For months now, I’ve been complaining to my husband about the disappearance of our date nights. Our last one (PechaKucha Night and dinner at Miku) was in January! I guess life intervened – work got busier, kids play-dates and activities ran us ragged and unshowered, it seems even the weather conspires against us. It’s all we can do to wrestle the kids into bed at 9PM and then we spend 2-3 hours on laptops in different rooms, catching up on email and bills. We even schedule things with each other via our wireless internet instead of walking the 20 feet to each other’s “office” and having a conversation. We collapse into bed at different times, him at 11PM, me closer to midnight. Add baseball 4 nights a week and this never ending rainy weather, I’m surprised that we remember that we love each other at all.

I know I am loved. But after nearly 20 years into a relationship, is it even possible to still lust for one’s partner?

We’ve heard over and over again that date nights are the answer. But we find this advice somewhat awkward as we were friends first. Actually, we were secret lovers first (our MBA school discouraged class romances saying they’re too distracting). Then we moved on to being haters (MBA school was right), then surprisingly to colleagues at CIBC, then friends, until one day he let me crash as his apartment when I moved to Toronto and I never left. I don’t remember him ever wooing me and now I’m in my mid-life crisis, I feel it’s absence. Strangers at Buffalo Bills or at your local construction site will make plain their desire for anything that has a vagina, but I’m finding it’s really important to me to feel desired by the man I’m married to.

As my life coach always says, once you make your needs known, the next move is up to him.

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Yesterday I got a call from a man I did my MBA with. He was from my Marketing class to be exact. We exchanged pleasantries for awhile and came upon a pause in the conversation. Then he asked me out to dinner! That night! Even though I already had dinner already prepared, I said yes and we started giggling helplessly, like teenagers.

We laughed because it actually was my husband on the phone, but his gesture was sincere. He later admitted that his feet started sweating when he was dialling my cell phone number. Even though he knows he has me, he still wooed me. It was delicious and I highly recommend it.

Failing that, John Gray has come out with a new product called Balanced Planets’ Marriage Saving Shake. Dr. Oz, apparently, is a fan.

I’ll drink to that!
Love Lucie