Advice Goddess

Q: My husband and I are entrepreneurs, developinga new product. We’re both working long hours. He’s miserable because hehas no time for his art (painting), and our sex life is in shambles.There isn’t a lot of blame or anger. We simply go about our entire dayswith little or no flirting and fall into bed completely exhausted atnight. Even if we crave sex, we’re too tired. We kiss goodnight andpromise it’ll be different tomorrow or on the weekend, but it never is,and I see no reason to believe things will change. We used to race homefrom work to have wild sex and then do silly things together in theevenings. People always called us “the sensual couple” because wecouldn’t keep our hands off each other. How can we get the zing back? 

—Accidental Celibate

A: Eighty percent of sex is just showing up. (The other 20 percent is remaining conscious while you’re having it.)

Of course, you’d need to leave work at a reasonable hourto make your role-play in bed more dirty doctor/naughty nurse thanadjacent coma patients. I know, that’s not what it says you’re supposedto do on your printout of the Puritan Work Ethic. Former Harvardpsychology professor Shawn Achor writes in “The Happiness Advantage”that we’re taught that we have to sacrifice happiness for success andtold that only when we’re successful will we be happy. Achor countersthat happiness isn’t something that falls in your lap when you attainsome level of accomplishment; it’s “a work ethic.” He cites a decade ofresearch suggesting that happiness “raises nearly every business andeducational outcome: raising sales by 37 percent, productivity by 31percent, and accuracy on tasks by 19 percent, as well as (leading tomyriad) health and quality of life improvements.”

Remember, people called you “the sensual couple” becauseyou couldn’t keep your hands off each other, not because you couldn’ttake your eyes off the clock. Ditching the clock for at least some ofthe day is essential. It’s activities that make you lose track of timethat make you happy — activities like sex (andpainting) that also make you forget yourself and that package yourhusband neglected to bring to the post office. To put this inentrepreneurial terms, you need to relaunch your sex life and take itas seriously as you would a business launch. Look at sex as a mandatorymeeting you need to have naked. And as unromantic as this sounds, youneed to put “flirt with husband” on your daily schedule —until it becomes a habit again. Implied in that is “be fun!” Be sillylike you used to. Make an effort to leave work well before the cows notonly come home but start watching “Seinfeld” reruns. And replace anymotivational posters decorating your office with ones that reflect yournewfound knowledge of trickle-down happy-nomics, for example: “As youclimb the ladder of success, be sure to stop every now and then to letyour husband look up your dress” and “Behind every successful woman isa man with his pants down.”

Q: I’m a recently divorced 40-something mom who’shaving trouble making female friends. I’m excluded from groupactivities, and my attempts at get-togethers fall flat. I attributedthis to my being a bit quiet and reserved until a mom at school — previously a friend —casually remarked, “You’re one of the moms we all love to hate!” What?!What am I doing that makes me hateable? Male friends say it’s because Iam “hot” and “have a killer body” and other women are jealous. 

—Lone Mom

A: Middle-aged women who’ve gotten a littlefrumpy, schlumpy, and stretchmarky cling to how “what’s on the insideis what really matters”…right until what’s on the outside is a hot,shapely, newly available divorcee collecting their husbands’ eyeballslike the Pied Piper commandeering the rodent population of Hamelin.Being “reserved” surely doesn’t help. If you were mousy, you’d probablybe considered shy. Being a looker and reserved possibly marks you as asnob. To take this less personally, recognize that these women areprobably driven by fear, envy, admiration, and/or intimidation. To getthem to see you more as a person than a hot person, you need to extendyourself: Be assertively friendly; join a volunteer organization sopeople get to know you through your actions; and seek out women whoseem happy and secure. All in all, you need to be realistic. Understandthat the first thing in some women’s minds will always be how muchcuter they are when they aren’t standing next to you —unless you’re dressed in something that’s figure-hugging in the mannerof those bags they zip the dead bodies into at the morgue.