Sex Advice

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” T. S. Eliot

Remember the cry "Do-Over?" It was how we got back to center when we played street games as a kid. Something was amiss and either side could call it, and although it didn’t promise any specific outcome, the ability to start again from a place everyone agreed was fair made any outcome reasonable. And while most of us can’t just call a do-over on most of what happens from one day to the next, it’s a worthwhile spirit to cultivate as we begin a new year. Borrowing from our childhood belief of what was always possible offers a novel emotional freedom to approach what we have created thus far and to look at it fairly.

If someone close to you asked you to describe your ideal sexual experience, what kind of encounter would you describe? How would it begin? What would be involved? Where would it take place? Most importantly, how would it feel?

For some, the answers to these questions may be easy to articulate. For others, not so much. Being able to voice our deepest personal needs and desires is not always an easy thing to do—especially when it comes to sex. Most will agree though, that identifying and expressing exactly what we want (and don’t want) in a sexual relationship with an intimate partner is crucial in establishing a healthy and fulfilling sex life—namely one characterized by consent and equal pleasure.

"Sex is always about emotions.  Good sex is about free emotions; bad sex is about blocked emotions."  ~ Deepak Chopra

Here is the sad truth about the sex lives in many long-term partnerships: often it is either the glue that keeps the relationship strong or the thorn in its side, a source of persistent pain and discord. Endless books and articles substantiate both the frequency and damage of the sexless marriage. Of all the conflicts that come between couples, there is no more painful and destructive injury than that of sexual rejection. Whether the conversation gets stuck in the frustration of who comes first or not at all, or in the score keeping of who initiates and who rejects more, or lost in the persistent silent erosion of who isn’t in the mood matters little.

As we settle into the fall season and say goodbye to our summer vacations and the romance of summer date nights on a terrace, it becomes a little bit harder to think of ways to keep the romance going. As the temperatures drop, we are less inspired to go out; school starts and we get involved into our children’s school lives and there just seems to be no time left for you and your loved one.

"We must give more in order to get more. It is the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest.” ~ Orison Marden

One of the saddest of all statistics on our collective sexual health is about how little time we spend on it, with the average sexual act lasting only 7-12 minutes.

Sexual foreplay is the moments when the arousal mechanism in the limbic brain gets to align with the blood flow to the genitals. Let me just say one thing about this phase of intimacy—more is better. This is what I say to customers who write in or call and tell me that the lube didn’t work. When I ask them how they used it, and the response is I put it on and then had sex, I have to explain the limitations of even the best lube in the world.

"Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures." ~ Voltaire

There is no time like long summer nights to cultivate the uniquely, profoundly human capacity for pleasure—especially sexual pleasure. Our pleasure response transforms our relationship to each other and even to life itself.  Focusing on pleasure not only changes how we see our opportunities for intimate connection, but also invites us into a deeper relationship with our erotic soul.