Dear Amritsar,
After 15 years of marriage, I have finally found an amazing lover. He opens me up like the time lapse film of a budding flower they used to force us to watch in high school biology class. When we make love, I see more fireworks than on Christmas, New Year's Eve and Take Your Child to Work Day combined!
Oddly enough, my new lover is my husband. Can you cheat on your husband with your husband?
When we were first experimenting with lovemaking (we lived together for 37 seconds before we tied the knot), Agamemnon the Sipid couldn't find my clitoris with GPS, a miner's helmet and the interactive edition of Women's Naughty Bits for Dummies! His idea of foreplay was to watch the latest episode of The Walking Dead - does that tell a story, or what?
The first time Aggie took me to Action Central and three quarters of the way back, I wanted to ask him what had changed, but he turned over and went back to sleep. Nothing new there, so, I dropped the subject and basked in my 1,000 watt afterglow. (Do you think I could get a SSHRC grant to study harnessing that power?) I have never basked so much in my life, let me tell you! I basked more than a dozen teenagers on a beach just before the serial killer starts picking them off!
The next night, Aggie was back to groping my thigh in search of my G-Spot. <rolls eyes /> Then, three nights later, I was back on the Ecstasy Express bound for glory! Halleluiah! This pattern went on for a couple of weeks, until one night I realized what was going on: Aggie wasn't making love to me and falling asleep, he was making love to me while he was asleep.
I'm sure you can see the problem.
Clytemnestra the Fair...ly Ordinary by Historical Standards
Hey, Babe,
Umm, yes, certainly, I can, err, see the problem. The problem is painfully obvious. But, uhh, why don't you spell it out for the readers who, aah, may not be as insightful as I am?Oh. Okay.
The problem is that I don't want to wake him up when he is sleep-loving the living daylights out of me - what if he reverts back to Caveman Aggie? But, I can't stand him to touch me when he's awake; once you've had caviar, you can't go back to Krofft Dinner and borscht. And, I like Krofft Dinner. I have gotten out of it by saying that making love the night before meeting with my bridge club would throw off my game; unfortunately, after three weeks, the almost nightly excuse is, frankly, starting to wear thin.
What should I do?
Clytemnestra the Fair...ly Ordinary by Historical Standards
Hey, Babe,
Of course. That's exactly what I thought the problem was.
Although it sounds like a rock opera by The Who, sexsomnia is actually the condition where somebody has sex while they are asleep. You know something is real when there is a medical term for it (except for Jackson's Phlebitis).
How does sexsomnia work? Most people believe that sleep is an all or nothing proposition, like being pregnant or being a fan of George Clooney's Ocean's Eleven movies. Some sleep researchers have called this belief into question (the question being: "Is the common wisdom completely wrong?"). They believe that sleep comes in stages, with different parts of the brain shutting down at different times, like watching any of George Clooney's Ocean's Eleven movies.
If this theory is true, your conscious mind could be asleep while your body was mowing the lawn (sleep-mowing), brushing your teeth (sleep-dentology) or passing changes to the tax code that favour the wealthy (Conservativism). Because the person was not conscious, they would have no memory of their actions. Does this sound like your husband?
Dear Amritsar,
Yes! Yes, that's it exactly!
Clytemnestra the Fair...ly Ordinary by Historical Standards
Hey, Babe,
Tough one.
A hypnotist might be able to convince your husband to sex you up like he was sleeping while he was awake, but this area of somnosexuality needs far more research before any cure can be considered definitive. Fortunately, there are enough volunteers to keep the research going for centuries!
If this doesn't work, you may just have to swallow your Krofft Dinner and borscht to get what you want. Women have swallowed worse.
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: human sexuality is confusing enough without cloaking what's really going on in euphemism. If you want to talk about ferking, call it ferking!