The best sex is rarely spontaneous. Or if it is, it’s because the conditions were right for it be ‘spontaneous’.

People often complain to me that their sex isn’t spontaneous. As though that’s a bad thing. They often reminisce about the early days when sex was so easy and apparently ‘spontaneous’. But, I challenge them, was it really spontaneous? I point out that back then sex was anything but spontaneous: there were days of anticipation, thinking about your new love interest, you’d spend time preparing to meet, looking good. Then when you met, you’d be doing interesting things, you were fascinated in each other, you’d spend hours talking or dancing or having fun. So, by the time you got home you couldn’t wait to rip your clothes off….

That wasn’t spontaneous. There were days and hours of looking forward to, thinking about, engaging with, before you got sexual.

Then time passes and people move in together, and all of life comes into the relationship: work, logistics, kids, finances, etc., etc. They work all day, deal with life matters, maybe sit in front of a screen for an hour or more… then collapse into bed exhausted, totally spent… and think they should suddenly turn into some ravenous sex fiend and have spontaneous sex!

No. It wasn’t spontaneous at the beginning. It was good because the conditions were right. Like anything else good in life. Think about it – how often has an experience been spontaneously good? Occasionally perhaps, but not regularly. You want to catch up with friends, go to a show, play some sport, have a holiday, cook a good meal – it all takes planning, making space in your life, making sure you have in place the elements that make it good. If you want a good meal you have to make sure your kitchen is stocked with the right ingredients, you need the time and energy to cook, and have the knowledge and skills to cook well. If you have all of those, then yes, you can spontaneously cook a good meal.

So, if you want to ‘spontaneously’ have good sex, you can if you’ve set up your life to enable sex to happen easily. That means you need to:

• create the time and space in your life
• not be too tired
• not be too distracted
• be feeling connected with your partner
• be in a relaxed, appealing environment
• pace the approach and interaction so that you both become aroused, don’t rush it
• know what each other likes and needs in general
• be able to communicate what you want and need in the moment
• not have expectations that cause pressure and anxiety
•  enjoy the pleasure of connection and co-create a lovely experience moment by moment

Have all that happening, and you’ll live in what I call the ‘simmer zone’, where you’re feeling loved-up, connected, relaxed and alive. From that space sex can be spontaneous, because you’ve made your life and relationship sex-friendly.

Some days into my last couples retreat in Bali we were in a group discussion when one of the participants said that what he and his partner were experiencing, based on what I was sharing and teaching, felt like a ‘practice’. Just as they had regular meditation practices, this approach to sexual intimacy had the same qualities. I think that is an excellent way of conceptualising the approach to sex that I encourage.

So, what do we mean by a ‘practice’? Well, spiritual traditions have various spiritual practices or disciplines to enable personal growth and spiritual development. Prayer and meditation are obvious ones, but it can expand to include some of the martial arts and other physical activities such as dance and yoga, volunteering, creative arts, being in nature. But it’s less about the activity itself that makes it a practice, and more about the way in which it’s engaged. Which is why sexual intimacy can also be a spiritual practice.

A practice is engaged in with intention to engage in a certain way and with attention during the experience. It’s mindful, both in the sense of bringing mindfulness to the experience and also for the experience itself to be a mindfulness practice. In the case of sex, regular readers will remember that the academic research I did a few years ago explored how sex itself becomes a mindfulness practice, heightening both the lovers’ experience in the moment, and taking from that experience an ongoing sense of presence and engagement in the rest of life.

It’s also about bringing a sense of the sacred into the experience, to create a sacred space of time and place. In the case of sexual intimacy, the lovers enter into it consciously, with the intention of creating a beautiful experience of pleasure and connection together. Then as the experience unfolds, each pays attention to what they are feeling and wanting to express in the moment, while also paying attention to what the partner is feeling and wanting to express in the moment - and through that they co-create positive meaningful experiences, whatever the activity and however long they stay engaged.

The lovers don’t rush in. There’s what I call a ‘chilled build’ - they take their time first to connect and then to become aroused. There are no expectations of outcome, other than pleasure and connection. There is no need for it to follow the standard linear approach, and even if it does, that happens through focused co-creation, not expectation. Then the experience comes to a close when the lovers feel it’s right.

This approach to sexual engagement can potentially last for hours, but what really matters is that it heightens any kind of sexual encounter, so a sweet and simple cuddly encounter under the covers can be enriched when considered a “practice” and not just a quickie and definitely not as a duty or obligation.

It’s simple really, just as a meditation practice is simple. But it’s not necessarily easy – you have to practise at making sex a practice! You need to change your mind set about what drives a sexual encounter, how it is initiated, how it is engaged with and how it’s concluded.

But once you do, the depth of feeling, both physical and emotional, that you can attain is so beautiful. It can feel not just mindful, but also bodyful and soulful. Then you really are making love.

Client after client sits on the couch in my consulting room wishing they didn’t have their sexual difficulties and were ‘normal’. After hearing their stories, I give them both the bad news and the good news – they are ‘normal’. In our society sexual struggles, difficulties are confusions are the norm. It’s a rare person who is totally comfortable in their sexuality.

Which isn’t surprising as we get no sex education. If we’re lucky we get a bit of reproduction education, which let’s face it, isn’t that complicated. And that’s not why humans have sex – we predominantly have sex to connect through pleasure. But we’re not taught anything about connection nor about pleasure. We’re not taught about how to be in tune with our needs and desires. We’re not taught how to communicate those needs and desires. We’re not taught how to listen to our partner’s and co-create experiences based on both parties needs and desires. We’re not taught how sex changes with different stages of life and how to enjoy all the different phases, nor how it can evolve for the better over a long relationship. We’re not even taught what quality sex is. And we don’t talk about it.

Imagine if we did that with food! Imagine if you couldn’t tell your partner you didn’t like eggplant even though they served it up frequently. Imagine if you weren’t sure if it was ok to have afternoon tea. Imagine if you couldn’t obtain any information about broccoli and how to cook it. How many people would have good food-lives?

It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. But that’s how we are with sex. We don’t know, we don’t talk about it and it’s very hard to get good information. Yet we are surrounded by “sex-positive” messaging that says we should be having good sex, we should be enthusiastically and frequently engaging in that good sex, and there’s a problem if we’re not.

Well, I certainly agree that we should be engaging enthusiastically and frequently in good sex! But I also know that we need to develop the sexual knowledge, self-awareness, and relational skills to be able to create that good sex.

Which is where I come in! Having devoted my life to understanding the art and science of sex, I know that with quality information and loving support it’s generally not that difficult to ditch the myths, shift the negative blocks, get in tune with yourself and learn to communicate positively about sex with your partner. It’s what keeps me going in this work.

I do get despondent seeing the anguish and the aloneness people feel in their ‘problems’, but I also love seeing the shifts as people free themselves to enjoy this gorgeous part of life. Whether it’s through private sessions, or attending retreats, or even just from reading this blog (I love the feedback!), I love to help people discover just how wonderful their sexuality can be and to become what should be ‘normal’ in what is still an abnormal society.

Just by reading this you are part of the shift in society to understanding quality, life-enhancing sex and relating. Go you! Be the ripple that spreads a truly positive sexuality until everyone is loved-up and feeling the joy of an authentic expressive sexuality. What a great world that would be! Let’s all do our bit to saving the world – one love life at a time…

We tend to think that the definition of ‘libido’ is sex drive, how much you want sex, or how often you get horny. But the original meaning of the word libido is life force energy. I think that is a much better way to conceptualise libido.

In the oriental traditions they say that the sexual energy is transformed into the life energy, the chi or ki. That’s what I notice clinically too. When people are flat, exhausted, stressed, depressed, their life force is low and they tend not to want sex. When people are engaged and joyful and connected, then they tend to be open to sex. Interestingly, I do see people with low life force who want sex, but it’s usually to relieve stress or because they’re bored and want a ‘hit’; and I see people with high life force who say they don’t want sex, but that’s usually because their concept of sex isn’t appealing or their experience of it hasn’t been great.

So, anything you do that enhances your life force will enhance your libido.

Being is nature is a great way to do this. Nature is full of life force – it’s where life comes from! Bathing in nature’s life force is so enhancing of our own.

I just spent two weeks camping in central Australia. It was a total experience of this libidinal life force! There was the vast open desert, incredible rock formations, hidden gorges, oases, towering river red gums, multitudes of wildflowers, wallabies, emu, and so many different birds… Waking up to the dawn chorus of birdsong, walking all day and sitting around an open fire as the sun set, were such connected, spiritual experiences.

It's bathing in nature. It’s cleansing the spirit and the soul with nature. It’s allowing freshness and goodness and joy to permeate and fill your being. It’s libido, being in tune with life and nature, untarnished with the stress and negative energies of modern living.

The more you can bring this into your life the better. With plants, art, good food, beautiful relaxing spaces, music. And making love in the way I advocate! Not some sordid pornfest but connected, slow, intimate (which can also be playful and wild and wicked, the two aren’t mutually exclusive) – real, authentic, deep and light, blissful and transcendent.

Sex like this is also life force-enhancing, libido-enhancing, so it becomes a positive feedback loop, enhancing all of life and love!

It's why my clinic is full of plants and has beautiful views of trees, why my own home blurs the boundaries of garden and house, and why I hold my retreats in beautiful locations surrounded by nature. I encourage you to create this in your own life too!

When you know it’s time to welcome your lover into your depths, when you’re yearning to be filled, then, and only then do you invite your lover in…and as he enters you envelop his penis with your vagina, holding it warm and soft and wet…

Now that ain’t ‘penetration’!

Regular readers will know how I loathe the word penetration being used for sex. It literally means ‘breaking through resistance’. It’s appropriate if you think sex is something a man does to an unwilling woman – force himself into a resistant vagina and essentially masturbate there. Ugh. Not the approach to sex that I advocate!

 So let’s go back to my opening paragraph. Notice the language. Nothing aggressive there. It is soft and inviting. And it’s not one-sided, it’s not something a man does to a woman. It’s totally mutual. There is equal agency. He enters and she envelops. And that entering and enveloping is done when both partners are ready. She knows when she is ready and invites him in, then he accepts, or they wait if he’s not yet ready.

No expectation, no obligation, no going faster than either of you need. Just an awareness of self, an attention to other, a communication and a coming together with pleasure. In this way you are co-creating psychological safety, which allows for relaxation, vulnerability and openness. These are the conditions from which the greatest intimacy and pleasure comes.

This doesn’t just apply to heterosexual intercourse, it applies whenever anyone of any gender enters into the other’s personal space. The more personal that space, and particularly when you are entering another person’s body, the more essential it is that you wait for the invitation and then allow yourself to be welcomed in.

Notice in your own life if there is this mutuality. Is there invitation? Is there welcoming? Is there envelopment? 

 If there is – excellent! If there isn’t, then start to shift the way you engage. If you need help along the way, come to me for private sessions, online courses and retreats.

One of the biggest impediments to a good sex life that I see over and over again, is the assumption that certain activities must inevitably lead to sex. These activities, a look, a touch, a kiss, are seen as a ‘green light’ that leads to the chain of events generally referred to as ‘sex’ which have as their main KPIs intercourse (if you’re heterosexual) and orgasms (whatever your orientation).

So, if at the point of the ‘green light’ – the kiss, the hug, the touch, etc – you don’t feel like any of the ‘subsequent’ activities along the chain of events, you will avoid the ‘green light’. You don’t want to give your partner ‘the wrong idea’, you don’t want to ‘lead them on’, to let them down or disappoint them or alternatively have to go through with something that you don’t want to do at that point in time.

Which leads to many people not doing those activities at all. But by not doing those things, you miss out on enormous amounts of pleasurable connection. And you also miss out on the possibility of becoming aroused enough to want to do more sexual activities.

So, rather than assuming the linear progression of this-must-lead-to-that – that a kiss for instance must lead to sex, take the pressure off and enter into any connecting activity with the knowledge that it just is what it is in that moment. A kiss is just a kiss.

Without the pressure of expectation, you can lose yourself in the enjoyment of the interaction, enjoying the kiss or the hug or the shower or the massage or whatever it is. You can trust your partner, and yourself, not to assume anything further without checking in and knowing that you both want to take it further. This creates a psychological safety that allows you to relax and enjoy yourself. And that psychological safety is also what’s needed to become aroused.

I really believe that one of the elements to having quality on-going sex is to be able to connect in this way. I call it non-linear lovemaking. No expectations! If either of you wants to take the encounter further, you make the suggestion and see where the other is at. And the real art is to do this in a way that is erotic, enticing and playful, so that whatever eventuates, it’s light, mutual and desired. You don’t want to ask permission or be heavy or pragmatic. You want it to be a joyful co-creation. Sometimes the activities and subsequent suggestions will lead to lengthier lovemaking and sometimes they’ll just be lovely encounters on their own. But those frequent lovely encounters are what keep couples connected in a way that makes sexual encounters easier. So it’s a win-win. You have lots of lovely connection all through life and you have plenty of sexual encounters too!

My last post was on moving from a lust-led to a love-led approach to sex. It’s an approach where you come together not because you’re ‘horny’, and already feeling aroused, but because you want to co-create an experience of connection and pleasure, which may or may not include the genitals.

The challenge with this approach is, without the lust, how do you get started?

As a client of mine said recently, the lust is the ‘first domino to fall’ and then the rest just flows naturally, without effort. So, he was very perplexed as to how to get started if he wasn’t already feeling lustful.

It’s a common problem in long-term relationships. It doesn’t matter how much you love and desire your partner, you’re not always going to both be feeling lustful at the same time (if ever!)

So, create the time and space – don’t leave it until you’ve collapsed into bed exhausted and just want to sleep, and make sure the atmosphere is relaxing and inviting. This isn’t ‘scheduling sex’, it’s ‘creating us-time’. And you’re making the environment work for you. You’ll have the lights dimmed to a comfortable level, the heating or cooling will ensure the temperature is just right and you’ll probably have some music playing.

Then greet each other, honour this space you’re creating. Check in and see where each other is at. You might want to start with some touch or massage, you might want to do a simple eye gaze, you might want to have a connecting conversation, or simply start with a kiss. You might start with a bath, or a shower. You might read together or listen to a story or podcast – erotic or otherwise. You might tease each other as you undress. You sure as hell aren’t going to discuss logistics or bring up difficult conversations. Don’t worry if it feels awkward at first, it probably will, and you’ll get better at it, especially as you discover how enjoyable the results can be.

This approach is relaxing and connecting. It allows the ‘chilled build’ where arousal can grow slowly and steadily. It might get you to where you both want genital connection, our general concept of ‘sex’, or it might not, it might be some other form of intimate, pleasurable connection. But chances are, with this approach to getting started, you’re way more likely to find yourselves having genital sex regularly than if you’re hanging around just waiting for the lust to descend.

If you both happen to be feeling horny at the same time, great, have sex. But chances are you’re not always feeling horny at the same time. So, what do you do? Nothing?

So often couples come to me claiming ‘mismatched libidos’ when all that’s really happening is that they’re not both feeling horny at the same time. One is horny, the other isn’t. Too often the response to that situation is not to have sex, in fact not to have any intimacy at all. This becomes a big problem in the relationship, often resulting in power struggles between one who often feels spontaneously aroused and one who feels aroused less often and less spontaneously. And for many couples, neither of them feels spontaneously aroused, they’ve both “lost their mojo” – and so they aren’t having sex.

Actually, this is only a problem if you think that you have sex because you’re feeling horny, ie you are already aroused. This belief means that if you’re not feeling aroused you think you don’t want sex. So, people wait for the lust to descend…

Waiting…

 waiting…

 waiting…

Sigh. No lust. No sex.

But, if rather than waiting for lust to miraculously descend, you come together out of love, out of a desire to create connection and pleasure, then you can start and see where it goes.

This requires the non-linear approach I always advocate. There is no pressure for anything to happen other than connection and pleasure. Those are the only two KPIs. If, through that connection and pleasure you find yourselves feeling aroused enough for genital engagement and orgasms, great. But it doesn’t have to. In fact most of the time you won’t be connecting your genitals, but you are certainly more likely to if you frequently come together out of love for conversation, passing touch, cuddles, having fun together, being interested in each other, looking at each with soft eyes. When you fill your relationship with these small frequent connections of love and pleasure, you’ll find it so much more likely for your genitals to want to join in some of the time, and you’ll be feeling loved-up and connected most of the time. You will be creating the conditions for arousal to occur rather than waiting for arousal first.

I call this love-led sex rather than lust-led sex. In fact, I just call it lovemaking, because it is literally making love. And this lovemaking isn’t something that occasionally happens in the bedroom, it’s happening all through life.

When it comes to sex, we tend to buy into the myth that bigger, harder, faster is best. While that approach might make for entertaining viewing on screen, what looks good is not necessarily what feels good. What feels good is a balance and a flow between the yin and the yang elements of sex. 

No doubt you are familiar with the Taoist concept of yin and yang, that the whole is made up of complementary opposites. Yin represents the softer, flowing side of life and yang represents the firmer, directed side. Too much of either puts us out of balance and life is not as harmonious as it could be. This applies just as much in our sex life as in the whole of life. In fact, we need the balance in the whole of life to have it in our sex life. Part of the problem is seeing sex as something separate from the rest of life. Thinking of sex as just what happens between two sets of genitals is a big part of the problem, it’s too linear and too detached, too yang.

When we take sex out of the ‘box’, and look at it less as an isolated behaviour separate from life, and view it more systemically, then we stay in a more balanced state sexually. Let’s look at this more specifically.

Starting with the physiology of our bodies, a lot of people would consider the yin and yang of sex as bluntly as being turned on or turned off, which is way too binary - there’s a lot more going on behind all that! What turns us on and turns us off, what enables desire and what dampens it, is a complex interplay within and between our nervous and endocrine systems.

Our nervous system is constantly flowing between the yang, up-regulated sympathetic system and the yin, down-regulated parasympathetic systems. If we are too much in the sympathetic, we’re stressed and we can’t become sexually aroused. Yet if we are too much in the parasympathetic, we’re so down-regulated we fall asleep, and can’t become aroused that way either. We need to be in a balance between the two, in a state of alert-relaxation, and from there flow between more yin parasympathetic romance and tenderness as well as more yang sympathetic system passion and excitement.

Now, in parallel within our nervous system there’s a balance between what we could consider the ‘yin’ hormones of oxytocin and vasopressin, the bonding hormones that give feelings of connection, as well as the endorphins, the feel-good hormones, that are released by tender, cuddly, yin activities; and the yang hormones of dopamine, the reward chemical, that leads you to want more (including more of your true love), and norepinephrine which makes you feel excited.

We need dopamine and norepinephrine, which are stimulated by novelty and interesting activities, so it's important that your relationship is stimulating and not complacent. And we need oxytocin and vasopressin as they are connecting and keep you feeling safe and connected and generally good about each other. So, both the tender affection and interesting activities are necessary in a relationship to produce the balance of bonding and desire. You need to be both tender and flirty, having cuddles on the couch as well as exciting adventures, to create both connection and interest. 

You need the balance in the lead up to sex and you need the balance during sex. Intensity is fine, but if all you’re having is shagadelic sex, striving for orgasmic intensity, then it’s yang without yin. Particularly if it’s tense intensity, which tends to happen if you go too fast too quickly and aren’t ready for it, as this produces cortisol, the long-term stress hormone, which is not good for feeling positive about yourself or your partner.

The focus on intensity, tension and orgasmic climax can also cause a dopamine drop after the big O, leading to a feeling of withdrawal from your partner as well as feeling irritated and disconnected. You need the oxytocin and vasopressin so that you balance out the dopamine drop and keep the happy feelings going. 

What’s happening physiologically then manifests experientially as a flow between the yin and yang emotions – tenderness and passion, romance and eroticism. 

When I talk to clients and others about this approach to sex, many people are so mired in the linear intense approach that they have no concept of what I’m talking about. So, I use metaphors to convey the concept.

A very simple metaphor is music. The standard view of sex is like heavy thrash metal - only intense. Very few us like that kind of music, it’s way too much! Yet we tend to approach sex like that. So ,think of sex more like a symphony, where you have quiet passages as well as more intense passages. There’s a journey in the music, not just one long lead-up to a grand finale.

My favourite metaphor is to think of sex like a picnic. There are no rules as to what you should eat in terms of order, pace and quantity. As enticing as pavlova might be, you don’t have to eat it to have a ‘successful’ picnic, and eating pavlova is certainly not why you’re having a picnic. You’re having a picnic because the whole experience is enjoyable, even if you only eat the dips, and even if you don’t eat at all and just enjoy the conversation.

When you get into a flow, instead of taking a linear direct approach to the main KPI of orgasm, and instead sink into a flowing encounter, each encounter becomes a unique co-creation of mutual pleasure and satisfaction.

How to do this? Most importantly, keep the balance and flow in the whole of your life and relationship. I call this beforeplay. It’s the bulk of life, making sure there’s a balance of the calm, cuddly, safe yin elements as well as the more exciting, flirty, active yang elements of relating. In this way your relationship never becomes complacent, you are always focused on keeping yourselves connected and engaged.

Then when it comes to more intimate engagement, don’t go racing straight to the genitals! Make sure there is plenty of non-genital engagement – which includes having good conversation and connecting mentally as much as engaging with your entire bodies and enjoying the feeling of kisses and touch and whole of body skin contact. Don’t get genital until your body really wants it.

Pay attention to how you’re feeling on the inside, and make sure you are letting each other know how you’re feeling and what you’re wanting. Never make assumptions. Learn to communicate both verbally and non-verbally at all stages of engagement, so that you don’t fall into the same old tired linear script.

Focus on pleasure rather than orgasm. Orgasms are great, but they are an outcome of sex, not the purpose of sex. When you focus on the pleasure, rather than just ‘getting each other off’, you’ll find sex way more satisfying. Not that there is anything wrong with orgasms! But don’t assume you have to have them, or else you’ve ‘failed’. Nor limit yourself to one and think you’re done if there is more love-making to be expressed in an encounter! And when you do orgasm, focus on opening and releasing rather than tensing and forcing.

Never underestimate the importance of a conducive environment. Let your surroundings help get you in the mood. Having a beautiful tidy bedroom with music and soft lighting really does help a lot of people sink into the enjoyment of erotic connection (not to mention practicalities like having a lock on the door!)

And make sure that when the encounter comes to a close you continue to cuddle and chat so that you keep your nervous systems relaxed and the calming pleasure hormones flowing.

This approach to love and life means that you are priming your body to have balanced neural and endocrine systems on the inside, which manifests as pleasure, connection and all the good things about love and sex on the outside!
 

When a wine ages well it becomes more complex, layered, subtle. You want to savour the experience of drinking it, not guzzle it down. Sex that ages well is the same. Mature sex takes its time, appreciates all aspects of the experience, doesn’t set out to hit ‘goals’, just enjoys the experience as it unfolds.

Actually, ideally sex at any age should be like this, an experience you savour and appreciate moment by moment, rather than consuming it rapidly to get to the ‘end point’.

Yet I do think that this kind of sex, actually making love, can become easier with age.

That is if we’re aging well. If you’re caught up in the belief that only youthful physicality is good, that anything different from what we were like at 25 is somehow less, then you won’t age well. You’ll feel inadequate, slow, ugly, sexually ‘past it’. To age well you need to notice and appreciate all the positives that come with age – qualities like wisdom, confidence, patience, not to mention things like financial security and more time. When we take all of those good qualities into our sex life, we really can engage in the way I always promote – with a chilled build, with mutuality, without expectation, no KPIs other than pleasure and connection. With this comes the ability to have self-awareness to express what you want and like and the safety and compassion to hear what your partner likes and wants. From that you co-create beautiful, meaningful experiences, whether they are simple, brief loving encounters or hours of erotic interplay. A whole realm of sexual engagement is available to you, depending on what is right for you at that time. It’s what you co-create moment-by-moment.

That is an experience to savour, one to finish on a high with and to take that goodness out into the rest of life. If being able to afford and appreciate a good wine in this way is a benefit of age, well then, the holistic, life-enhancing advantages of mature lovemaking take the benefits way beyond those of a mere wine!