The Married Woman Whose Dog Ruined Her Sex Life

Once a week, Daily Intelligencer takes a peek behind doors left slightly ajar. This week, the Married Woman Whose Dog Ruined Her Sex Life: Female, 41, freelance writer, San Rafael, California, straight, married. Buy sex toys on sex chop.

DAY ONE

8 a.m. I wake up at the same time as the Male Masturbators — nicknamed by a mutual friend for his height and heritage. We've taken the day off work with the plan to goof around town, a date of sorts. He gives me a tender kiss, longer than usual for a weekday morning. We discuss the day's itinerary: brunch, used furniture store, beach with the new puppy, barbecue dinner. Before getting up, we snuggle with the puppy, who's snuck into the bed and wormed her way between us in the night.

11:30 a.m. Walking back to the car from brunch, a guy who's nowhere near my type checks me out a little. I've made an effort to dress cuter than usual for Date Day — sundress, heels, dangly earrings. But still. I'm surprised. That hasn't happened in forever.

5 p.m. When we get back from the beach, the Viking asks if I want a ladyscaping, something he knows I love. I hesitate, then nod. He gets out his beard trimmer and gets to work. The puppy is fascinated by the electric buzz so we lock her out of the bedroom. Usually I get super turned on and push up against the trimmer as the Viking shears my seventies porn pelt down to nothing. Today I mostly worry he's going to nick me.

5:15 p.m. Finally, I feel a little tingle. Fully naked, I roll onto my stomach, the trim over. The Viking kneads and kisses my butt, then my back. We grope and make out a while, but it's forced and awkward. He massages my clit and sticks a finger inside me while I stroke him, but I'm not feeling it. I tell him I'm hungry, we should start dinner and pick this up later. We both know later could be days or weeks away.

5:45 p.m. Neither of us can remember the last time we had sex. Earlier in the year, the dog I brought to this relationship almost a decade ago spent several weeks sick with a mystery disease the vet couldn't cure. During those three months of worry, then grief, I wasn't a sexual being. I was just an anguished dog mom. Now that the new puppy's breathed some life back into the house, it feels like time to resurrect our sex life. If only it were that easy.

DAY TWO

7:30 a.m. The Viking's downstairs in the shower, getting ready for work. I have an article due, but before I get up to work I decide to see if I can get myself off.

7:35 a.m. Now he's back in our bedroom, looking for a shirt to wear. I tell him I have my hand in my pants, which he knows means I'm horny, or at least trying to be. He drops the shirt in his hands and gets under the covers with me, looking eager. I like to masturbate next to him. It's always hotter with him kissing me or pinching my nipples. He never masturbates for me, though. Says he's too embarrassed.

7:37 a.m. Before he even touches me, I decide to quit. I'm bone dry and not interested in forcing the issue. I tell him as much. He has to leave for work anyway and doesn't seem bothered. I drift back to sleep with the puppy at the foot of the bed.

8:30 a.m. I wake up horny and decide to see things through. I think about the woman in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (English version), which we watched last night. She's not the type I usually fantasize about: too thin, flat-chested, cyberpunk, pierced. But I like how she takes what she wants, at the bar with the long-haired girl in the mini, and back in the research shack with Daniel Craig. I used to be like that with the Viking, and with the strapping young lads I knew before him.

8:45 a.m. Just as I start to come, the puppy pounces on my chest. I laugh and push her off the bed. I suspect my sex life is more stagnant than that of my fortysomething friends with preschoolers. I finish finishing and get up to feed the puppy.

DAY THREE

4 p.m. Aside from playing hooky with the Viking the other day, I've been working too much lately. Today I'm wiped from getting up before dawn to make a deadline. I try to nap so I'm not a total zombie when the Viking gets home but fail miserably.

7 p.m. The Viking grills some salmon while I make a salad. We settle on to the couch for a little TiVo while we eat, which is fine by this zombie.

8 p.m. Between shows, I suggest a dinner-and-movie date for the coming weekend, just us two. This makes the Viking happy. "Do I have to pay?" he teases. "More important, are you going to put out?" I assure him no, and yes. I like that we still flirt even though sex has been on the wane this year.

11 p.m. I come upstairs after falling asleep on the couch, dead to the world. The Viking's already passed out in our bed. Fall is coming and it's cold. I press myself against his back for warmth.

DAY FOUR

8 a.m. The Viking's already left for work and I'm struggling to get up. Rather than start in on the business profiles I have to write, I start in on an imaginary three-way with Jack White and backup singer Ruby Amanfu. It doesn't take long before I've made a hot mess of the sheets.

7:30 p.m. I'm in the basement doorway, putting the harness on the puppy. The Viking looks up from his computer and says he wants to walk with us. I make a stupid frat house joke about how can only join us if he'll do me on the hot tub first.

7:31 p.m. The Viking is out the door in a flash, lifting me onto the covered hot tub. I'm shocked. The Viking hasn't lifted me onto anything in ages.

7:32 p.m. We kiss like awkward teenagers. He takes off my sneakers, my yoga pants, and my underwear and goes down on me. I can't stop giggling or thinking about the work I'm behind on, the puppy who's now tangled in her leash, the neighbors talking on the other side of the cedar fence. Eventually something clicks and I succumb, kissing him deeply, stroking him, wanting badly to be fucked.

7:55 p.m. Sex is not going to happen. The Viking looks like something's wrong. I ask him what. He says he doesn't think I want to do this. I tell him I wasn't sure at first, since it's been hard getting sexually comfortable with him again after so many platonic months, but now I do want to do this, really. Is he sure he isn't projecting? I ask. He admits that it's hard for him to get comfortable, too, and yes, maybe we should stop.

8:05 p.m. I leave to walk the puppy. The Viking stays behind, looking as dejected as I feel. At the park, I wonder if what's sexually broken can be fixed. At least we're trying, I think, hoping I'm not kidding myself.

9:15 p.m. Back home. The Viking has his "I'm sorry" face on. I tell him not to feel bad, it's both of us, we have to work at it, we'll fix it. I tell him I love him and he knows I mean it. He tells me the same.

DAY FIVE

8 a.m. Saturday morning. The Viking and I snuggle in bed a while before inviting up the puppy for family wrestle time. It feels like progress.

2 p.m. A friend comes over to help us stain the deck, or rather, to help the Viking while I attempt to catch up on deadlines. It's hot out and the guys have their shirts off. I walk out back on a work break and tease the Viking about all the stain he's getting on his chest and belly. He chases me with the brush and paints my arm brown.

9 p.m. The friend is still here, watching bad action movies with the Viking. Aside from the dinner we grilled, I've been writing all evening. I have a sore back, so I get in the hot tub. I stay in too long, wishing I were alone with the Viking.

10 p.m. Feeling like Jell-O from the tub, I slink off bed early. The friend is still over.

11:30 p.m. I wake up to find the Viking next to me. He says he's wide awake, which he never says. That's usually my line. Normally he just reads himself to sleep. I wonder if he's trying to drop a hint. But I can't even lift a limb and quickly fall back asleep.

DAY SIX

9 a.m. The Viking is already up when I wake. I shower, put on a pair of cute panties, and find him lying on the couch, watching football. I get under the blanket with him and press myself against him. He's in his underwear and warm. We snuggle like that a while.

1 p.m. We're supposed to have our dinner-and-a-movie date later, but I'm still behind on work so we postpone. The Viking heads out to Home Depot and I trudge back into my office.

3 p.m. The Viking is still out. I'm stuck on a difficult story and need a change of scenery. I climb into bed and reach into my pants. This time I'm with Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, only he's tan and shirtless and wearing Jim Morrison pants. Like much of the sex I have in my head, he has me against the wall, sucking my nipples, then my clit. Jon undoes his leather pants and plows into me. I come powerfully.

DAY SEVEN

3 a.m. I get up to let out the puppy, who's whining in the hallway. Instead of going back to bed, I stay up till dawn writing. After two years of living together, the Viking is used to waking up to find my side of the bed empty.

7 a.m. I crawl back into bed. The Viking has the day off. He wraps himself around me from behind, his arms squeezing me tight. It's the coziest I've felt in I don't remember when.

7:10 a.m. I rub his penis and scratch his balls lightly through his underwear. It isn't long before I am sucking him off while gently riding his thigh. He squeezes my breasts and begins to buck, coming quickly.

7:17 a.m. Back to spooning. Before he falls back asleep, I grind into his crotch. He takes off my underwear and reaches gently for my clit — almost too gently. I squirt as soon as he touches me. His fingers feel big yet soft. I press myself into his palm and moan up a storm. The puppy jumps on the bed, squeaking her squeaky toy. Undeterred, the Viking and I soldier on like it's the most natural thing in the world.

7:40 a.m. Sticky and sweaty, I finally come. The room smells like funk. I drift back to sleep, convinced I'm the luckiest girl in the 'burbs.

TOTALS: Five orgasms; two acts of oral sex; one mutual groping session; one act of manual penetration; three masturbation sessions; one ladyscaping.

Are Musicals Reviewed By Ignoramuses?

Stephen Sondheim completed his personal memoirs about his career in American musicals more than a year ago, but they are so thoughtful, detailed and dense that I keep discovering new treasures, provocative observations by a first-rate mind. Yesterday, I found one that was buried in a footnote, in the middle of a technical tangent that most readers, like me in my first tour through the books, probably skimmed.Our shop provides you with various types of anal beads.

Sondheim pointedly did not use his erudite analysis and reflections in his two retrospectives (“Finishing the Hat” and “Look! I Made a Hat!”) to settle scores with critics, a group that obviously annoyed and to some extent handicapped him over the course of his long career. In this brief footnote, however, the composer/lyricist delivers a withering verdict:

“The sad truth is that musicals are the only public art form reviewed mostly by ignoramuses.”

At the end of the note, he repeats the indictment, this time changing the description to “illiterates.” Sondheim is accusing theater critics of engaging in professional conduct they are in anal vibrators or anal vibrator are popular among men and women. competent to perform, rendering expert opinions that are not really expert, and as a result, misinforming the public and undermining the efforts of serious artists, like him.  If he is right, not only are the critics unprofessional and unethical, the media organs that hire and publish them are unethical as well.

Though this passage is from the first volume of his memoirs and approaching three years old, it is a timely one. The footnote appears in the section in which Sondheim mocks the Broadway fad of “sung-through” musicals, which he suggests owe their success to a false sheen of sophistication that depends on critical and audience ignorance. He is writing about the hit musical Les Misérables, the monster of the “sung-through” genre and currently racking up Golden Globe nominations as a film.

I certainly think Sondheim is right if he believes that Les Mis is pompous, derivative junk, but his footnote’s ethical implication is the true topic at hand. His statement alone cannot be reasonably challenged; I have observed the same phenomenon. Reviews of stage musicals, even those by otherwise celebrated critics, regularly contain evidence of musical ignorance and shocking unfamiliarity with the form. While operas are reviewed by authorities who know the composers, musicology, history, and who have often seen and studied the operas being performed for years, and while professional theater critics typically understand stage craft, dramatic theory and have at least a passing knowledge of literature and literary criticism, the reviews of most Broadway musicals are written by non-musicians whose sole qualification to pass judgment on a production is that they were in the audience and probably have reviewed other musicals.

You wouldn’t have to read far in Sondheim’s autobiography (he denies that he’s written one, but that’s what the two volumes are) to understand why this drives him nuts. Musicals are his art form and passion, and he has mastered the craft of constructing them and studied the history of their evolution as thoroughly as anyone who has ever lived. He understands what works in a musical and what does not, and more important, why. Not only that, he possesses a mastery of words and rhetoric to explain all of this, clearly and persuasively. He would be the most qualified critic of musicals imaginable, and also the most frightening.

Whether he would be the best critic of musicals, however, is the more pertinent question.

I empathize with Sondheim’s frustration with the fate of having to be reviewed by disproportionately influential hacks who are incapable of noticing and describing the craftsmanship and artistic integrity that he regards as paramount.  To a man whose lyrics are constructed with the precision and loving care of a Swiss watchmaker, reading reviews that shout hosannas over the Hallmark ditties to music that litter Les Mis must be torture.  Like him, I wish that theater critics, and not just those reviewing musicals, would be better prepared, more modest, and willing to reveal their biases (as Sondheim does, by the way, to his great credit.)

Nevertheless, I disagree with Sondheim’s central premise. Yes, the critics who review musicals are, by his standards, “ignoramuses.” But so are, by his standards,  the audience members the musicals are devised to entertain. A critic who views his or her job as delivering a technical, dispassionate and subjective analysis of a stage work from the peculiar perspective of someone who spends all his nights and weekend afternoons sitting in audiences isn’t performing much of a service. This is best illustrated by the odd case of stage comedies. I cannot count the number of times I have sat in an audience of a comedy listening to and participating in uproarious laughter throughout the evening, only to read a sneering review the next morning by a critic in that very same audience, who wrote that the play was as unfunny as a funeral. Even if that critic can explain, with superb reasoning and impeccable references, why he found the show unfunny, what good is that review to a reader hoping to be amused? The objective of comedies is to make audiences laugh; if the audiences laugh, it’s a good comedy. I don’t maintain that a critic who does not enjoy a play is obligated to write a positive review because everyone around him disagrees, but I do believe that for the outlier reactions of critics to have more influence over the success of shows than the vast majority of those who see them, simply because the critics may be more knowledgeable, distorts the purpose of public art.

It may be, ironically, that the theater critic who knows nothing about music other than what makes his toe start tapping, and nothing about musical craft and structure other than what makes his emotions soar at the finale, is doing a better job at what reviewers are supposed to do than the rare authority who appreciates the exacting nuances of a Stephen Sondheim. I agree: the reviewers of musicals are usually illiterate. That doesn’t mean, however, that they are necessarily incompetent.

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Good Riddance, Facebook

Dear Facebook,

It’s not you, it’s me. I need to figure things out. Like how you are sucking all my time and how you’re making me into someone I am not. Like how you make me hate myself as I skim through posts and pictures of my so-called “friends”. God, their lives are so perfect! Why is my life not as perfect as theirs? Am I the only one who have to deal with occasional bouts of jealousy and self-doubt every time I read about a “friend” who bought his own private jet, and another “close friend” who spent his holidays on the moon? I feel so pathetic.

Oh please, don’t stare at me with those wide pitiful eyes. That won’t work anymore. I know, things were going so great between us, and it’s such a shocker that I’m telling you this. But this has been on the back of my mind for months, and I’m sorry it has taken me quite a long time to finally gather enough courage to confess that you and I just aren’t good for each other. Remember that time I was at the top of the Eiffel tower in Paris? For a fleeting moment, while taking in the breathtaking panorama of the City of Lights, I really felt like I was the King of the World, that everything was truly possible, and yes, that with a panoramic view of Paris at night, who needs drugs to get high? But that feeling of being invincible quickly evaporated and was immediately replaced by a seemingly innocuous thought along the lines of: “I need to share this on Facebook! Paris, you’ll now be Instagrammed!”

Oh by the way, I don’t have an Instagram account, so I might have slightly altered the line above. But then, altering wall posts and minor adjustments in statuses have become a staple part of our complicated relationship dynamics, right? You’ve always made me feel like I needed to make my posts and stories more interesting than they really are, so there you go, I made some minor adjustments in them. It’s not that the minor adjustments are lies you know, they are after all, just minor. I just want my “friends” to like my posts, isn’t it a noble motivation to alter, and in doing so fake a post? Everyone’s doing it, so nothing’s possibly wrong with it, right?

Listen, you’re really great. You are. And you’re way too generous, to the point that I’m really having a hard time receiving all the stuff you so generously shower upon me. How come you know that I need to get informed on what my “friends” had for dinner, or about how a “friend’s” baby just had the first poop of the baby’s life, complete with DSLR-quality pictures of the poop? And isn’t it too much information when a “friend” posted about her weird bodily functions, about another’s drunken ramblings, and beat this – about someone’s sex life?

Our relationship was founded on complete trust. We even made a pact to be totally honest to each other. You promised me that you will reveal to me all your secrets, that all the things you know I will know. You have given me the power to really stalk know someone – what someone is up to, what type of movies she likes, where she spent her weekend, what sort of jokes she finds funny, how she looks like in a swimsuit, and even when she has a period – all in the comfort of my room and with a mindless click of a button! You even told me about a friend of a friend’s family background and life history, even though that friend of a friend is someone I’ve only known through you, and wouldn’t even talk to in real life. I sometimes feel queasy about this kind of set-up. Don’t you think it’s a little unhealthy knowing too much about a person without even spending time talking with that person?

This is not easy for me, believe me. We had so much promise, we shared so many memories. But as time passes by, I feel like our relationship has become a little more than a superficial facade, a carefully altered representation of myself. It has been totally unexpected that with the ease you provide in communicating with “friends”, my relationships with my “friends” are increasingly becoming shallower. What went wrong? Is it because with your existence, I have been more concerned about what others think of me through my online persona? That instead of meeting and talking with friends and family, I have resigned myself to simply liking and commenting on their posts?

It’s not you, it’s me. You deserve someone better. I deserve a better life too – a life of genuine relationships, a life that couldn’t care less about what people think as long as I know it’s what I want, a life lived every moment without thinking of posting it online… which is why, I’m setting both of us free.

3 Romantic Gestures That Will Earn You Big Points

In the dating world, women are more often the ones who are showered with compliments, but the thing is, men need the same level of TLC from women. Here’s a secret all women should know: a man can keep up the one-sided wooing up to a certain point, then the woman would have to pull her own weight in the romance department. If not, well, let’s just say that’s when you start complaining that the man is not paying attention to you.

Here are three of the best ways to bring the oomph back in your relationship and your sex life.
Ask About His Day

Even if you know his routine by heart, you should ask the man you’re dating how his day went. The reason for this is simple but significant: asking means you care. If you just assume that everything went well and that you have a lot more to worry about than his needs or the way he spent his day, that’s when he starts feeling like he’s a fixture.

Comments or questions that encourage him to talk about his activities that day can spark conversation. After you’ve done this a few times, he will go through the day collecting small tidbits of stories he can tell you when he comes home and you ask him how his day went.
Open The Topic On Sex

Innuendo doesn’t have to always come from him. When you casually drop hints that you miss doing it with him, he will assume that you’re in the mood. Doing this will also plant the idea of sex, so that he will think about it even when he wasn’t expecting to have sex with you that night.

Just the thought of sex gets men in the mood, especially if you haven’t been doing it lately. Being playful starts with sexual innuendos, followed by subtle touching and stares that tell him you want him.
Be Touchy-Feely On A Date

A man does not have to be the one doing the asking. Being passive about your dating life will get you nowhere, especially if you’ve been living with the same guy for a long time. Ask him to go with you to the movies, or to a concert, and be touchy-feely when you’re out together.

Public display of affection is a way to increase sexual tension. Men tend to forget to hit on you when you live together. When you’re out on a date, being touchy-feely can make him want to go home as soon as possible. If it’s not possible to go home at once, expect him to reciprocate with his own brand of affection as the sexual tension rises.

If you’re not keen on facing the prospect of a break up, small gestures like these are necessary. Pulling away is the result of not focusing on small things that matter a lot when dating. If your man is not the type to respond well to your gestures, don’t be disillusioned. As long as he feels your sincerity, he will find a way to reciprocate.