Men and Sex. Women and Worry.

Today’s blog is dedicated to all the men out there: dads, uncles, cousins, grandpas, nephews and friends. I hope this will help shed some light on the thoughts of a mother.

Thanks to the wonders of science, we know that men think about sex every 7 seconds.  Every 7 seconds! That’s pretty much all the time. Science has also told us that they just can’t help it. There is nothing that can be done to change how often a man thinks about sex.  This statistic is just an average. I bet if you asked a man, he would say he thinks about sex even more than that, if he’s being honest. Now if we tell a man, “Hey, don’t think about sex. Stop. Think about something else”. What happens? He’ll think about sex even more.

OK, now that we’ve established that and we are all in agreement, I want you to try something. Let’s take this fact: Men think about sex every 7 seconds, and lets transform it to apply to the one thing moms think about every 7 seconds. Anyone have any guesses? Anyone?  We are replacing SEX with WORRY.   So what do we get now?

Moms worry every 7 seconds. Yep, it’s true. Every 7 seconds we are worrying about something.  It is a constant dialogue going on in our minds. We cannot shut it off. We cannot make it go away. And if you tell us not to worry, what happens? We worry even more.

What do we worry about? EVERYTHING. Are the kids happy? Did they get enough hugs before they went to school? Do they like it at school? Are they making friends? Did I turn off the coffee pot? Did I close the garage? Did I lock the door? Is there a doctor’s appointment today or tomorrow? Did I brush my teeth? When was the last time I took a shower? Does the baby have a clean diaper? Did I pack enough formula? Did I make enough for dinner? Did I kiss my husband goodbye this morning? Did I brush me teeth before or after I did that? Do I need to shave? Do my kids know how much I love them? Does my husband know? Is that bump a rash? Does my child’s head hurt? Why does that lady keep stating at my child? Does she think he’s too skinny? Is my little one eating enough? Am I spending enough time with my kids?

All those thoughts took place in less than a minute’s time. No, really. We worry that much.  A woman cannot help but worry, and a mother losses full control of her worrying ability once her child is born. A mom worries about the little things. A mom wakes up at 2 am and worries about whether she packed her child’s toy for show and tell. A moms last thought before she goes to bed is the worry that her kids are either too hot or too cold.

So men, do me a favor. For the next hour, pay attention to all the times sex crosses your mind. On average, you will have thought about sex over 500 times. Now pretend you’re a mom. Each one of those 500 thoughts about sex for you, was a worry for a mom.  Just remember this, the next time you start to tell us that we worry too much. We can’t help it anymore than you can.