By Stephanie Sellars

I’ve never been a morning person, and sex is no exception. If a rigid cock pokes me from behind sometime between 7 a.m. and noon, my morning self usually perceives the gesture as an obnoxious disruption to sleep—perchance a lovely dream, and the cantankerous hag who nocturnally abducts my supple mind mutters something offensively penis-deflating before sending the invader back to his side of the bed with an elbow jab. The persistence of this routine eventually conditions the cock to go elsewhere for release; in other words, he loses faith in the poke method. In the past, if my lover told me later that he masturbated while I was sleeping, I would protest, “Why didn’t you wake me?” Nowadays, I’m no longer bothered if my bedmate sneaks away to jerk off in the bathroom, nor do I care if he performs a little wake and shake while I slumber peacefully unaware at his side.   

Most men wake up with a hard-on, so it’s natural that they would want to fuck the person in bed with them first thing in the morning. If he’s rising alone, spanking the monkey is a common way to start the day (unless he’s repressed or simply pressed for time). The timing of sex is not so crucial when you first start sleeping with someone. Novelty heightens arousal, making sex a natural priority. In the honeymoon phase, any time is a good time, even if she normally doesn’t consider sex before breakfast, and he usually likes to begin each day with the big O. But after a few years of having sex with the same person, these chronological differences are magnified, and erotic intimacy gets lost in the daily to-do list. This is the unfortunate course of most relationships, the Catch-22 of settling in with someone.  

Typical professional advice for couples facing this problem is: schedule sex. Friday night is movie night, so let’s make Saturday night sex night, all right honey? And I have some time Thursday between work and Book Club, so maybe we can squeeze in a quickie then; how does that sound? Sounds great, let me pencil that in. Couples who do this get an “A for effort,” but where’s the romance in this forced approach? How can you reclaim sexual spontaneity by scheduling it into your life like everything else? Therapist and author Esther Perel claims in her book Mating in Captivity that spontaneous sex is a myth: “Spontaneity is a fabulous idea, but in an ongoing relationship whatever is going to ‘just happen’ already has. Now they have to make it happen. Committed sex is intentional sex.” The intention is not to schedule sex as we schedule work but to create what she calls an “erotic space.” This type of open-ended planning generates anticipation, an essential ingredient of desire. She believes that “longing, waiting and yearning are fundamental elements of desire that can be generated with forethought, even in long-term relationships.”

I agree, but forethought takes time. And time eludes domestic couples with careers, social activities, housework and other obligations draining their days. Add kids to the mix and sex becomes a rare luxury vacation. On a day-to-day basis we attach more importance to the things we have to do, and sex is not one of them. Forethought may lubricate a dry relationship, but it doesn’t address temporal preference. If Graveyard Shift Sarah hates morning sex and Nine-to-Five Bill is too exhausted after a day’s work to do it at night, that leaves the weekend, and how predictable is that? After a week of zero sexual contact with their long-term partner, most people lose the desire: the less you have it, the less you want it. When horniness strikes in this situation, many couples prefer to masturbate alone while yearning for someone who’s not a witness to their daily routines. Sometimes a fantasy is more available than the one you’re with.  

The fantasy doesn’t care what time it is. It doesn’t insist that morning is the best time for sex or try to convince you that there’s no better way to start the day. Sure, if my eyes weren’t crusty, my breath were fresh and I could actually feel sensations between my legs before noon, then perhaps I’d go for it. But please don’t ask me to drink your protein shake or expect me to cum. Lying there passively is the best I can do, unless I’m with a new lover—then anything is possible.  

Whatever your preference—morning fucks, lunchtime quickies, lazy afternoon coitus, early evening oral or late-night naughtiness—time is irrelevant in the height of passion. If you can get past the idea of scheduling sex, creating erotic space between lunch and dinner can’t be such a bad thing, because once you’re in the moment of giving and receiving pleasure, who’s watching the clock? It’s always sex o’clock when you’re moaning in ecstasy. Still I’m counting the days when I’ll be able to honestly say, “I’ve always been a sexual person, and the morning is no exception.”