First off, Jack is taking a pass on this one.  He claims that his relationship with his mother didn’t affect his sex life in any conscious fashion and from what I know of it I would say that he is correct.  Additionally, Jack read the words “your mother” and “sex” in the same sentence and pretty much shut down.  So I’m all you get this week.

Growing up, sex wasn’t something that was really addressed in our household, certainly not by my parents.  Of course, my siblings and I knew that they were having sex.  Even if we couldn’t hear their bed frame moving late at night, there were eight of us so it was clear that there was nothing dysfunctional about their sexual relationship.  We just didn’t discuss it, or anything sexual, with them.  Also, my parents frequently took weekend trips in order to be alone.  We all knew that their alone time didn’t just involve quiet dinners and sleeping in.  But again, no one ever talked about it.

I don’t remember my mother and I having any sort of sex talk when I began dating.  I learned about sex from a variety of sources both reliable and otherwise including my friends, romance novels and porn, women’s magazines, and the limited sex ed program offered by the Catholic high school I attended.  In the days before the internet, it was pretty difficult for me, as a young woman raised in a religious household, to find unbiased, positive information about sex, specifically sexual pleasure.

One of the first times I can recall having a vaguely sexual discussion with my mother was shortly before Jack and I got married.  After we met with the priest who was going to marry us, my mother asked me what he had to say about the fact that Jack and I were living together.  He hadn’t mentioned it and we got the sense that it wasn’t a real concern of his.  Technically while Jack stayed with me when he was in town on the weekends, we were not living together before we got married.  We weren’t even living in the same area code.

My mother and I have a very close relationship today.  Since I’ve been married she comes off as much more sex-positive than I ever thought she was.  I’ve been able to talk freely with her about the importance of sex and intimacy in a relationship.  The one piece of advice she’s given me that has stood out more than any other is to make a conscious effort to continue to be intimate after having children.  It’s something that I’ve taken to heart, and in some ways it is part of the reason that Jack and I enjoy such an active sex life today.

– Jill

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