How Do You Manage Sex When Your Schedules Are Different?

Sexual intimacy is a lot easier when you and your husband can actually spend time together. There was even a law about it in the Old Testament:

If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married. Deuteronomy 24:5

That first year of marriage must’ve been nice—but I imagine other obligations began to creep in. We have to deal with that in our own lives, too—and sometimes those obligations seem to get in the way of sexual intimacy.

When life gets busy, it can be difficult to find time for sexual intimacy. Family responsibilities, household chores, jobs, and volunteer work can make it hard to find time for more than just quickies.

It’s even harder when one spouse works second or third shift or has a very different kind of schedule. You have to juggle the same things other couples do, with the added challenges of not even being home and awake at the same time.

Big Guy and I dealt with this ourselves a few years ago. I had a fairly traditional work schedule that paralleled our kids’ school schedule. Big Guy worked second shift. The kids and I would get up in the morning and try to be quiet so my husband could sleep. He left for work before any of us got home, returning after we’d all been asleep for a while.

The kids didn’t see their dad much during the week, and most of my time seeing him was when one of us woke up briefly to say hello.

Nonetheless, this was a time of great growth in our sexual intimacy. Our sexual frequency was good, as was the quality.

Now my husband works regular daytime hours and I work from home, but our rhythms still don’t exactly match up. He goes to bed early so he can get up early for work. I don’t fall asleep until several hours after he does, and I usually sleep in for a bit after he leaves for work in the morning.

With our kids grown, we have plenty of waking time together. Even so, we have very different preferences about when sex happens. The time he is most interested is when I am least interested, and vice versa.

When your schedules are so different, it can be hard to maintain sexual intimacy—but it IS possible!

Let’s look at some ways you can manage this.

Be intentional.

As much as you may want sexual encounters to develop spontaneously, the fact is that if you have really different schedules, this just isn’t going to happen. You have to create opportunities for connection and make new ways of creating some sexual tension.

• Use a private app to send racy messages to each other to stoke fires from a distance when we can’t do it in person.
• The person who leaves first can lay out some sexy underthings for the still-sleeping spouse to put on after waking up.
• Leave sexy notes for each other.
• Put lipstick on and kiss your husband somewhere on his body where he’ll notice it when he wakes up.
• Try these safe-for-work text ideas from Bonny at OysterBed7.
• Try out these sexy acronyms from the 1930s. (Warning: a few are definitely rated more than PG-13!)
• Even if you aren’t in the mood, look for opportunities that present themselves or shuffle things around to create opportunities.
• Use your mind to help you get in the mood.

Prioritize your marriage.

Decide that your marriage is important, and make decisions that align with that decision.

• Change your volunteer hours if you can. If there is volunteer work that has to take place during the one short stretch of time you are both awake, step away from that service in order to spend time with your husband.
• Instead of spending every Sunday dinner with your extended family, alternate weeks. And if anyone asks, it’s okay to say, “Sorry, it’s the only time we can have sex.”
• Let the dirty dishes sit until morning if doing so will give you and your husband some time together.

Teach your children that your marriage matters.

If you have children, you naturally want to have some time together as a whole family—but your marriage matters. If you’ve been sacrificing your marriage in order to have family time, it might take everyone time to adjust to a new approach.

Here’s one way to handle it: Let your kids have some family time or time with the parent who just got home. It gives them a chance to calm down and feel connected. But then tell them you are going to your bedroom for private conversation. Lock the door. At first, just stay there for five or ten minutes and have a conversation. Come out before your kids start standing outside the door asking for you. This will help them know that everything is okay and that the two of you will return to them. Gradually increase the time you are in your room until you have enough time that your private conversation turns into “private conversation.”

Pull out board games or kid-friendly videos to help your kids stay occupied. A video can give you the added comfort of not feeling so self-conscious about sex sounds.

If your kids are young and cannot be left alone, consider asking a friend or family member to watch them for an hour or two every week so you and your husband can have time together.

Schedule sex.

Scheduling sex doesn’t sound sexy–but neither does not having sex. We often have this idea that sex should just happen spontaneously, with both spouses feeling amorous and falling into each other’s arms. That’s nice when it happens, but if you have very different schedules, it isn’t likely.

If it’s hard to create opportunities for sex during the week, you and your husband can look at your schedules and just decide when it’s going to happen. For instance, you could decide that every week you will have sex Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon, and Wednesday right before dinner. As much as you may prefer spontaneous sex, this is part of being intentional. (Be sure to listen to the Sex Scheduling episode of our podcast for ideas.)

If you work different shifts, one spouse may need to have sleep interrupted in order to fit sex into your marriage. One way to do this is to take turns. One month, your husband can be the one to interrupt your sleep after he gets home or before he leaves. The next month, it will be your turn to interrupt his sleep.

If you schedule sex, then you will know before you fall asleep that it’s going to happen. This can make it a little easier to wake up enough for sex.

Maintain your non-sexual connection.

Be sure to find ways to connect and communicate with each other throughout the day and week.

• Leave sweet notes for each other in unexpected places.
• When one of you has a break at work, call or text each other just to say “hi.”
• Make a point of doing things for each other. Program the coffee maker. Pick up the dry cleaning. Keep a meal warm in the oven. Show that you are thinking about your husband even when he isn’t around.

What suggestions do you have about how to maintain sexual intimacy when you and your husband seem like two ships who pass in the night?

Check out my guest post at Messy Marriage about how to be intimate when intercourse is not an option: Maintaining Sexual Intimacy When Sex isn’t Possible.