How to Improve Your Sex Life

Sex is more than a physical release, it is a way to intimately connect with another human. But sometimes distractions can interfere with your ability to connect with your partner. Maybe it's work, school, or kids that dominate your time. Whatever your distraction is, sex is often the thing that gets kicked to the curb in your relationship. You don't have to let life get in the way of having the sex that you want to have, though. Keeping your sex life fresh and exciting is easy if you communicate and make an effort as partners to spice things up and have fun with each other in the bedroom (and elsewhere).

Explore your own body. To feel comfortable and intimate with a partner, feel comfortable and intimate with yourself. This includes being connected to your body and your feelings.^[1] Feel free to experience and express the way you feel. Learn how you like to be touched, what turns you on, and how your body reacts to different stimulus. You can explore your body with your partner, too.

·         Using a vibrator can help a woman explore her own sexual responses, and can show her partner what she enjoys.

Relax before sex. Use some relaxation techniques before becoming intimate with your partner. This will help take the focus off of performance. Strive to enjoy every moment of the experience. Take some deep breaths and consciously relax tight muscles.

·         Relax with your partner. Take deep breaths together and enter into a relaxed physical and emotional space.

·         If you struggle with performance anxiety, check out How to Deal with Sexual Performance Anxiety.

Concentrate on foreplay. Sometimes sex can start to feel scripted, like you're moving quickly from A to B to C. Slow down and focus on sensuality before diving into sex. Foreplay is about exciting both partners equally.

·         Trade massages before you have sex, and spend a particular length of time exploring each other's bodies before you're allowed to move on. Make the touching part of sex as long and luxurious as possible. Put on soft music and make an evening of it. Take your time.

·         Focus on pleasuring your partner and giving excitement. Then, revel in pleasure when it’s returned to you.

·         Many women benefit most from clitoral stimulation during foreplay.

Take your time. Don’t approach sex as something to do and then get done. Slow down and enjoy every aspect of sex. Experience the pleasure of being touched, and return the touch to your partner. Enjoy touching and being touched. Engage in non-sexual touching before moving onto sexual touch. Enjoy the feeling of your partner’s body and take it slow.

·         Practice sensate focus. This exercise helps build trust and intimacy over a gradual period of time (20–40 minutes), and helps relieve performance anxiety. Taking turns, engage in increasing touch with your partner. First start with non-sexual touch to your partner, touching the torso, arms, legs. Then include increasing sexual touch, around the breasts/nipples and groin area, but not touching genitals. Finally, engage in more sexual touch, including genital touch or light stimulation. You can choose to engage in sex afterward.

Be spontaneous. One of the most common ways a sex life can become mundane is that it becomes a routine. Maybe you only ever have sex in the mornings, or on particular days when you get a break from work, school, or kids. Spice things up by having sex at unexpected times, in unexpected ways, or in unexpected places. Further, don’t be afraid to masturbate; masturbation can be a healthy part of a relationship.

Explore your kinky side. If introducing toys and costumes into the bedroom seems exciting and fun for both of you, go for it. Be as kinky as you want to be. As long as your relationship puts honesty and communication first, there's no wrong way to have sex.

·         Add to the fantasy with role-playing. You both could dress up in costumes and call each other by different names.

·         Blindfolds are easy ways to make sex suddenly touch-focused and different. If you're into it, go the sensory-deprivation route.

·         Some couples in long term relationships like to relive the early stages of their dating, when they couldn't get enough of one another. Plan to meet separately at a bar you used to frequent and pretend like you don't know each other. Go through all the motions of the first blind date, and pretend you don't know anything about the other's sexual likes. Go from there.