I suffered the 10-year-itch hard in my marriage. It happened gradually. Less touching day to day, less cuddling in bed, until one day I realised we hadn’t even kissed for weeks, let alone had sex. We were never a super PDA couple, but sex was never a problem for us either. In the beginning, we were having sex a few times a week, and even years into marriage we had a pretty regular sex life.

Things changed once the kids were in school. My work picked up a lot, and we were both just so busy all the time. But because we functioned well outside of that, we weren’t arguing or overtly unhappy, I didn’t even really notice how infrequent sex had become. It was one day when we were at a friend’s barbecue, and I walked in on my friend and her husband passionately kissing in the kitchen. It was just a funny, easy moment at the time, but I left the room thinking ‘Wow, they’ve still got it.’ It was then I realised me, and my husband hadn’t been like that in months. It was like both of us had stopped caring about intimacy until it smacked me in the face.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days. I started to feel insecure, wondering if my husband had noticed and if not, why not? So, I raised it with him, and it was clear he’d been thinking about it a lot more than I had. He looked relieved when I brought it up, and something about his reaction just made me realise that this wasn’t a minor issue I could brush under the carpet. We needed to switch things up immediately.

So, we started researching ways to restore intimacy into our marriage. We did everything. Extra date nights, sex scheduling, we even tried the ‘six second kiss’ rule where every time you say hi or bye you kiss for six seconds. We watched porn together, experimented with new kinks, we even pondered going to a swingers party together, but bottled that at the last minute (we’re not quite there yet).

Honestly, it all worked wonders. Sex scheduling felt strange, but we didn’t stick to it by fire or force, it just allowed us to prioritise sex into our day instead of forgetting about it. The six second kiss rule lasted about three weeks, but at that point we were kissing and touching more regularly that we didn’t feel the need to count each one down.

The best part about all of it was that it forced us to communicate more about fetishes we hadn’t explored, neither of us felt embarrassed to suggest new things when it was clear our future relied on switching things up. For me, I realised I had really lost my sexual side with life getting so busy. I used to love trying new things during sex, I was very open-minded in my 20s, but I think I got lost in work and being a mum and pursuing pleasure in that way just fell by the wayside. It’s sad now I think about it, but I think it means we really needed to go through this 10-year-itch to realise just how much needed to change in our marriage.

Now, our relationship feels exciting again and less predictable. I feel like a new woman!

*Names have been changed