“Remember what we were talking about earlier?” He said as he crawled into bed.

My heart sank.

I did remember. But secretly I had been hoping that he didn’t.

“Babe, I’m so sorry, but I’m really tired.” I said. “It was such a busy day.”

My husband and I had both had really busy days, but despite our business and stress, we had still been making the effort to flirt with each other throughout the day. We had been sending text messages back and forth, and had made a plan to be intimate that evening.

But then the projects we were working on took double the amount of time they should have, he got pulled away on an unexpected conference call, and dinner took way longer to cook than we had anticipated. By the time we had put the last dish into the dishwasher, I was exhausted.

I have a whole arsenal of tools in my toolkit for what to do in situations like these. But I chose the worst option: crawling into bed and trying to pretend like we hadn’t spent the entire day planning on having sex.

Whoops!

Even though I’m a sex therapist, I’m still a normal, flawed human being in a normal, flawed relationship. My husband and I face the same kinds of challenges that most couples face. We know what it’s like to feel busy, stressed, exhausted, and depleted. We know how difficult it can be to add sex and quality time to our never-ending to-do lists.

When I ask the couples I work with to tell me what gets in the way of them having a better sex life, they almost always say, “We’re just so busy.”

On the one hand, I get it. I just told you a story of how I had to turn my husband down because I was too busy and my day got away from me.

But on the other hand, I call BS.

Because here’s the thing: When you use the excuse “I’m too busy”, what you’re really telling your partner is, “The other things I chose to do today were more important to me than spending quality time with you.”

We all have the tendency to feel powerless against our crazy schedules and our constant business, but the truth is that we make dozens of decisions about our time on a daily basis.

If you could rewind the clock on my busy day, you would see me doing lots of important things, just as I’m sure you have plenty of things you need to get done during your day too. I’m not saying your partner needs to be your #1 priority every single second of the day! But you would also see that I did have plenty of opportunities to prioritize my husband and our relationship throughout the day and evening.

When I turned my husband down that night, what I was really telling him was, “writing that unnecessary work email today was more important to me than you were. That 20 minutes I spent goofing around on Instagram today was more important to me than you were. Cooking an elaborate dinner was more important to me than you were.”

The truth is that you are not too busy for daily connection with your partner.

I wasn’t too busy to spend time with my husband that day. And you’re not too busy to spend time with your partner today.

Most of us are choosing not to prioritize our partners and our relationships. But you can change that starting today.

You can make the choice to prioritize them over something else.

So today, I want to challenge you with this: Take a look at your to-do list for the rest of the day, and find some way to put your partner as close to the top of that list as you can.

Rearrange your schedule. Say “no” to something. Cross out at least one thing that is less important to you than spending time with your partner.

Maybe it’s inconvenient. Maybe it’s annoying. Maybe it’s sad.

But you have got to have at least one task today that is not more important than your partner.

And I’ve got one more challenge for you!

For all of next week, try prioritizing quality time together as early in the day as you can.

So many couples get caught up in their daily routines, and leave quality time until the end of the night. But as you can see from my example, we’re usually exhausted by the end of the night. This is the worst possible time to try to spend quality time together!

Instead, try to have quality time together as early as you possibly can.

Whenever you’re both free, go into your bedroom together, close the door, and just hang out for 10 minutes.

You don’t have to have sex during this time; you just have to spend quality time together. Talk about your days. Cuddle. Make each other laugh. Give each other massages. Have sex if you want to have sex.

Show your partner that they’re the most important thing in your life.

If you’re truly committed to prioritizing your partner and your relationship, I invite you to join the Sex Challenge!