The 4 Keys to Having Better Sex In Long-Term Marriage
If you’d rather listen to the audio version of this content, check out my podcast episode, “Expanding Erotic Intelligence”
Imagine you just took eighth-grade algebra. You can solve basic equations. Then someone puts a calculus test in front of you, saying “you should be able to ace this one, now!” You’d probably muddle through, feeling confused and inadequate.
This is how most of us treat sex. We may have been doing it a while, and we figured it out… But nobody REALLY taught us how to have the sex we really want, for THIS stage of life.
Do you really know how to have great sex and a nourishing partnership… With a grown-up? With your changing bodies and your adult responsibilities? While you’re juggling aging parents and growing kids and big careers? While you’re trying to build a better world and worrying about its most painful aspects?
Just as we need to build our mathematical intelligence to get us from algebra to calculus, we also need to expand what I call “erotic intelligence” to have and give the kind of pleasure and connection we really desire inside the erotic space.
Some clues you need to expand your erotic intelligence:
INITIATION: You’ve had a hard time initiating sex… or taking your partner up on their invitations when they ask, even though you sincerely WOULD like to have more sex, at least in the abstract.
DESIRE: You aren’t sure what you really want, but you know it’s different from what you have
REQUESTS: You think you or your partner could build more skill at touching and being present, sexually, but it’s hard to describe what that skillfulness would look like
PRESENCE: You notice that you have a hard time staying present in erotic situations, truly letting your partner in, and allowing yourself to deeply receive their attention and touch and care
If you’ve faced any of these challenges, you are in very good company!
I am determined to help you unlock the best sex of your lives. It’s still ahead of you, whether you believe that yet or not, and with these four keys, you’ll learn how to create it.
There are four main factors that dramatically accelerate a couple’s ability to go deeper in love and sex.
They include:
CLARITY
CAPACITY
COMMUNICATION
And CONTAINER
Key #1: Clarity
What do I mean by clarity? Wherever you are with your erotic interactions with your partner, you have a definition of what sex is and what sex isn't.
You know or believe something about how your body works and how their body works. You might know something about what takes you out of the moment. You might know the same about your partner.
Whatever you already know, the clarity you already have helps determine the sex you have now. If you expand your clarity, you can create deeper, more pleasurable sex. You can learn more about how your body works. You can get curious about how your partner's body works. You can explore your emotional, energetic, and physical responses to different stimuli in the bedroom and outside the bedroom. All this clarity will help you expand the amount and quality of delicious interaction that you have.
How do you begin to expand your clarity?
The single most important distinction that most couples get from our work together around sex is the understanding that the best sex isn't goal oriented.
We've been given a definition of sex. When I say "have sex," what comes to mind? Quite likely, if you’re a straight couple, you think of penetrative vaginal sex that ends with ejaculation (and if the feminine partner's experience matters, an orgasm for her before that endpoint of his ejaculation). We tend to categorize most of the other, even more preferable things that you may do erotically with your partner as "foreplay."
That terminology is a huge impediment to our real clarity and to our capacity to really enjoy erotic connection with one another, because that phallocentric view puts pressure on both people. There's so much performing and jostling to make sure we're doing it right that sex isn't fun anymore! That's a huge bummer.
What if we take that phallocentric definition off of it? Learn to think of sex as the act of engaging with one another's erotic energy.
Create a new clarity about what sex can be: sex is play time together. How do we know we had sex? It felt good. Whether there was penetration or not, whether there was anyone's climax or not.
Climax =/= Orgasm
That brings up another important distinction in our clarity: the distinction between orgasm and climax. Climax is what you probably refer to as orgasm: that place where ejaculation happens. Regardless of gender, climax is a peak that often leads to a dissipation of energy.
But orgasm is not synonymous with climax.
We can enter an orgasmic state and ride that out for far longer than we can maintain a climactic state. Orgasm is a place we enter. It's a ride we go on together. That orgasmic arc and undulation is a journey. A climax is more a destination we have to produce: it’s a goal-oriented, performative act, like turning out a perfect omelet.
This goal-oriented view of sex is what makes sex just another “to do,” another of life’s pressures. That’s a real boner-crusher and pussy dryer-upper! But it’s also a huge disservice to the energy source that eroticism can be in our lives.
These are key distinctions: sex is more than penetration; it’s play time. And orgasm is more than climax - it’s a journey that doesn’t require ejaculation or dissipation. They can give you new clarity and I invite you to continue to explore the clarity you can gain yourselves.
What you can do right now
Where are you unsure about how your own body works?
About how your heart and mind respond, and what that does to your sex drive or to your interest level?
What are your learning edges with regard to entering an erotic, playful, soft space with your partner?
What aren't you sure about when it comes to your partner? What questions do you need to ask?
You can start by going to ourlegacylove.com/57-questions to download my free 57 favorite questions about sex and ask your partner those questions. The whole intent of that set of questions is to expand your clarity.
Wherever you are today, expanding your clarity will expand your capacity for erotic connection with yourself and your partner.
Key #2: Capacity
Your capacity for sensation is what governs how far you can go in your erotic experience. If you have to maintain control, maybe you will protect yourself from experiences on the “less pleasant” end of the spectrum, but you won't be able to experience much on the positive end.
I invite you to think about your capacity right now as a container. You can imagine anything from a little eighth of a teaspoon measuring spoon, up to a measuring cup, up to a bucket, up to a bathtub...Maybe a swimming pool, maybe an ocean.
How much holding power do you have to experience uncertainty? To experience surprise? To experience receiving? To experience inflicting sensation on your partner? How much capacity do you have to take a risk? To reveal yourself? How much goodness are you able to accept in all areas of your life? How much are you willing to be served?
I'll sometimes say, “Hey, you're really stretching my receiving muscles here!" when I’m out on the edge of my receiving capacity.
We want to play on the edge of our capacity for sensation. That's where it's most delicious: right at the edge. And that's how we expand our capacity.
Another important question to ask yourself is "Which sensations around eroticism do you have great capacity for?” Which do you welcome? What makes you say, "Yeah, bring it. I've got room for this all day!"
And which sensations, by contrast, do you have a lower tolerance for? Which can't you deal with? Where do you shut down and go away? And how can you play with your edge there, in the name of welcoming sensation?
Let me get a little “woo” for a moment
It is my sense that the reason we're here on earth is to experience in human form, using these bodies and these emotions. We’re here for this messy, messy experience, right? There are so many smells, and sounds and pains and aches and uncertainties, emotionally as well as physically.
I think that's by design. I think the creator of the universe is capable of so much exquisite design that those things would have been designed out if they weren't desirable. But in fact, what if life itself split itself up into all these little manifestations called you and me and everything else because it wanted - quite precisely DESIRED - to experience the stubbed toe, and the razor burn, and the longing and loss?
And yes, orgasm! Yes, tenderness, vulnerability, all of these sensations.
What if just like red, yellow, blue… the Infinite doesn’t have a favorite? It just loves all of them, and uses them all blended together to make all the other sensations. What if the sensations themselves are where it's at in this life?
And what if our capacity for them IS our capacity for spirituality, for presence, for aliveness? What if our job here is to enjoy every last dripping one of them to whatever extent we can, on any given day, and just keep growing our capacity?
That's where I play from. And if you are devoted to growing your capacity, then engaging in practices that push the edge of your capacity will help you do that. And that's what I'm here for: to help people who are edge-lickers... who want to play out there at the edge of their capacity and expand it.
Key #3: Communication
We need to be able to convey, in essence, just four things to our partners to be able to have the best sex of our lives:
What we’re experiencing
What we want to offer
What we want to ask for
Whether we consent to our partner’s latest offer or request
I invite you to consider, “How do I convey what I'm experiencing to my partner?" And I encourage you to use the sensations in your body. You don't have to be really articulate. You just have to find the sensation in your body and name it.
That will actually speak from your body to theirs and let them know the impact they're having. And it's far more effective than telling them what they're doing wrong, or trying to compliment them, trying to tell them they're doing well.
Letting them know what it feels like for you is often the most moving, deepest way you can convey your experience and touch their heart.
When you want something to be different, simply making a request is the best way to convey that. Not saying "don't do this, don't do that." But saying, "Would you please ____?" and asking for exactly what you want.
Likewise, many, many problems in the erotic space can be averted if rather than just changing up what you're doing, or trying to read your partner's mind, you make an offer. "Would you like me to…" can be the beginning of a very powerful question. "Would you like me to go faster?" "Would you like me to keep going?" "Would you like me to move to the left?" "Would you like more pressure?"
That brings us to an essential facet of communication: our yes or no. Yes to your offer, or Yes to your request. And if you're free to say either yes or no, then we can always keep the game going. No one has to fake anything, shut down, do anything they don't really believe in. It's all consent based, and then we're actually free to play.
Key #4: Container
A container is a specific space in which you can engage in expanding the other three skills safely, with privacy, and with an assurance that you're not going to wade in over your head in any way.
The simplicity and clear boundaries of your container are what make room for the clarity, capacity and communication to grow.
The container I use is The Couples’ Stroking Practice
The Couples' Stroking Practice is a clear, well-defined 20-minute exercise that I teach my clients. They're supported to practice it week after week, and it expands their clarity, their communication and their capacity every time they practice it.
If you want to learn more about this practice and working with me, reach out here.
The Couples' Stroking Practice is the single best way that I've found to turn up the heat and deepen the connection and grow your capacity for pleasure in yourself and your relationship. But even without learning the Couple's Stroking Practice, the two of you can create a container that works well.
What you can do right now
Just talk together about an invitation that either of you can make that lets the other accept or decline to enter an erotic space for a given period of time. You might also set 15 or 20 minutes to play. If you can make that space goalless and non-penetrative and without an ambition for any particular outcome. You can create a space to experiment with the other three skills.
If you're eager to learn more, these are some of the best books that can help you expand on these skills:
Women’s Anatomy of Arousal by Sheri Winston
Extended Massive Orgasm by Steve & Vera Bodansky
My guarantee
If you create a space to experiment with clarity, capacity and communication, they will grow. And if they grow, the heat and the sweetness between you will also grow.
You don't need new outfits or lingerie. You don't need to go away for the weekend or for a month together. You don't need a workshop that teaches you mind-blowing techniques from porn stars. Really, you have everything you need right there between the two of you already. You just need to create space to experiment with these skills.
I wish for you the best love and erotic connection you can imagine. And I would love to hear about it as you create it.
If you want to know more about working with me reach out here or DM me on any social channel: