That intense sexual energy you had when you first started dating can be hard to access once you’ve been in a relationship with someone for years. It’s still waiting for you to activate it, but it takes effort and intention. If things start to stall sexually with your significant other, below are some tips on lighting a fire in your bedroom.
Learn How to Flirt Again
Sometimes it happens without warning: you start paying bills with someone, and you stop flirting. And though flirting can feel separate from having hot sex, it’s not. Flirting is a kind of foreplay, and being deliberate about flirting will help you both anticipate the next time you have sex.
What makes sex boring in long-term relationships is the lack of anticipation. Many couples take for granted that sex is a given, and it becomes a routine. To counteract this, make an effort to touch, speak to, and look at your partner the way you did when you first met. There may have been a way that you held hands in public, grabbed your partner to sneak a kiss, or stroked your partner’s arm during a movie. Remember what it felt like to need to touch your partner as often as possible and reenact that. Before you know it, you’ll feel like you did when you just started dating, and having good sex will be a cinch.
Disconnect From Your Day
Instead of getting into bed and immediately beginning the same kind of foreplay that you always have, take a minute to disengage from your stressors. Your body won’t let you feel turned on if you’re in survival mode. Honor the fact that you need to transition from a hectic, anxiety-provoking day to slowing down, feeling your body, and remembering how nice it will be to be intimate with your partner. This can be the first step to developing a mindfulness practice.
Practicing mindfulness looks different for different people. You may want to go to a hot yoga session or other exercise activity that helps you connect with your body, take a hot bath, dance to your favorite music, or meditate. When you can slow down your brain to focus on the present moment, you will notice what your body has to say. Often, your body has been craving intimacy more than you know, especially if you haven’t taken the opportunity to slow down and listen.
Take Some Time
It’s counterintuitive, but it’s true: when long-term couples become proficient at sex, their sex lives can suffer. When you know exactly what your partner likes and become an expert at bringing them to orgasm, you tend to do what you need to as quickly as possible. Humans are good at taking a task and making it quicker and more efficient, and we tend to do the same thing with sex. But when you treat sex like a task on your to-do list, it loses the romance, the seduction, and the spark that you once had. And if you do this too often, your relationship could suffer from a sex drought or, worse, become sexless. If your relationship is already sexless, the video below can help you find a way through it.
Whether or not your relationship is sexless, it’s essential to start paying more attention to your partner’s body. Though you likely know your partner’s body very well, it’s important to linger, explore, and tease. The more time you spend tantalizing your partner, the more explosive the climax will be.
Taking It to the Next Level
Whenever you’re ready to heat up your sex life, contact me for a free consultation.
Bio: Dr. Nazanin Moali is a clinical psychologist and sex therapist in the Los Angeles area. She works with various individuals to understand and improve their sexuality. Dr. Moali conducts personal consultation sessions in her Torrance and Hermosa Beach offices, or via a secure, online video-counseling platform. Click here to take the sex quiz for women.