That bitch has SOME NERVE wearing white.

It was with great interest that I read this little vignette about two couples who, suffering from the oft-noted sexual dry spell that comes from being married-with-children, decided to spice up their lives with some seriously frequent fucking. In one case, they made a solid attempt to bone every day for a year.

Apart from making my jaw drop, it really got me thinking about my own sex life. (Note to my parents: I know you're reading this. You might want to stop here.)

Not that I'm going to launch into a graphic discussion about this -- the how and where and which orifice stuff is best left to the inimitable One D at a Time -- but my wedding is three months away. My chances of banging James McAvoy without committing actual, state-defined adultery are shrinking by the minute, and the outrageous dreams I'd been having have gone right over the edge from "slightly unsettling" to "completely absurd". (The latest cast of characters has included, in no particular order: the cross-eyed guy who hangs out in my neighborhood bodega, an extra from the movie "Elizabeth", and my dentist.)

But even more than that, there's this other little problem that's begun to loom large in my mind -- probably the result of my watching too many period dramas, set in times when premarital sex was a major no-no, in which people got married at least in part because it meant that they could share a bed. In those movies, people go home from their wedding and have explosive, ridiculous, pantingly urgent post-nuptial sex. Corsets are ripped off! End tables are overturned! Broad, manly backs with rippling muscles are scratched in slow motion! It makes sense because, if we are to believe the pretense, these people have never done it before. Their entire sexual relationship, pre-wedding, is pretty much limited to taking long walks in the countryside and furiously dry humping behind trees when nobody is looking.

Oh, my quivering loins! Damn you, 1800s, with your upright Puritan principles
and your seventeen layers of impossible underwear! DAMN YOU!

Brad and I, on the other hand -- and please, try not to faint with shock -- have Already Done It.

Which leaves the question: How does a couple who are living in the cohabitation-and-fornication-friendly 21st century go home on their wedding night and have oh-my-god-we-can-finally-do-this Empire Period sex?

Thus far, I have no good answer to this. Some married friends of mine have suggested we abstain for a month beforehand, which apparently worked well for them, but this approach worries me for a few reasons. First, I'm afraid that it will be too difficult -- that I cannot survive for a month without sex, and that if I somehow manage it, I will be so debilitatingly horny that I will completely cease to function, and would eventually be found running naked through the park in a sex-starved fugue state, trying to rub myself inappropriately on trees, benches, and picnicking families.

My second worry, at the other end of the spectrum, is that it will be too easy. Suppose we abstain from sex for a month and it's not a challenge whatsoever? Suppose neither one of us even suffers? What would that say about our relationship? What if it becomes later fodder for arguments in which one of us is upset about, say, the dishes being unwashed, and the other retorts, "Oh yeah? Well, remember that time we didn't have sex for a month? I didn't even MISS IT!"



While I'm not exactly comfortable ending this post with, "Hey, internet strangers, tell me your wedding-sex-preparation stories"... well, let's just say that I consider the comments below a prime venue for, you know, sharing.

Help a sister out.