How To Have Better Sex and Intimacy
One question lands in a sex therapist's office over and over, and it probably comes up in franker water-cooler chats too. It goes something like this: two people love each other, they're genuinely happy together, and yet the sexual spark has faded almost to nothing. I tend to explain it as a problem of wiring, of needing to link up three parts of a person: the head, the heart, and the groin. You adore your sweetheart. You've got the silly pet names, you enjoy each other's company, maybe you're raising kids side by side, and you've become close friends. What's gone quiet is the hungry, physical pull you used to feel.
The reason is usually that these two currents are hard to run through the same circuit at once. The lusty, slightly forbidden, almost taboo charge sits uneasily next to the tender, respectful affection. Mindful sexuality, which draws on teachings that have been around for thousands of years (the Kama Sutra, the Taoist tradition, and others), asks a simple but difficult question: can you bring the whole range to one person? The love and the reverence and the wanting to cherish someone, alongside the rawness, the spice, the wild monkey love, the hanging-from-the-chandelier, being naughty and bad and a little crazy. Can you hold that entire palette with this specific person, you and your partner, right now?
Most people instead peel off into fantasy at the most intense moment. As orgasm approaches with their actual partner, they slip away into a favorite scene with someone else, because it dials down the flood. Showing up fully, in your mind and your heart and your body all at the same time, is overwhelming, so the mind wanders off to make it bearable.
Put bluntly, most people aren't very good lovers. Some are fine technicians from the waist down. They can do the clever little swirl, the practiced clitoral touch, and perform all the moves. But can they also arrive with their heart and their head present? Others have the opposite problem: they connect beautifully, emotionally, and then settle into sweet, forgettable sex (nipple, nipple, crotch, goodnight) on the odd night when neither of them is too wiped out. Neither version comes close to what our bodies and minds and hearts are actually capable of together.
So here are three things anyone can start playing with right away. First, in tiny doses, try to actually show up and connect. It can be as small as this: when your partner walks through the door, go to them, hold them, and breathe together, in and out, for three breaths. Just that. Just this.
Second, make room to get creative. Once a week, or at the very least once a month, block off an hour or two. Grab some chocolate body paint, go into the bedroom, and explore that body the way you probably did in your early days together, when you were far more curious to touch and tease and discover.
Third, and this one is a practice that takes time and more teaching than fits in a single conversation, try to keep your eyes open and look at each other as you near orgasm. It might stall things. That's fine. Bringing the two worlds together isn't familiar yet, and stalling just means you're new at it.