The gateway touch

I am in close physical contact with my kids all day long. You too, right? Although they give very sweet hugs and kisses, 99% of the physical contact is what I call taking-touching. They are touching me to take love, take affection, take security. And I am happy to give it; it's a big part of the mom-job.

But you know what's coming, right? By the end of the day when I finally get some alone time with the husband, I am touched-out. I have been touched by little humans all day long, and I've had enough. What I really crave is for nothing to touch me except the leather sofa and the remote control. 

So yeah--it's hard to transition from Point A (kids taking-touching me all day long) to Point B (lovemaking with husband).

The solution? The gateway touch. My husband is pretty good at this. We'll be sitting on the sofa watching TV and he will start rubbing my feet. Or if I sit on the floor in front of him and hunch my shoulders pathetically, he knows it's his signal to massage them. My favorite is to have my head touched: temples rubbed, hair stroked, jaw massaged. All of these fall under the category of giving-touching. I can't stress enough how important it is for a mom to be given this sort of comfort at the end of the day. And the gateway touch can lead to other kinds of touching...and maybe even get us to Point B.

Now, you have to make sure your husband knows about the gateway touch. Otherwise you'll find yourself going from hugging and kissing and toting and carrying your little ones...to suddenly having a boner pressed into your backside by a bumbling husband desperate to make contact. You've got to tell him that you need a gateway touch to help you transition from taking to giving. And if he does it right, he might even get lucky in the end.