The Married Couple’s Guide to Bedroom Etiquette

I can’t tell you how many times people give me the old wink of an eye and casually say something like, “Well, it’s obvious you don’t have any problems in the bedroom — you know, with having 8 kids and all!”

Say what?

You think that’s what’s been going on in our boudoir for the past 24 years? 

As painful and humbling as this may be, I’m going to share a few “bedroom” secrets with you from “between the sheets” of a married couple’s 24-year stint of intimate togetherness.

It was obvious to me from the first few weeks we were married we were going to get along just fine in the bedroom. Not only did we purchase a dark, knotty pine waterbed from that popular store, Sleepy Hollow, (well, something like that), which was encased with built-in cabinetry (complete with mood lighting) and was loaded with extra drawer space for essentials like Doritos, Reese’s Cups and diet coke! (Did this utterly disappoint you or have you cheering from the sidelines?). The icing on the cake was our investment of an awesome 16-inch screen TV that came with not one, but two remote controls!

Talk about Nirvana!

Now, keep in mind that we were both in the best shape of our lives at this point in our marriage. Eating a bag of Doritos was not only like foreplay, it didn’t add an ounce to either of our 24-year-old physiques. (My, how times do change! Now we wouldn’t attempt sharing an apple together for fear the natural sugars would make us do crazy things or, worse, gain a few pounds!)

So, let’s take a step back in time to that knotty-pine water bed. We got married in 1987, the era of the “wave” waterbed. The minute your body lay down on the heated pool, I mean mattress, you did one of two things— threw up or grabbed the Dramamine stashed next to the Hershey’s Miniatures and hoped for the best. My husband has a bad back. Did I mention that?

Back in the day ... those newlywed years when I could talk him into just about anything — buying cocker spaniels at those wretched mall pet stores, investing in top-of-the-line white linen sectional sofas, getting him to wear pink/green checked Ralph Lauren polo pants, and advising he hang out with my bridesmaids instead of going golfing with his college buddies — I was calling the shots! (Did I just admit that in public?)

Let me catch you up!

The water bed lasted all of a year. It wasn’t doing a thing to help my husband’s bad back and we were desperately trying to conceive our first baby (there I go again — sharing in public!) and were too busy being tossed from the sea swells (God, I hope my parents aren’t reading this!) to accomplish that. So we did the only logical thing: We sold it and bought an extra firm mattress.

Five years later (jump ahead to 1992) we have since moved from our lovely starter house in Warwick — the one with 4 bedrooms underneath the flight path at TF Greene — to our dream home in Coventry, with 6 bedrooms, an in-ground pool and a master bedroom the size of our now entire upstairs living quarters.

Though it boasted horrendous rust colored carpet, the bed itself took up only 1/8 of the room and we no longer needed the storage cabinetry beside the bed to house our hobbies, so we now had enough room for an extra-large mini fridge! The diet coke was a thing of the past and my newfound love, Chardonnay, had a place to call home! 

Before you go thinking I’m now a total lush, let me explain. This bedroom on Peach Tree Lane now had enough room to house our favorite books, games and collectibles. It had become a one-stop comfort/entertainment dwelling where we both retreated to find peace from our hectic days.

Within a year of landing in our new homestead, we became the beaming parents of an adopted baby girl and our honeymoon suite had now turned into a complete baby nursery! Are you getting the picture?

Jump ahead to 2011. Now we're living in our third home with our current love nest bathed in peaches and cream and the mini fridge (Bwaaaaahhhh!) is long gone and my computer has since landed in the only nooky, I mean corner, of our bedroom. The TV is a thing of the past, the steam shower — bye bye — and my loving husband still has a bad back. Ouch!

So, next time you wonder how it is that we’ve been happily married for 24 years without killing one another, please take note that we owe it all to our bedroom. And all this time you thought multi-tasking was for the real go getters in this world! Nah — it’s the secret to keeping “things” alive and well in the bedroom!