Married sex is like making risotto: always nice, but often you can’t be arsed | Romesh Ranganathan (original) (raw)

I wrote most of my last tour in Crawley, which sounds like an incredibly obvious thing to say given that I live in Crawley. But what I mean is that I would work up half an hour or so of material, book the small studio room at the Hawth theatre near my house, and try the stuff out there.

Crawley audiences have seen the absolute worst of me. When you write new material, you can sometimes go too far for the laugh. My routines start way too offensive, and the audience response usually helps me dial them back to something more acceptable.

One part of my routine detailed my sex life, or lack thereof, with my wife, Leesa. Obviously, I hadn’t honed it by that point, so it was a pretty frank discussion of what Leesa and I were experiencing passion-wise. I have a vivid memory of seeing her face in the audience, looking completely calm, and then glancing across to our friends, who looked utterly horrified at the prospect of going out for dinner with a couple they now knew were definitely not having sex when they got home.

Leesa is to blame for a lot of the offence caused. People often ask me if she minds me talking about her, but she genuinely sees it all as just comedy, and therefore meaningless. Which means I get all blase and think it’s fine, and then all of her friends think I’m a bastard. While we’re all now more relaxed about sexual content on screen, talking about the sexual dynamics of an actual relationship is still a big taboo. But the truth is that when you are a decade into a marriage, sex is a bit like making a risotto: it’s always nice, but a lot of the time you really can’t be arsed. In the past, you might have cleared an evening for it; now you try to fit it in early, so that you can watch two episodes of a box set before bed. I’m not going to say this fully describes our sex life because that would be indiscreet, but I will tell you that we are watching a lot of Sneaky Pete at the moment.

In our case, children (three of them) obviously have their part to play. It’s very difficult to be unexhausted enough to engage in passionate sex, plus we have both discussed the horror of one of them walking in on us. I don’t even know how much money would have to go into counselling the boys out of “that time we were at Butlin’s and I saw my dad’s flat arse going up and down at what even as a child I would describe as quite a sedate pace”.

Bringing up a lack of sex can be an issue in itself. “Sex” sounds too clinical, but all the euphemisms sound too funny when said in an adult conversation about diary arrangements: “Next Thursday after dinner do you fancy a shag/a bonk/doing it/a hump/a knee-trembler/a hello sailor.”

That said, Leesa is quite masterful when she wants to stand me down. Sometimes she suspects I’m going to suggest sex and gets an excuse in early, usually after we finish dinner. She will say something like, “That was really filling, wasn’t it?”, and what she means is, “Do not even think of trying to touch me later”. Or we might go upstairs, where she will start taking off her clothes in a very non-sexual way, saying things like, “I’m so hot”. To be fair, that does sound quite sexy, except that Leesa says she’s hot in the manner of a frustrated toddler miming that they’re drenched in sweat. These are all signs for me to put away the launch codes.

I know other couples who have just accepted that sex is now too much effort, and have given up altogether. And while I believe that acceptance will bring them nothing but happiness, I do worry about what not having sex means for our relationship. I’ve read countless articles suggesting the first sign that a marriage is struggling is when the sex slows down. Whenever you read about people having affairs, it’s because their partner wasn’t giving them enough attention.

I once jokingly asked Leesa about this and she replied that living with the boys and me left her too tired to think about adultery. I’m pretty happy about that. If you want to keep your relationship together, you either show your partner the love and attention they need, so they can live a happy life and never think about going elsewhere. Or you drain them physically and emotionally to the point where searching for something better would be just too exhausting.

For now, we’re trying to be more chilled out, which I think is helpful. Rather than panicking about the fact we haven’t docked for a bit, we just live our lives and then, when it does happen, it’s a lovely surprise that doesn’t feel like putting the bins out.

Meanwhile, I am worried about whether we’re putting enough energy into other aspects of our relationship. Do I share enough responsibilities at home? Do I give Leesa enough gifts? Sometimes, for our anniversary, I manage to pull something together and give Leesa a nice day and a series of presents. The next year, I might just get her a card. I suspect this is the worst possible situation; she has to feign gratitude regardless of what is delivered. Obviously she needs to do that when the kids give her the pasta jewellery they’ve made at school, but you shouldn’t have to do it with your husband. In the nights before her birthday, she’s not sure whether she is going to get a holiday, or a piece of A4 paper folded in two with “World’s Best Wife and Mum” written on it in crayon.

But I try to be romantic. A few months ago, Leesa’s girls’ night out fell through so I suggested that the two of us go out for a meal instead. She agreed, and we spent some time smugly discussing how great it was that we were still planning romantic things, as if going out for dinner was something revolutionary.

I had a gig first, so she came to the set. But as we left the comedy club, one of us said, “Can you be bothered to do dinner now?” Suddenly it felt like an unbearable pain in the arse, so we decided to bin off the restaurant, go to Tesco, buy a load of snacks and have a night in watching films.

On the way home, it occurred to us that we were going to have to explain to the babysitter why we were back early with Tesco shopping. I imagined she would take one look at us, and immediately decide never to be in a relationship, ever.

So we made a tragic decision: we went to the pub to have a drink, just to kill enough time to make us not look like losers. We sat in the pub laughing about how sad we were, and the fact that the most excitement we’d had was discovering the pub had the chilli crisps we both really like. Then, having killed enough time, we rolled in at the absolutely irresponsible hour of 10.15pm.

I realise there is a strong possibility that Leesa and I have got too comfortable. We could not know more about each other; there are no surprises left. This was brought into sharp focus by lockdown, which for many long-term couples was a preview of what life will be like in retirement. You are no longer generating separate experiences and so have nothing new to say to each other, unless you can come up with something sparkling that happened in the bathroom. The bar at which you think a story is worth sharing drops rapidly. Leesa came home after a walk to tell me she thought she had seen a fox but it was in fact a cat.

I sometimes wonder how any couple survives beyond that point where you have heard each other’s stories numerous times, and are bored to death by them. It’s exciting when you have a banger anecdote that the group you are with haven’t heard; but it’s also terrible for your other half, who has to watch you go through the motions once again, noticing the little changes and alterations to make it funnier, how each time you move it away from the original truth, until one day they are listening to you recount the story at a wedding and suddenly scream, “That’s not even what fucking happened any more!”

But maybe getting to that stage of comfort, of being fully saturated in someone else’s life, is entirely the point. I am not sure about this obsession with keeping things spicy.

I’m sceptical of anything that looks too perfect: whenever I see couples who cannot stop playing with each other’s hair or kissing, I can’t believe they don’t go home and have huge blowouts about the sell-by date of a yoghurt. Yes, I understand the appeal of not farting in front of each other, and going out on mad evenings all the time with surprise romantic experiences; the pair of you sitting at home ready to watch an episode of Tiger King, when your other half cries, “Forget Tiger King, I’m going to show you the real thing!”, and you jump in a car and head to a late-night dinner at a safari park.

But is it so wrong to really enjoy just sitting and watching Tiger King? I like having a drink while quietly watching a show, with occasional moments to talk about what an absolute lunatic Joe Exotic is. I like that sometimes we are honest and say we can’t be arsed to do anything tonight, and we just read books next to each other. These are all nice, comfortable things, and I hope that Leesa feels the same way – although maybe I’m about to find out that she’s secretly plotting her escape from this loveless prison, as every hour of Netflix ticks by.

All I know is that I am currently in the best stage of my relationship. Yes, the other night I was pulling on my boxer shorts before bed, and I got my toe stuck in one of the legs and had a little tumble, and I’m almost certain that my wife Leesa looked across at me to see my penis and gelatinous belly jiggle up and down as I frantically hopped to try to regain balance. But that’s what knowing each other is. Fully and completely. It’s not as exciting or as sexy as that getting-to-know-you bit at the beginning, but it’s a lot less exhausting.

‘Bringing up a lack of sex can be an issue in itself.’ Photograph: Pål Hansen/The Guardian

‘He has got it spot on about being too tired to have an affair’: what Leesa says

When Romesh told me that I was going to have a right to reply, I readied myself to disagree with everything he said. But, honestly, it’s all fairly accurate. The night I went to watch him at that gig, I was at the side of the stage with our friends, feeling slightly uncomfortable – not because of what Romesh what was saying, but more that there were people in the audience who knew me. When I went to watch the final tour show some months later, I had no problem hearing Romesh talk about our relationship; me, the anonymous wife. It felt like a truthful routine about the state of our sex life, and typical of how my friends describe theirs.

What Romesh says about us being comfortable is true. We want to have an exciting relationship, and we try to make the effort, but when the evening rolls round we both end up agreeing that we would rather stay home and hang out with the kids, or have our “date night” at home over a nice meal and some wine. We are best friends, and we make each other laugh.

I didn’t think I was making excuses to stop Romesh’s advances, but I suppose I do talk about how much I am looking forward to reading the book I’ve started in bed. The truth is, life gets in the way. It’s difficult to get yourself in the mood when you know you have to be up at 6.30am to start getting the kids ready for school, something that Romesh manages to fairly effectively sleep through.

He is incredibly inconsistent with gifts. He claims he’s busy and disorganised but, without blowing my own trumpet (something Romesh might get me for an anniversary), I manage and I have the boys. I’m not asking for better presents, just a bit of consistency, so it’s not embarrassing when friends ask what he’s got me.

He has got it spot on about being too tired to have an affair. The thought of shaving my legs and not being able to be myself in front of someone new just seems like a lot of effort. Also, I love Romesh. But it is a lot to do with the leg shaving.