Even though most women would hate to admit it, as pointed out in "I will never take a man underwear shopping", when we first get into a relationship with a new man we often find ourselves going to great lengths to make sure that we're wearing nice, clean, matching, sexy underwear. Hours are spent trudging through the lingerie section of various department stores and mornings are spent scrambling through the washing bags in the laundry matching those brand new lacy knickers with that brand new lacy bra.
Just as your mother always told you to make sure you're always wearing clean underwear in case you get run over, in those first few months of a relationship, we often make sure we're wearing nice underwear just in case we're going to get some sex. Heaven forbid that our new man would see us in plain, comfortable underwear.
Then the relationship hits the comfortable stage. And slowly but surely we lose the willpower to spend valuable time scrambling through laundry bags or trudging through department stores. After a while, we no longer worry about matching colours and then skimpy and lacy gets swapped for large and cotton. If the relationship is going particularly well, the dreaded floral and cotton begins appearing.
But that's not to say that the skimpy and lacy will not return because once the relationship hits a stumbling block, in a desperate attempt to patch things up we tend to return to the matching, sexy underwear.
The irony of it all is that it's the prettiest and most expensive underwear that probably spends the most amount of time on the bedroom floor.