When I began to look at this problem head-on, as a problem and not as another shrugging expectation of married life with kids, I realized the whole thing boiled down to resources. How much of me should I allocate to my baby, and how much to my husband? And what long-term damage might my choice inadvertently do to either? I put it this way to a good friend over Saturday lunch.

Anne is a newlywed for the second time; having endured a long, increasingly icy marriage and years of single motherhood, she is newly attuned to the pleasures and responsibilities of married life. "Is he taking a lot of cold showers?" she asked with real concern. "No, he's been very understanding," I said miserably. "You know," Anne said, "this weird thing happened when I was still married to Jeffrey." She described arriving home late one evening, casually flipping on the TV, and being shocked to see full-on porn. "We kept saying, 'Can you believe that they're showing that right on TV?' But let me tell you, after watching it for awhile, woo-hoo."

"You mean, it worked?"

"You betcha, baby."

This was stunning news. Anne's first marriage had broken up precisely because she and Jeffrey weren't compatible in the bedroom. Yet here was proof that even the most irreparable kind of sexual problem might, at times, be overcome—even if just for one night. Still—porn? I squirmed in my seat. "I don't know, Anne," I said, looking at the ceiling. She didn't reply, and I realized almost instantly how small-minded it was to reject a possible solution merely because I didn't think of myself as a pornography kind of girl. "Where do you get that stuff, anyway?"

I left Anne's that day with a mission. I was going to solve this problem that Chucho and I had allowed to lie dormant between us. We had fumed in private and been cordial in public, pretending that it would go away by itself, but neither of us had actively searched for a solution.

Until now. I logged onto Xandria, an online sex shop. In the women's section, I chose a DVD called The Voyeur. After entering a fake phone number and grumbling at the $9 shipping and handling charge, I pressed "Buy." A shiver went down my spine. Then a key rattled in the front door and I leaped up, aghast. With trembling hands I opened solitaire, so that when Chucho came bustling in he found me blandly putting a red seven on a black eight.

Later that evening I began to think I had been silly to hide my purchase from him. Wouldn't sharing my plan create a yummy sense of mutual anticipation? So after the kids went to bed, as we finished the supper dishes, I told him. "I bought something online today. A video. You know. That kind of video." He said nothing. I felt a stab of remorse. Was my husband disappointed in me? Did he think I was polluting our marriage? But then, scrubbing a pot, he asked, "And when is this video going to get here?" The carefulness with which he said it—the deliberate way he avoided making eye contact—told me he was intrigued.