The movie was boring and not good at all. The characters were poorly written and poorly acted. It was a movie that had been on Sasha and Greg's to watch list for years. Greg didn't like to waste time "wandering around Netflix" as he referred to it. He had a schedule and liked to keep to it.
So, every night after eating dinner, and doing the dishes, they would sit down to watch a movie from the list they had been compiling for years. Anytime Sasha discovered a new movie to watch she would add it to her Netflix list if she could. On any given day they knew they had a movie to watch at their fingertips. It was just the way Greg liked things, organized and predictable.
Greg's organization and scheduling had been refreshing when the two had started their relationship. Sasha had grown up with an alcoholic single father, which led to very little predictability in her life that having so much structure had been comforting.
Household chores and making dinners were traded off on the schedule which Sasha also appreciated. It allowed her to focus on her online ceramics shop and actually turn it into something lucrative for them both. She knew she was lucky. She knew Greg was great.
But at some point in their marriage the scheduling had got out of control. Greg was scheduling normal things like vacations, dinner with friends and date nights. But then he also started scheduling down time together, "spontaneous" outings (which lacked the very thing that defined it), and worst of all he began to schedule in sex.
At first Sasha thought it was a considerate move. The longer they were married the more difficult it was to find time to get sexy with each other. Time in the evenings would get away from them, especially if Sasha had customer orders to finish up or if Greg had brought work home. They would part ways after their movie and suddenly it was 1am; the couple almost too tired to kiss each other good night.
Mornings were very separate affairs, since Sasha liked to sleep in. Greg was an early bird. He liked to get a morning run in before heading to work. It had gotten so bad that Sasha began to feel more like roommates than lovers. So, scheduling in sex to make sure it happened was the most obvious solution to Greg.
But of course, it only made the problem worse. When sex started appearing on the schedule it took on a weird obligatory feeling. It became another 'To Do' to complete like an extra load of laundry. The spontaneity was gone, passion nothing more than a fizzled firecracker lost in the park after a rousing festival.
The romance of the act was lost in the strict little chunk of an hour that it was allowed to occupy on the calendar. So here Sasha sat with her husband turned roommate watching a movie, wasting time on a story that was bad and acting that was worse and wondering where the romance had gone.
"Are you enjoying this movie?" Sasha suddenly asked. Greg looked up from his phone guiltily.
"Not really," he admitted. "I'll put my phone away though. Sorry, I'll be more present." He slipped his phone in his pocket. "Who added this one?"
"I don't know. It might have been 25-year-old Sasha," she admitted, although she honestly couldn't remember. "Should we change it?"
"Eh," Greg shrugged, non-committal and sighed.
"It feels like we're ships passing in the night," Sasha blurted. "I miss you." Greg looked at her surprised.
"I'm right here Sash!" Greg held his arms wide.
"I miss you kissing me! I miss you randomly coming up behind me with a huge boner! I miss the spontaneity we used to have, the passion! I miss your dick dude," Sasha said.
Greg reddened. He had this weird dichotomy of being. He could be such a prude sometimes (raised by strict Mormon parents probably didn't help with that), but damn when he let loose, he was a fucking animal in the sack. The problem was that the animal was making fewer and fewer appearances as time went on.
"Where is this coming from?" Greg asked. It had admittedly come out of nowhere. The movie had nothing to with sex and she hadn't yet told Greg how little she enjoyed the scheduled sex.
She'd been too contemplative about the whole thing lately, talking with her therapist and her sister about it. They both told her to say something. Her sister insisted she couldn't complain if she sat in silence about it.
