Tag: fantasy

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.

It’s been a year since I’ve had my baby and I never feel like having sex. Am I normal?

Very normal. Quite frankly, why would you feel like having sex? All the changes to your body’s hormones, the sheer exhaustion, and feeling overwhelmed are in no way an aphrodisiac.

That said, the first two years after baby couples often create poor sex habits, which will make for an unhappy sex life many years after… instigating a lot of unnecessary fights. It’s important to make efforts to have sex or at the very least a space for connected intimacy on a regular basis.

"The way you make love is the way God will be with you."  ~ Rumi

One of the great mysteries in life is the way in which our sexual encounters, especially the most memorable and passionate ones, live outside of normal space and time. It’s almost as if time stands still and bends itself around the encounter. Minutes that fly by in a moment seem to last hours and hours. It is in fact this space that we create an outside-of-ordinary reality that makes sex great.

"Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it’s a cure." ~ Thomas Szasz

Of all the sexual acts on the planet, masturbation leads the way as not only the most commonly practiced and safest ways to have sex, but also as the one that most frequently and reliably ends in orgasm. Not terribly surprising when you consider who would know better than you, the mysterious pathway to climax.

Reading. Something we do every day, in many ways. We read street signs, we read directions, we read texts and emails, we read instructions on everything from setting up a baby crib to how your manager wants you to approach a new project.

As an author, I read all the time. My own work ("that was awful" – delete!), other people’s work (endlessly), even my wine bottle. Ah yes, my new fav is a wine is labeled "Well-Read!" I kid you not, the label is a painting of a cozy nook with shelves of books—how could I resist?!

It’s a common problem for couples: After a while things get a bit ho-hum in the bedroom. Whether the issue is frequency (you can count this year’s sexy-time sessions on one hand) or creativity (you’re not quite stuck in a missionary-position-with-the-lights-off rut, but close), you’d like to spice things up. Problem is, you’re too shy/embarrassed/inhibited to bring it up… and even if you could find the nerve, you wouldn’t know where to begin.

"This is the body that engages in sex, a body with so much soul that any attempt to deny its layers of meaning will come back to haunt us."  ~Thomas Moore

  Maybe the smartest book I have ever read about how sexual attraction happens and why it is such a powerfully transformative healing response came from Stanley Siegel’s book, "Your Brain on Sex."