The Ultimate Guide To Quickies

Sometimes you have time for a marathon. You've spent a long, romantic dinner together where the flirting was laid on thick and you're primed to go for hours. You're transported back to the first time you ever had sex, where every touch, every sensation, was orgasmic. You just can't get enough and there's literally nothing else in the world you'd rather do than him. Other times, you want to connect after a long, stressful day and a chaotic bedtime routine that never seemed to end, but you also really want to watch another episode of that new show you're both loving before you pass out from exhaustion. You don't just want to have "maintenance sex," you want the real deal, but also... you've got like 10 minutes to make that happen. For those of us (a.k.a. most women) that haven't been blessed with spontaneous desire, a "quickie" can feel daunting, or like a task to be checked off your to-do list. Admittedly, it's hard to tap into your responsive desire in thirty seconds flat when time isn't on your side. But that's what we're tackling today. Disclaimer: This article is intended for readers 18 and older. It contains explicit adult content and is intended for married women for educational purposes only. Reader discretion is advised. The biggest mental shift women need is permission to stop treating short sex as lesser sex. While date-night sex is generally going to be the most relationship-giving and memorable, quickies are what allow you to thrive in between those date-nights. In that way, they're almost more important. Ditch the all-or-nothing mindset right now and this whole idea will become that much easier. The Easiest Place To Start I'll die on this hill: a quickie in the morning is the easiest place to start. And no, that's not just my personal preference. Every man on earth wakes up horny, and if you think yours doesn't, you're either missing something or you've rejected him so many times he simply stopped trying. There's science to back it up , too. Male testosterone follows a daily rhythm called the diurnal cycle, and it peaks in the early morning between roughly 7 and 10 a.m., when levels can be 25–35% higher than they'll be later that same afternoon. Plus, you're already in bed together and probably half-dressed. You couldn't make it easier on yourself if you tried. Despite that, I used to reject my husband's advances in the morning. Once in a while, he'd get through to me, but most mornings I'd grumble something along the lines of "I'm tired. Let me sleep." Nice, right? Good morning to you, too. But about a year ago (several years into our marriage, mind you), something shifted. Now I can't tell you exactly what that thing was. It could've been my postpartum hormones, my confidence in my body that was finally bouncing back (thanks, Pilates), or our relationship itself, but I thought, "Am I really doing anything more important than connecting with my husband right now?" Unless we're up all night with the kids, we usually get at least 8 hours of sleep. And even if we didn't, is that extra 15 minutes of sleep really worth it? I decided it wasn't. I might be one of the most high-strung women you'll ever meet. I can't remember a single time since I had our first son that I've truly felt "relaxed." But, on my "spectrum of stress," I'll call it, I'm most relaxed and open to jumping spontaneously into sex in the mornings when I'm still half-asleep and my brain hasn't yet had a chance to bombard me with tasks and alarm bells for the day ahead. The desire catches up faster than you think. There's a window in the morning, maybe twenty minutes between when your eyes open and when your brain fully boots up, where you haven't yet remembered that the dishwasher needs to be unloaded, the dog needs a walk, you forgot to respond to that email from your boss, and your four-year-old has a dentist appointment you absolutely have to leave for in an hour. That window is your opening because your nervous system is still soft, your guard is down, and you don't have the time to overthink it. By 9 a.m., you're a different woman (well, at least I am), and not in a good way. So, before that window closes, I've found it's easier to just go for it, even if I don't quite feel "ready" yet. This is a little different than faking it til you make it, though. This is letting your body warm up during sex rather than insisting it has to be fully on board before sex begins. Which, by the way, is exactly how responsive desire works in practice. The arousal shows up in response to what's happening, not in anticipation of it. So start anyway. The desire catches up faster than you think. Another reason why I love a morning quickie is because it truly sets the tone for the rest of our day. By the time we're both downstairs with the kids, we're much more patient with each other, more loving, and more at ease. It's the difference between a morning where I peck my husband on the lips as he rushes out the door, and a morning where we're making out as I'm practically pulling his shirt back inside the house for round two. If You Need More Of A Warm-Up This is where my last article on flirting comes in handy. If a morning quickie still feels like a stretch, or you know your brain needs a longer runway than "alarm goes off, jump on husband," try giving yourself the entire afternoon to warm up instead. Sex therapists call this the " extended invitation. " You tell him in the middle of the day that you want him later, and now you've both got something to think about until the kids are down. It takes the pressure off you to suddenly feel something at 9 p.m., which, as established, is when you are running on fumes and one chicken nugget you ate off your toddler's plate. And it gives your brain hours to prime itself. By the time he walks in the door, your body has had a chance to catch up to the plan instead of starting from zero in the dark with the baby monitor humming. The text doesn't have to be a novel, either. "Don't get too tired today, I have plans for you" is plenty. Then you've got options. A quickie in the shower while he's rinsing off after a long workday is one of the most underrated forms of intimacy in marriage, and the warm water does half the work of relaxing your nervous system for you. Or a quickie in bed before you start the show you've been meaning to watch for three weeks. Either way, you've given yourself the runway you needed, and you've turned a regular Tuesday into something that feels a little like the early days, when you actually anticipated each other. Finding The Equation That Works Generally speaking, a quickie is not the time to experiment with something crazy. Unless you're new to this with your husband, you both likely already know exactly what gets each of you there fastest. Whether that's a certain position, dirty talk, or giving cues that you're really into it, find your equation and utilize it. Save exploration for the long sessions. For women specifically, this usually means direct clitoral stimulation alongside penetration. Use a position that allows his hand or yours to be involved (think modified spooning, standing from behind with a counter for leverage, or you on top leaning forward). Women average 14–20 minutes to orgasm with direct stimulation, so positions that allow simultaneous clitoral contact are non-negotiable if mutual finish is the goal. Dirty talk is another tool in your toolbox that works beautifully for quickies and can be really powerful. You don't have to be a porn star to mutter a few words or phrases that will have your husband dropping to his knees. Especially for quickies, whispering something in his ear like "get upstairs, I can't wait any longer," or "I bet I can make you come in five minutes" is extremely effective. Dirty talk is most useful toward the end of your time allowance, though. Don't underutilize the ability to make your husband orgasm with the most simple, yet most useful phrase of all: "come for me." Above all, enthusiasm is likely what's going to work in your favor the most. If he can tell that you're just not into it, it's going to be much harder for him to get there. Grabbing him tightly, gyrating your hips, passionately making out with him, and moaning are all going to help immensely in both of you reaching orgasm and making it an encounter that you feel positive about. Logistics To Consider If you're ready to become a master at quickies, lube is about to become your best friend. It literally has to be. For my husband and I, it's become so attached to us that we literally sleep with a bottle in between our sets of pillows. You can laugh at that. I know how ridiculous it sounds. But I'll be honest, if we don't have lube within arm's reach, you can count me out. There's no world in which I'm going to enjoy a quickie when my body has zero lube and zero time to warm up to sex. It's going to be dry down there and no one wants that. No one. Our favorite lube for years now has been Lauryn Bosstick's ( The Skinny Confidential ) Woo More Play . It's organic, made of coconut oil, smells amazing, and has never given my very sensitive body an issue. It also doesn't make me cringe and feel like a boomer in the way K-Y Jelly tends to. They sell Woo More Play on Amazon and it usually lasts us a few months using it daily. Buy one, buy two, heck, buy three if you're really committed. Hide it all over your house and allow a quickie to unfold anywhere. Lube is about to become your best friend. A couple other logistics to figure out now rather than in the moment: having (working) locks on your doors and jotting down a mental shortlist of which rooms in the house offer true privacy when the kids (if you have them) are awake. While I'm a fan of the morning quickie because I know my kids are safely in their rooms sleeping still and our bedroom door is locked, one of the most incredible quickies I've had recently was in our upstairs guest bathroom while our kids were watching a movie downstairs. It was totally unexpected. After all, I actually went upstairs to throw a load of laundry in, but when my husband showed up a minute later pressing himself against me, I knew that laundry was going to have to wait. We tucked quickly into the guest bathroom only a few feet away, locked the door, and he lifted me up on the counter for possibly the hottest 6 minutes of my year. When we returned back downstairs, the kids hadn't even realized we left. Now, if you and your husband both work from home (or you're a SAHM), a lunch time or nap time quickie could be just what the doctor ordered. Another fun window to pop a quickie into is before a date night or social event because it creates a shared secret that makes the whole evening that much hotter. If you find yourself exhausted, bloated, or overstimulated after a night out, leading you to skip sex then, a quickie beforehand may just be the solution you need. The Most Important Permission Slip You'll Ever Receive Skip the orgasm requirement. I mean it. Look, no one wants to talk about this because, at its core, it feels a little male-centered, but my priority during a quickie generally isn't to orgasm. It's to connect with my husband, and yes, receive pleasure, but ultimately give it. My sex drive isn't relentless like my husband's is, so if he didn't want to have sex every day, we probably wouldn't. Being in a healthy marriage though means compromising, and sometimes that compromise looks like you enjoying sex, but not reaching climax every single time you have a quickie. There's nothing wrong with that. If you're having a genuinely quick quickie, there's actually a very small likelihood that you'll orgasm since women's bodies take so much longer to reach climax from ground zero than men's. Removing that performance pressure is what makes quickies enjoyable, and also repeatable. A quickie that's a "tease" for one of you where one finishes and the other doesn't can actually build anticipation for later, if framed in the right way. If you're left wanting more but time is genuinely up, you can say something like "we can settle the score tonight." That alone is guaranteed to have him thinking about you all day long. The 30-Second Afterglow Rule We're going to end on this one since it's important to the desire to continue having quickies, and ultimately, the health of your marriage. Even thirty seconds of holding each other after a quickie turns "we just had sex" into "we just connected." A final, lingering kiss, an "I love you," or a laugh about how ridiculous you both just looked in the bathroom mirror is what your brain will remember. When you skip afterglow care, even for quickies, sex begins to feel transactional. When you skip afterglow care, even for quickies, sex begins to feel transactional. The more you do it, the more fun it gets. Your body learns the pattern, your brain stops protesting, and fifteen minutes stops feeling like a sacrifice and starts feeling like the best part of your morning, or your afternoon, or the gap between bath time and bedtime stories. Sex becomes something woven into the fabric of your days instead of a separate event you have to summon the energy for. So do it (him) more often, until it becomes second nature and folds into the rhythm of your everyday life. Your marriage will flourish because of it. Want more relationship advice? Order our latest print magazine now: The Sex Issue!