How many times have you thought that and kept it to yourself? I know I have. When our relationship changed from pals to lovers one thing we always promised each other was that we’d never say no, even if we didn’t feel like it. So if I’m definitely not in the mood, I will always be ok with a quickie and that’s always ok with him.

Should I say no?

I was reading a blog the other day and the writer crapped on about being honest and truthful to oneself and having the guts to say no. She mentioned sex but she meant in everything. If you don’t want to help out on neighborhood cleanup day or you don’t want to take your mother to her doctor’s appointment and you don’t want to take your kid to music lessons — then you shouldn’t do it.

Isn’t that what life is all about? The give and take that makes life complete? There are exceptions of course. If you’re a doormat who can never say no to anything, then learning to say no once in a while is a good thing.

But back to sex. Everything always leads back to sex around here.

As a woman who’s probably past her prime (who am I kidding?), I recall many times in my past that I was exhausted and all I wanted to do was sleep. I didn’t feel sexy, I don’t think I looked sexy and I didn’t have time to do anything about it. I worked 9 hours a day and had two kids and a house to take care of. I wasn’t alone but I may as well have been. My mother told me that I’d get to a point where sex wasn’t important and she was right, but for all the wrong reasons.

Now sex makes me feel terrific — even if I’m not in the mood. I’m with someone who wouldn’t be offended if I said I wasn’t in the mood when he asked if I felt frisky, because he’s confident enough to say, “I am, how about a quickie?”

As the world’s top condom experts convene this week to update international standards, one American entrepreneur has a simple message: size matters.

It’s shaking up an industry that has generally taken a one-size-fits-all approach.

Frank Sadlo, founder of TheyFit, which makes what he claims are the world’s first custom-fit condoms, is pushing for updated standards to allow greater variation in condom size.

Sadlo said his inspiration for custom condoms arose from his days playing baseball at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, where locker room tales of exploits with the opposite sex often failed to include use of condoms due to complaints they did not fit.

It’s not just about well-endowed men in cramped prophylactic quarters, Sadlo told a meeting Thursday of delegates from 21 countries under the Geneva-based International Organisation for Standardisation.

When given a choice, he said many men prefer condoms smaller than the standard minimum 160 millimetres (6.3 inches) long, with more than half ordering those less than 130 millimetres (5.12 inches).

Standards are especially crucial - failure could mean the spread of potentially deadly diseases or unwanted pregnancy.

“Our job is to do away with inferior condoms,” said Eng Long Ong, meeting chairman and deputy head of the Malaysian Rubber Export Promotion Council, which estimates 13-14 billion condoms are made each year.

Getting quality condoms can be especially difficult in places like Africa, where they are a major part of AIDS prevention campaigns.

The length issue is just one of many being debated at the five-day meeting, the 24th such session since 1975, where delegates were creating new standards for synthetic and female condoms.

Synthetic polyurethane condoms are an alternative for people allergic to rubber latex, and can be thinner without losing strength. They also conduct heat better for “much more sensitivity with lovemaking,” said Grant Burt, international division director for Japan’s Sagami Rubber Industries Co.

Innovation for male condoms has focused on adding textures to enhance sexual pleasure, or offering different colours or lubricants. At the meeting, South Korean manufacturer Unidus displayed its “Long-Love” condom - featuring desensitising cream inside to prevent premature ejaculation so men “make a lasting impression.”

Widths vary but condom length is usually standard, as it is believed latex can stretch to fit all men. The average adult penis is 12.7 to 15.24 centimetres (5-6 inches) long, experts said.

A more comfortable condom contributes to men actually using them, said Michael Reece, director of the Centre for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University.

“Typically, when a man complains about condom fit, we have assumed that he means that condoms are too small, and we have often just ignored this complaint because we think that men are bragging about the size of their penis,” Reece said via email.

He said men also have problems with condoms being too large.

“It is time for those who establish condom manufacturing standards to consider whether an expanded range of condom sizes is necessary,” Reece said.

Sadlo offers a “fit kit,” a sheet of paper printed from a computer for sizing - and advising the user to watch out for paper cuts.

According to Pala and Al at 4 Freedoms Relationship Tantra, more and more couples are going back to the ancient arts of sacred sexuality. Since 1987 they’ve been sexual mentors to more people than you can count with a calculator to help them:

• Develop communication that satisfies you both.
• Become a skillful, sexy lover
• Bring sensual-spiritual pleasure to every aspect of your lives.
• Expand your consciousness through the power of love.
• Become the best you can be, together.

They offer weekend retreats at their place in Canada where they teach all this and they also offer Caribbean cruises (that’s the one for me!). This is not an orgy in a different dress, they say on their site that you don’t undress in front of other people. It’s all for you and it’s all good.

Al and Pala have written four books and five e-books and to get you started they offer a free e-book of Kama Sutra sex positions. It’s ancient knowledge in a modern manual. If you want to get that free book for yourself while you’re checking out their site, Tantra-sex.com.

If any of my wonderful readers have been to one of these seminars I would LOVE some comments.

So much is written about women who get married and then lose all desire for sex. I hear it day in and day out from men as the biggest reason they are looking for a new relationship or for a bit of sex on the side. Is it true? DO women lose all desire for sex the month after they say, “I do”?

I don’t think so.

I read a blog the other day that said “researchers say that womens’ libido plummets rapidly when they are in a secure relationship.” Hamburg-Eppendorf University interviewed 530 men and women in Germany. They say that mens’ libido “rarely flagged in over 40 years of marriage.”

I don’t believe it.

Every person’s sexuality and desire for sex waxes and wanes just like our appetite for everything else. We’re always changing. In my personal experience my partners have all gone through times when they could hump like rabbits without stopping to times when once or twice a week was fine.

They found that 1/2 of women over 30 who’d been married about 4 years didn’t want regular sex. Ok, if they’ve been married 4 years there’s a big likelihood that there are new babies involved. Who wants sex (or anything else that requires physical effort) when you’re totally exhausted?

You’re up half the night and can’t rest during the day. Your husband assumes since you’re home all day that you have plenty of time to do the shopping, cleaning, laundry, cooking, caring for the baby AND look like a million dollars full of sexual desire when he walks through the door after a day at work. If someone had asked me how much I liked sex during my first year as a mother I’d have said, “no thanks, I’d prefer a nap.”

Then you have the older woman who seems not to want sex. I say seems because that’s what I think it is. She’s probably got older kids and she’s got a full time job. She gets up in the morning, feeds the kids, cleans up the breakfast dishes, fixes the lunches, gets everyone to the school bus and she gets to her job without a minute to spare. She works all day, rushes to the market to get fixings for dinner and goes home. Rarely does her husband help. Not because he is lazy but he just never thinks of offering to help. His dad never helped.

After dinner she does the cleaning up while he watches the news. She helps the kids with homework while he surfs the net and then she puts in a load of washing and gets the kids bathed and in bed. Clothes into the dryer and then she sorts out what everyone will wear the next day. Finally she runs a quick vacuum over the carpet and heads to bed.

Does this woman feel sexy?

Probably not. She feels tired and taken for granted.

Do all women have this experience? Absolutely not. There are MANY men who realize that a marriage is a partnership and they work together to get everything done so they both have time for themselves. They also realize that caring for and about the children is their job too. Bathing, reading, kissing owies, changing diapers, walks in the park are things they do. They don’t consider it babysitting - it’s parenting. Men like this are most always adored by their wives. I’ve said it heaps of times but a man emptying the dishwasher is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. He validates me and says everything I do is as important as the work he does.

What’s your experience?

Have you ever been with a group of friends and they start talking about something you’re clueless about? You think and think and think and just can’t get a handle on what they’re talking about. It happened to me yesterday. Martha and Sharon decided they’d been working too hard lately and needed a leisurely Friday lunch together and I was asked to come along. Nobody needed a break more than I did so happily off I went.

During lunch Sharon announces she’s having “a bit of luck with the anal bleaching.”

That’s the bit I was clueless about.

I just nodded like I had a fucking clue. Martha, always the one in the know in our group of friends, starts telling about her trip to the dermatologist recently and she got some great cream to take home to use once the “office treatment” stopped doing its job. OK, now if you’re at all like me, my asshole isn’t a public place and I couldn’t imagine cheerfully going to a doctor to expose my backside unless I was in dire need of medical attention. Not so for my pal Martha. She explained that her doctor has a special chair to drape herself over so it opens her ass cheeks to the proper degree to allow inspection and application of lightening cream.

I sort of nodded again and then my mouth opened and started speaking without any thought beforehand, I swear.

“Why is it so important to have a pink bottom when you’re over 50 and you’ve been married for more than 20 years?” my mouth said. Right there I admitted to them both I was an outsider in this conversation.

They both looked at me and then at each other as if to say, “she doesn’t *know*, does she?” Well, they’re right, I didn’t know.

With all the trouble people are having with their mortgages, young men and women dying in Iraq, AIDS crises in most countries, terrorism alerts everywhere, floods and droughts, wars and starvation - why is it important to have no dark brown staining on your butt? I mean if you are a porn star, forgive me because the thought of having thousands of people looking at your butt might make you self conscious.

“It’s the next thing after Brazillian waxing!” Martha exlaimed and Sharon nodded.

So here I was sitting in our favorite restaurant thinking about two of my best friends with bald pussies and REALLY light assholes. Then I wondered out loud if having no hair at all and a really pink butt gave them better sex or more frequent sex or more satisfying sex.

It turns out that the answer is yes. They both agreed that they felt cleaner all the time and every time they moved in their clothing they felt their panties against their skin and found it to be a turnon. I asked how often they were having sex just to see what I was missing out on. It turns out that Martha has sex once a week and Sharon says her average is 1 1/2 times a week. Big Whoop! I get more than that and I don’t have to do a thing other than keep the kitty trimmed.

I was still curious about anal bleaching so as soon as I got home I did some googling and this is a big thing with a lot of women and some men too. You can buy creams online or at many stores that will lighten the skin around your anus. I wondered if I should ask for some do-it-myself cream for my birthday or go all out and ask for a day of total rectal beautification. Problem is, he might never notice! Why spend that sort of cash for something nobody would see. Geez.. give me diamonds any day!

In addition to anal bleaching and Brazillian waxing you can also visit your favorite plastic surgeon for vaginal rejuvenation. You can have your labia made more beautiful or your hymen reinserted. Hymenoplasty - now that’s a good one. Initially requested by more Muslim women, more Americans are requesting the procedure as a “gift” to their husbands or partners. I mean get a life people!!! Do you have to play all shy and coy all over again? Will it hurt when you bleed on the sheets?

If they can lift and tuck and tweak and move, why not attach my whole sex apparatus to my elbow for instant sexual pleasure without having to undress at all! Then when I get my little rosebud lightened I can show it off when I drive through traffic and let everyone know that I have more money than sense!