I dedicate my song today to Grace Chris Rumble from Harlow in Essex. Grace celebrates her birthday today. Have a smashing day, Grace, and thank you for being my Facebook friend. Bill x
My song today is ‘I Need Your Love Tonight’. This song was recorded by Elvis Presley. It was written by Sid Wayne and Bix Reichner, and was released as a single on June 10th, 1958, in RCA Studios, Nashville, Tennessee. It was the second of multiple single releases recorded at a final session conducted just prior to Presley leaving the US for Germany to serve in the United States Army. He would not return to a recording studio until the spring of 1960.
The song reached Number 4 on the ‘Billboard Pop Singles’ chart in 1959. Released as a double-A-side with ‘A Fool Such As I’, the song reached Number 1 in the ‘UK Singles Chart’ in May 1959, where it remained for five weeks.
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Love comes and is expressed in many forms at different times of our lives. Often, during our romantic teenage years, being able to attract young women or young men often acts as confirmation that we are also attractive and a good catch for the opposite sex.
During our adult years, in our twenties (pre-marriage) love will often be confused with lust. The way to discern and distinguish between these two overlapping emotions is to look for the overriding features. Whereas lust will always seek the physical pleasure of the sexual act predominantly, love may or may not! Love is always concerned (if not more concerned) with the emotional input as much as the physical!
Ten years into most marriages, after the diminishing need to grab every moment of sexual pleasure you can together has started to vanish, a new kind of love appears which all newfound parents experience with the birth of their first child. Most of the mother’s physical attention is diverted to her dependent infant, and constant breastfeeding and sheer physical tiredness makes her feel ‘loved out’.
For a long while after childbirth, there is an essential and natural re-establishing of roles within the marriage that is not as easily accepted by the husband, who often starts to feel a bit left out from his wife’s affections. As his wife becomes more preoccupied with caring for a dependent infant, along with her energy-draining experience of breastfeeding every four hours of the day, plus having to get up repeatedly and settling her crying baby down during the night, her husband usually displays his male capacity of having his snoring sleep unbroken. Marital sex becomes something that is still wanted by the husband but is the farthest thing possible from the mind of his wife. It is as much a psychological as a physical need for the husband; it is as though he needs her reassurance that she still loves him more than the actual sexual coupling.
The more that lovemaking becomes less available on-demand and is left to the discretion of an always-tired wife to dispense at her pleasure, a new power imbalance in their relationship starts to develop which can become long-term detrimental to the maintenance of a healthy relationship if left unaltered.
This pattern is often repeated as another one or two children come along. It now becomes the experience of both parents to be constantly occupied with the increasing pressures of family life. As the children grow, and their parents age with them, increasing tiredness usually regulates the sexual need of both parents when they hit the pillow at the end of a stressful day.
Without realising it at the time, an unconscious and unspoken pact between the couple has developed. The gradual mounting of parental pressure is maintained by increased work commitments, meeting mortgage repayments, along with having to deal with a family financial situation where there is now less income coming in than expenditure going out!
Before they know it, married life has moved on twenty years and the children have all gone off to University. Neither man nor wife knows where all the years have gone, and what made all the romance gradually vanish from their life.
It is true that for much of their first twenty-five years of marriage, husband and wife still had some sexual relationship, albeit at an ever-decreasing rate; somewhere between regular and rare (or intermittent intercourse as a friend of mine used to call it). The previous romantic access that the husband developed during their early marriage before the children came along, is soon radically restricted to Saturday nights only ( weekly): or whenever a babysitter’s exorbitant rates of pay could be afforded for a night out together (monthly): or birthdays and New Year’s Eve (annually): or holidays away from home (every two years): or whenever it occurred spontaneously (never again)! It is a finely-judged military exercise which only a married woman could carry out with the planning strategy and precision of an army general; how to keep her husband forever short of rations, but never deprive him enough to stop him fighting at the front or to desert the family field.
As a rule, if one remains with the same spouse or partner over a lifetime, several things manage to keep you sexually separated. Providing the man does not stray into extramarital relations with a lover or a engage with a ‘one-night-stand’(so-called because the sexual act is usually performed vertical as opposed to horizontal on such occasions), then rest assured that as far as most men are concerned, they will face some or all of the following to distract their sexual dalliance: advancing age: increasing aches and pains: advancing illnesses: a Body Mass Index shooting off the scale of the clinically obese which physically makes sexual coupling impossible: the imbibing of too much alcohol (leading to stale breath and midnight droop): too much television watching, where the score on ‘Match of the Day’ becomes more important than scoring in the bedroom! Without even lifting a hand to influence her husband’s mood, your wife has managed to shelve any possibility of a Saturday night surprise attack in the bedroom, thanks to her husband preferring a different ‘Match of the Day’ that will not end until long after she has gone to sleep. As for any daring husband making a forward advance in the marital bedroom after ‘Match of the Day’ has ended, forget it. All men know the dangers of daring to wake a sleeping tiger! Her gnashers may now be false but her snarl is still deadly!
Indeed, one’s wife learns to adapt well as her husband’s natural prowess in the bedroom becomes more in danger of dropping off. And, just to show that she still loves her husband, she supplants the waning sexual needs of her man with a different pleasure that ensures he doesn’t run off to eat at any other woman’s table. She does this by feeding his stomach with culinary delights like his favourite steak and kidney pie with a proper crust all over (just like his mother used to bake for him). She essentially waves a wand and magically learns how to become his mother as well as his wife.
Retirement years onwards and the added status of senior citizenship and roles of grandparents, and regular babysitters of the new family generation is more than enough for most men and women.
And yet, it does not always have to be so! I know because I experienced what it is like to be reborn, physically, sexually, mentally, psychologically, and spiritually when I met my wife Sheila (14 years younger than I am, and fitter than any woman I have ever known) during my 68th year of life. It was as if somebody had rolled back the magic carpet of youthful romance again for me and sprinkled it with stardust. In my mind and in my body, I had been reborn ‘young at heart’, and I even started Rock & Rolling again in more ways than one!
We married in my 70th birthday, and even during our honeymoon in Morocco, the angels continued to bless us with a once-in-a-lifetime honeymoon experience. The accommodation we had booked for our two weeks honeymoon period could not be used (due to some necessary emergency maintenance work) and we were upgraded by the owner to a friend’s hotel on huge grounds with every luxury imaginable and panoramic views all around, out in the Moroccan mountains. We arrived a few weeks before the palatial upmarket complex was officially opened for its seasonal booking of rich residents, and for the first week of our honeymoon, we were the only couple being accommodated there. We were treated like royalty by a full staff and were given a room with a bed that would have comfortably fitted any Roman orgy and a chariot beneath its sheets.
My rejuvenated life of ‘youth revisited’ in my seventies continued for around two years. I had woken up and found myself in heaven as Sheila satisfied my every need, whether it was in the bedroom or the kitchen. Then, cancer of the blood struck me down when we were at our happiest, and over the following seven years, I have medically been put through the mill, so to speak. My body pain in my arthritic legs (caused by life-long effects of one of the chemo drugs used twice on me during two nine-month courses of chemotherapy) prevented me from staying still in bed and caused me to thrash my legs in the air for temporary relief. This naturally prevented my lovely wife from sleeping, and so I decided that the moment to have my own bedroom had finally arrived. Strange though it may seem, this arrangement suits us both nicely. Don’t knock it until you have tried it, as it is great for a good night’s sleep, whatever your age happens to be!
Were you to ask me if I love Sheila more today than those wildest days of our courtship, I would honestly say, ‘I do’, but in a different way. Our love life was initially like being on the highest roller coaster in the world; exciting, enormously exhilarating, and as thrilling as the heart of a man in his seventies could possibly withstand. And although the ride went on long enough to provide me with sufficient beautiful memories of our physical love to last me the rest of my life; had my romantic roller coaster not stopped and allowed me to get off and catch my breath when it did, I would have most certainly died.
Today, our love for each other shows itself in different ways. Increased sensitivity and meaning is currently witnessed by a soft kiss on the cheek, a held hand, an exchanged smile, a tender hug, or even the brushing of the hand on the other’s shoulder as we pass by each other. Love for each other is forever present in both our hearts and our eyes when we look at one another. Our love is most certainly here to stay however it now shows itself, and my initial need of saying, “I need your love tonight” has been replaced by the knowledge that I have Sheila’s love every minute of the day 24/7.
Love and peace Bill xxx
My song today is ‘I Need Your Love Tonight’. This song was recorded by Elvis Presley. It was written by Sid Wayne and Bix Reichner, and was released as a single on June 10th, 1958, in RCA Studios, Nashville, Tennessee. It was the second of multiple single releases recorded at a final session conducted just prior to Presley leaving the US for Germany to serve in the United States Army. He would not return to a recording studio until the spring of 1960.
The song reached Number 4 on the ‘Billboard Pop Singles’ chart in 1959. Released as a double-A-side with ‘A Fool Such As I’, the song reached Number 1 in the ‘UK Singles Chart’ in May 1959, where it remained for five weeks.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Love comes and is expressed in many forms at different times of our lives. Often, during our romantic teenage years, being able to attract young women or young men often acts as confirmation that we are also attractive and a good catch for the opposite sex.
During our adult years, in our twenties (pre-marriage) love will often be confused with lust. The way to discern and distinguish between these two overlapping emotions is to look for the overriding features. Whereas lust will always seek the physical pleasure of the sexual act predominantly, love may or may not! Love is always concerned (if not more concerned) with the emotional input as much as the physical!
Ten years into most marriages, after the diminishing need to grab every moment of sexual pleasure you can together has started to vanish, a new kind of love appears which all newfound parents experience with the birth of their first child. Most of the mother’s physical attention is diverted to her dependent infant, and constant breastfeeding and sheer physical tiredness makes her feel ‘loved out’.
For a long while after childbirth, there is an essential and natural re-establishing of roles within the marriage that is not as easily accepted by the husband, who often starts to feel a bit left out from his wife’s affections. As his wife becomes more preoccupied with caring for a dependent infant, along with her energy-draining experience of breastfeeding every four hours of the day, plus having to get up repeatedly and settling her crying baby down during the night, her husband usually displays his male capacity of having his snoring sleep unbroken. Marital sex becomes something that is still wanted by the husband but is the farthest thing possible from the mind of his wife. It is as much a psychological as a physical need for the husband; it is as though he needs her reassurance that she still loves him more than the actual sexual coupling.
The more that lovemaking becomes less available on-demand and is left to the discretion of an always-tired wife to dispense at her pleasure, a new power imbalance in their relationship starts to develop which can become long-term detrimental to the maintenance of a healthy relationship if left unaltered.
This pattern is often repeated as another one or two children come along. It now becomes the experience of both parents to be constantly occupied with the increasing pressures of family life. As the children grow, and their parents age with them, increasing tiredness usually regulates the sexual need of both parents when they hit the pillow at the end of a stressful day.
Without realising it at the time, an unconscious and unspoken pact between the couple has developed. The gradual mounting of parental pressure is maintained by increased work commitments, meeting mortgage repayments, along with having to deal with a family financial situation where there is now less income coming in than expenditure going out!
Before they know it, married life has moved on twenty years and the children have all gone off to University. Neither man nor wife knows where all the years have gone, and what made all the romance gradually vanish from their life.
It is true that for much of their first twenty-five years of marriage, husband and wife still had some sexual relationship, albeit at an ever-decreasing rate; somewhere between regular and rare (or intermittent intercourse as a friend of mine used to call it). The previous romantic access that the husband developed during their early marriage before the children came along, is soon radically restricted to Saturday nights only ( weekly): or whenever a babysitter’s exorbitant rates of pay could be afforded for a night out together (monthly): or birthdays and New Year’s Eve (annually): or holidays away from home (every two years): or whenever it occurred spontaneously (never again)! It is a finely-judged military exercise which only a married woman could carry out with the planning strategy and precision of an army general; how to keep her husband forever short of rations, but never deprive him enough to stop him fighting at the front or to desert the family field.
As a rule, if one remains with the same spouse or partner over a lifetime, several things manage to keep you sexually separated. Providing the man does not stray into extramarital relations with a lover or a engage with a ‘one-night-stand’(so-called because the sexual act is usually performed vertical as opposed to horizontal on such occasions), then rest assured that as far as most men are concerned, they will face some or all of the following to distract their sexual dalliance: advancing age: increasing aches and pains: advancing illnesses: a Body Mass Index shooting off the scale of the clinically obese which physically makes sexual coupling impossible: the imbibing of too much alcohol (leading to stale breath and midnight droop): too much television watching, where the score on ‘Match of the Day’ becomes more important than scoring in the bedroom! Without even lifting a hand to influence her husband’s mood, your wife has managed to shelve any possibility of a Saturday night surprise attack in the bedroom, thanks to her husband preferring a different ‘Match of the Day’ that will not end until long after she has gone to sleep. As for any daring husband making a forward advance in the marital bedroom after ‘Match of the Day’ has ended, forget it. All men know the dangers of daring to wake a sleeping tiger! Her gnashers may now be false but her snarl is still deadly!
Indeed, one’s wife learns to adapt well as her husband’s natural prowess in the bedroom becomes more in danger of dropping off. And, just to show that she still loves her husband, she supplants the waning sexual needs of her man with a different pleasure that ensures he doesn’t run off to eat at any other woman’s table. She does this by feeding his stomach with culinary delights like his favourite steak and kidney pie with a proper crust all over (just like his mother used to bake for him). She essentially waves a wand and magically learns how to become his mother as well as his wife.
Retirement years onwards and the added status of senior citizenship and roles of grandparents, and regular babysitters of the new family generation is more than enough for most men and women.
And yet, it does not always have to be so! I know because I experienced what it is like to be reborn, physically, sexually, mentally, psychologically, and spiritually when I met my wife Sheila (14 years younger than I am, and fitter than any woman I have ever known) during my 68th year of life. It was as if somebody had rolled back the magic carpet of youthful romance again for me and sprinkled it with stardust. In my mind and in my body, I had been reborn ‘young at heart’, and I even started Rock & Rolling again in more ways than one!
We married in my 70th birthday, and even during our honeymoon in Morocco, the angels continued to bless us with a once-in-a-lifetime honeymoon experience. The accommodation we had booked for our two weeks honeymoon period could not be used (due to some necessary emergency maintenance work) and we were upgraded by the owner to a friend’s hotel on huge grounds with every luxury imaginable and panoramic views all around, out in the Moroccan mountains. We arrived a few weeks before the palatial upmarket complex was officially opened for its seasonal booking of rich residents, and for the first week of our honeymoon, we were the only couple being accommodated there. We were treated like royalty by a full staff and were given a room with a bed that would have comfortably fitted any Roman orgy and a chariot beneath its sheets.
My rejuvenated life of ‘youth revisited’ in my seventies continued for around two years. I had woken up and found myself in heaven as Sheila satisfied my every need, whether it was in the bedroom or the kitchen. Then, cancer of the blood struck me down when we were at our happiest, and over the following seven years, I have medically been put through the mill, so to speak. My body pain in my arthritic legs (caused by life-long effects of one of the chemo drugs used twice on me during two nine-month courses of chemotherapy) prevented me from staying still in bed and caused me to thrash my legs in the air for temporary relief. This naturally prevented my lovely wife from sleeping, and so I decided that the moment to have my own bedroom had finally arrived. Strange though it may seem, this arrangement suits us both nicely. Don’t knock it until you have tried it, as it is great for a good night’s sleep, whatever your age happens to be!
Were you to ask me if I love Sheila more today than those wildest days of our courtship, I would honestly say, ‘I do’, but in a different way. Our love life was initially like being on the highest roller coaster in the world; exciting, enormously exhilarating, and as thrilling as the heart of a man in his seventies could possibly withstand. And although the ride went on long enough to provide me with sufficient beautiful memories of our physical love to last me the rest of my life; had my romantic roller coaster not stopped and allowed me to get off and catch my breath when it did, I would have most certainly died.
Today, our love for each other shows itself in different ways. Increased sensitivity and meaning is currently witnessed by a soft kiss on the cheek, a held hand, an exchanged smile, a tender hug, or even the brushing of the hand on the other’s shoulder as we pass by each other. Love for each other is forever present in both our hearts and our eyes when we look at one another. Our love is most certainly here to stay however it now shows itself, and my initial need of saying, “I need your love tonight” has been replaced by the knowledge that I have Sheila’s love every minute of the day 24/7.
Love and peace Bill xxx
