現実に managed to get myself a bit organised - maybe cooked dinner, opened a 瓶／封じ込める of ワイン, kept my 注目する，もくろむs open for longer than ten minutes at a time. Let's say my husband and I have gone to bed with hope etched in our hearts . . . something always happens.

Even the best-laid 計画（する）s can be scuppered by the constant interruptions that occur in the night. Because children, wonderful as they are, are the death knell to spontaneous, glorious, night-long, morning-after, maybe-in-the-afternoon sex.

This is why married women with children will not be embracing gourmet sex. We will stick with what we know, thank you very much.

Lost And 設立する by Lucy Cavendish (Penguin, £6.99) is 利用できる now.