Over my years of clinical and academic involvement in sexuality (not to mention countless hours of personal ‘research’) I have identified seven underlying elements to our sexuality.

These elements are all essential to having a strong, healthy, integrated sexuality. If you are weak in any of them, your sexuality will be out of balance.

These elements are also developmental, each element includes and transcends the ones before. If you jump ahead before you’ve developed and integrated the earlier elements, that too will cause your sexuality to be out of balance. read more...

I see a lot of couples who like sex, but somehow they're just not getting around to it.

The higher-desire person is perplexed as to why the lower-desire person doesn’t want sex more often, especially when both parties clearly enjoy it once they actually get around to doing it. And the lower-desire person is confused as to why they find it so hard to have sex when it’s generally not so bad, even brilliant, when they actually do get around to doing it.

And sometimes it's not that there's a higher and lower desire person, they'd both like the idea of it, but it's not happening...

I point out to them that having sex can often be like getting to the gym – you know it’s good for you, you know you’ll enjoy it while you’re there, you know you’ll feel better for doing it, but … it’s still hard to get there in the first place!  read more...

Desire is a wonderful thing. Intensity is not.

When you desire without intensity, when you open yourself to your partner and invite them in, that is enticing. That will attract them.

But, some people have a more direct approach, and that might not always be appealing to the partner. Some people come on too strong right from the first approach, and others try harder and harder if they feel they’re not getting the response they want.

If your partner isn’t responding as enthusiastically as you might hope for when you express your desire for them, it’s understandable that you might try harder. Unfortunately, that tends to come across as intensity and often causes your partner to back further away and be less forthcoming. So, you try harder and harder… until you give up. Then you back off completely and offer your partner nothing. It’s kind of like: “If you’re not going to play with me, then I don’t want to play with you!” Which is about as mature as the childish tone implies.
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I was in session with a couple recently, looking at some challenging aspects of their relationship, when one of them said: ‘I guess you have to wade through your shit to get the insights to make change…’ and I responded with: ‘You’re not wading through it, you’re composting it!’.

They loved the analogy! And it’s a good one. We’ve all got our shit – defences, traumas, fears, confusions, resentments - that has accumulated over our history. If you don’t deal with it, it ferments and turns bad. But if you do deal with it, you are composting it, turning it into fertilizer for new growth. read more...

You can live life to the full or you can sink into dreary monotony. You can mature with vibrancy or you can grow old and tired. You can have a relationship that continues to explore and grow or you can have one of complacency and dullness. You can see your parenting role as one of keeping under control or as growth and delight (for you and your children).

It’s a choice. There is nothing ‘inevitable’ about how life turns out. The only thing inevitable is that life mirrors your attitude and beliefs. If you believe life, relationships, anything is all downhill after the early flush, it will be. If you believe life can continue to open up and bring new and interesting experiences, it will. read more...

Sex within intimate relationships can be an extraordinary place to grow spiritually, to deepen in love, expand conscious awareness, to feel more peace, bliss, ease. But it’s also very easy to fall into what’s called spiritual bypassing, thinking that you’re becoming more spiritual but actually doing some or all of the following:
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The clitoris is a wonderful thing, one that leads to many and varied delights - but it is not an on / off button.

The clitoris is not the spot that turns a woman on.

In fact, a woman has to be already turned on before you touch her clitoris. read more...

Phase One: Two Become One

When we fall in love, there is so much newness and discovery that it’s very easy to feel like ‘two become one’, you feel you have so much in common! It’s just like the fairy-tales and you feel that you really will ‘live happily ever after’!!!

This is the ‘symbiotic’ phase of a relationship. It’s a very important part and builds a strong foundation.
 
Symbiosis or Fusion?

However, inevitably, you start to realise that two have not become one, two are still two. The cracks start to appear, your differences are more obvious and unsettling. I call this the ‘aargh’ phase of a relationship.
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One of the absolute keys to good sex is the ability to let go, to surrender to the experience.

I'm going to speak directly to female readers here, because I find that women have more trouble in this area. Yet it’s actually more important that the woman let go for the couple to be able to reach heightened states of arousal and pleasure.

Essentially what women need to do is allow for self-indulgence.

Now there are some ‘precious princesses’ out there who are all about self-indulgence: me, me, me. I'm not talking about them. I’m talking about all those women I see in my clinic and at workshops and in the street and in the school playground, etc, who can’t allow themselves to indulge. Especially sexually. read more...

 At the end of my last Couples Retreat, one participant, who’d had quite a challenging time of it, declared with a big smile and evident relief that she realised that prior to the retreat she had not been relationship-oriented.

I see this a lot, in various manifestations.

In some couples, one declares they are quite happy in the relationship and so their dissatisfied partner must have their own issues to deal with. Well, no, I’m afraid that if one person is not happy then there is something wrong with the relationship not with only one of the individuals in it. Thinking otherwise is not being relationship-oriented.

I see other couples where they might both be feeling dissatisfied in the relationship, but one claims to know what the problem is, and the problem is the partner, who needs to sort out ‘their’ issues. This person is also not relationship-oriented.
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