Some parents are introducing a third party in to their relationship
Every Saturday I spend 3-4 hours at the new “confessional” in my country town – the day spa. There, like minded ladies talk, bitch and weep. We strip ourselves bare, physically and emotionally.
During these sacred sessions I have met a colourful collection of women. They are vibrant multi-tasking masters of their universes, full of Girlpower attitude, but some with spicy secrets to keep their the spark in their post-baby marriages .
Rather than take the predictable route of “rediscovering one another”, date nights and erotic lingerie, some time-poor mums are trying something new – outsourcing.
Faith*, a hot young mother of two lets her husband have what she calls a “spice girl” once a month. “The porn industry has a fluffer, I have a “spice girl”,” she declared matter-of-factly. “She tends to my husband libido so I can concentrate on raising the kids.”
“Are you for real?” I gasped.
“She is a prostitute, if you want to use that term... I pay her once a month to give my husband what he needs but there are rules.”
Faith’s rule for her husband’s spice girl are no kissing, safe sex, no anal and no swallowing. (If they are practising safe sex what is she going to swallow - his nose?)
I discovered Faith was not alone. Trudy, 34, a family lawyer (who could pass for a librarian) and mother of one goes on weekend ‘get-a-lays’... yes you read it here. She and her husband of eight years travel interstate and choose a random lady for a night of ‘spice and delight’ (her words). Trudy’s rules are that the lady must 1. Be a non smoker, 2. Have real breasts, 3. Be Trudy’s ‘type’ and 4. That her husband can only have sex with the woman on Trudy’s consent.
These guidelines, she assures me, keep her the driver and navigator of the spice experience. If they fail to find a candidate, I ask, do they enjoy the weekend away from the baby, with each other? “No, I shop and he plays golf” she replied.
On the other hand, Lisa, 28, has a raging libido, which she declares proudly has never waned... and only heightened after baby number four. Her husband of seven years was the one who needed the “spicing” so she has on a number of occasions invited a close girlfriend into the bedroom, where they mix it up.
By this point I was suffering information overload and beginning to melt in the sauna. “This is ok with you ladies?’ I asked incredulously. To which the general consensus was ‘couldn’t be happier’. Most insightful was Trudy’s response. “I have a full-time job (the kids), a part-time career and a full-time marriage... and I don’t fly around the universe in blue spandex, yielding a golden lasso... I’m not f*&%$ Wonder Woman!”
As a feminist at heart, I believe in women having the ability to make choices which suit their lifestyles. Significantly, we have surrogate mothers, wet nurses, nannies and cleaners. Is a “spice girl” not just a very “personal” assistant?
I asked the husbands how they felt about this and not surprisingly it works for them. Two confessed that after witnessing the birth of their babies, it was very hard to see their wives as sexual beings for now.
Armed with these new revelations I pitched the Spice Girl phenomena to my ‘salt-of-the-earth’ no-frills Aussie man. He looked suspiciously at me and asked, “Is this a trick question? Are you asking me to get takeout?”
“Yes, if you had that as an option”, I replied.
After some serious deliberation he switched off ESPN and said to me, “If you get spicy takeout it will always cost babe; not money but from your heart... it will ache (just a little), never mind how sexually empowering you may think it is. And anyway... spicy food gives me gas.”
And that, ladies, is why I love him!
*Names have been changed
