For people in long-term relationships, chilling out together is generally a prerequisite for good sex.
 
 I always recommend that couples find some time, preferably every day, where you can just hang out and chill together. It only needs to be 15 minutes over a cup of tea or glass of wine when the kids have gone to bed, or similar. You can give each other a foot massage - anything conducive to time to chat in an easy, relaxed way.
 
 When you’re in a good space like this it's also easier to raise the issue of whether you might move into some love-making that evening or not; and if you are open to the idea, what one or both of you might need to get there.
 
 Clients have told me that this one small change to their relating – deciding that sex is no less sexy because it’s a little bit planned - has had a huge impact on their sense of connectedness and therefore on their sex lives.

Now let’s take this a step further and talk about where you have this together time. Of course, you could do it around the kitchen table, you could do it on a balcony or veranda. (Not in front of the TV.) Or you could do it in your bedroom.
 
 I’ve always used my bedroom as a sanctuary, a place to hang and chill, whether I’m in a relationship or not. But from talking to hundreds of people I’ve realized more and more that for many people the 'bedroom as sanctuary' isn’t common, so I’ve been encouraging people to chill out in their bedroom together. Just as I recommend turning your bedroom into a sanctuary in the way it’s decorated and presented, I recommend you actually use your sanctuary – as a place to chill, relax, connect.
 
 Loll around on the bed in your pyjamas with a cup of tea - chat, touch, share. It’s a great way to spend easy, quality time together, and it makes it easier to segue into some delicious sensual and sexual activity. 

If you want a good night out, do you tend to plan it in advance or decide on the spur of the moment? If you’re playing sport, do you have your trainings and matches planned in advance, or do you just play whenever the whim takes you (and hope that everyone else involved is interested and available too)?

I imagine you’d say in both cases that you plan in advance, that you schedule those enjoyable activities.

So why not schedule sex?

• If you know you like a lazy, sensual Sunday morning lie-in, then keep Sunday mornings free.
• If Wednesday is the only day of the week when no-one in the family has evening activities so the kids can go to bed on time and you can have an ‘early night’, then make Wednesday your nooky night.
• If you both have jobs where you’ve got flexibility of time, consider starting late or working from home on a Tuesday and spend some time in the bedroom.
• If you go to the gym together after work on a Thursday and tend to come home feeling aroused, then have sex straightaway and have a late dinner.
• If one of you plays golf on Saturdays and the other gets a day to themselves so the golf-player comes home looking and feeling refreshed and sexy and the other's feeling relaxed and sexy, then make Saturday evening your time for lovemaking.
• Or whatever works in your life.

• You make sure you keep Sunday mornings free, or go straight to the bedroom after gym, or cooperate to get the kids to bed on time so you’re not too tired by the time you get to the bedroom.
• You think about it earlier in the day, so it’s on your mind and you can start to get in the mood. Anticipation can be wonderful for libido.

You might be in the mood…
 
 …but by the time you’ve put the dishwasher on, put out the rubbish, checked on the kids, locked the house, brushed your teeth, got changed and hopped into bed… well, somehow the urge has disappeared.
 
 How do you stay in the mood as you lead-up to sex?
 
 Make the lead-up erotic! 

If the two of you have had a good cup-of-tea (or cup-of-coffee) connection, or gone for a walk, or watched a happy movie together or whatever, and that’s got you both in the mood, then keep that happy banter up as you both do the last-minute chores. Or divide the tasks with a sexy: “Meet you in the bedroom in 20 minutes…first one there lights the candles!”
 
 Either of those approaches will keep the desire bubbling away as you finish the mundane matters of the day, with the anticipation of some delicious pleasures to come.
 
 Then there’s the teeth brushing, the face-washing and the undressing and all that end-of-day body maintenance that needs doing.
 
 Well, if you’re showering, I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you how to make that erotic - just jump in together! Or one of you watches while the other washes. Or one of you washes the other.
 
 If you prefer a more private night-time toilette, then a sensuous: “I’ll be out in ten, be ready for me…” can keep your partner in delightful anticipation.
 
 Changing into sexy or sensual nightwear is always a good thing. Brushing your teeth while wearing a silk teddy and satin robe does increase the erotic nature of this ordinary act quite considerably. Or watching your partner brush their teeth in the nude can be quite enticing (it’s amazing how the muscles in his back move as he brushes…mmm, mmm).
 
 I always feel it’s a shame to let a good undress go to waste. So, rather than doing it privately or furtively, take your time and let your partner watch. You don’t have to do a fancy striptease; a simple slow reveal can be enough. Better still, just stand there and let your partner take your clothes off for you, piece-by-piece, kissing each new body part as it is revealed…
 
 Do you need to brush your hair before you retire? Let your partner do it for you. Having your hair brushed, even if you have very little, is one of life’s great sensual delights.
 
Finally, don’t get in to bed stay on the bed - it’s much more erotic to be on the bed, kissing and stroking, than to be fumbling around under the covers. You can see each other better, you can feel each other’s bodies more easily, there is room to move, it’s easier to use props whether that’s food or oils or sex toys, and importantly, you’re less likely to be tempted by sleep. Falling asleep mid-foreplay is not erotic.
 
 So, think about what you need to do at the end of the day and get creative turning the mundane into the erotic! 

I’m not sure where I found this, but it’s wonderful advice. It’s pretty much the approach I’ve always followed, and I look pretty good for my age!

• Drink pure water.
• Breathe good air deeply.
• Live in a clean house.
• Good skin comes from a clean body, so make sure to eat foods that purify the body.
• Eat a wide variety of simple foods.
• Sleep at least eight hours a night, and go to bed before 11pm.
• Enjoy nature.
• Stay tranquil and calm, by keeping a relaxed mind.
• By the age of 40, the mind is visible on the face. So improve your outlook and you will improve your face.
• Don’t sit around worrying.
• Control your desires: don’t always want what you can’t have. This unsatisfied-yearning makes a woman ugly.
• Don’t complain, don’t be envious, don’t be irritated. Your health will deteriorate and your skin will look terrible.
• Enjoy lovemaking. You will have glowing shiny skin and a relaxed face.
• Accept your age and the changes in your beauty. A beautiful old person is beautiful because their mind and spirit are wise and graceful.

My clients are all adults, although in some cases it’s hard to believe: they come to me wanting a positive, mature relationship with good sexual relating - yet they act like kids in the playground! They bully, they whine, they play games, they lie, they ignore, they’re rude, they’re insensitive…. And they think that this behaviour will result in mutual sexual desire!?

Name-calling, sarcasm, rudeness, withdrawing, clamming up, insults, aggression, contempt and so forth are not conducive to harmonious relationships. It sounds obvious when you read it here, but are you actually putting it in to practice yourself?

A mature relationship is based on individual confidence and mutual respect. Consider this as love of yourself and love of your partner. The two individuals are confident within themselves, not needy of having their partner agree with them on everything or share identical views, desires and intentions. Coming from this internal strength, they can then relate to their partner with utmost respect.

Respect means two things: to admire someone for their qualities, and more importantly to have due regard for their wishes, feelings and rights.

In a mature, respectful relationship neither party will force their views on the other, or expect their partner to share theirs. They will each respect the other as an individual so their coming together will be from desire and respect, not from need and expectation.

How does this look? For a start, you listen to the other with an open heart. You don’t leap in with defensiveness or accusations. You don’t respond until you are sure they’ve been heard, and you take time, whether it’s a moment or hours, to consider what they’ve said, from your heart, and then respond with love and respect.

You will also be completely honest with your partner. You won’t make assumptions, expect them to mind-read or withhold expressing yourself for fear of their reaction or fear that they won’t like what you say. You will have the personal confidence, and the respect of your partner, to trust that the two of you have the ability to deal with anything that comes up.

A client recently told me that after she opened up and told her husband exactly what she felt about their relationship she felt closer to him than she had in a very long time. As her husband replied when she shared this in session: “yes, and you naturally held your hand out to me afterwards and it was lovely.” She was taken aback that such honesty had been received so well and that it had created a better relationship. It was only because she respected her husband enough to be able to share, and he was strong enough to hear.

It does take work to get to this level of relating. That’s what relationships ideally are for: they hone your skills at being independent while together, being confident and respectful.

If you use your relationship to help you mature in this way, you will leave the playground shenanigans far behind in childhood, where they belong, and enter into a far deeper, more meaningful and genuinely sexier relationship.

This is one of those ‘am I normal’ type questions that I’m always asked. The answer to the question: How often is normal? Is simply: Whatever is right for you.

So the question you should be asking is: How often is right for us?

If neither of you want to ever have sex, that’s fine, because that’s right for you. If you both want to have sex twice a day, terrific! That’s what’s right for you.

Clearly most people are somewhere between those two extremes.

I get some clients who come to see me claiming they’re having too much sex - or at least, the lower desire partner is claiming that their partner wants more than is ‘normal’.

More often though, clients assume they should be having more sex than they are having. They just take it as a given that everyone else is having lots of sex and so they should too. How much sex this ‘ideal’ amount is, is usually pretty vague, and they expect me to tell them.

I’ve noticed that a lot of women assume their partners want sex every day. This is generally because he’d like it more often than they’re having it, or more likely, he’d like better quality than they’re having. But that doesn’t mean every day. I’ve seen so many surprised women hear their partners say just once a week, maybe twice, would be great - especially as she often says the same thing!

A female client once told me that her husband wished she’d want sex every day like I do - except that I don’t! They’d assumed that because I specialize in sex that I must have sex daily, because that’s what they thought was the ‘ideal’ amount of sex. I burst out laughing and then explained that I’m a quality rather than quantity kind of a gal. They were both quite puzzled initially until they ditched this myth. Then we could actually get real and work around what each of them actually wanted, not what they thought they should want.

Even if you would like sex more frequently, there are the realities of life. Hey, I’d like to go to a yoga class every day, but I can’t do that either. If I’m away on holidays, sure - daily yoga and daily sex! Bring it on! But back in the real world, nope.

So have an honest chat with each other about how often you’d really like to have sex, and more importantly what quality of sex you’d like to have. You’ll generally find that the better the quality, the less the higher desire partner will crave it and give the impression that he or she wants it all the time. The more open you are, the easier it is to find the balance that works just for you.

That’s what a couple said to me recently: “We’re slaying the pink elephants!” These elephants had been sitting in all the corners of their relationship and taking up so much room they were feeling stifled and could hardly breathe, let alone relate. 

Because the elephants were there, but they did nothing about them, the elephants grew in size and number and took up a ridiculous amount of room. The couple had got to the point where they couldn’t mention anything of any significance or meaning as there was so little space in the relationship. They were tippy toeing around with shallow breath, hoping they wouldn’t bump into an elephant.
 
 Fortunately, they found the way to acknowledge that the elephants were there, and do something about them. They got out the metaphorical elephant guns and went on safari within their relationship, slaying all the pink elephants - those they knew were there, and those they discovered along the way.
 
 It can be quite a process to do this, and rarely easy. It requires bravery and commitment. You’ll hear stuff you don’t want to hear; you’ll acknowledge parts of yourself that you’re not proud of, you’ll get a greater insight into your partner and into yourself, and you’ll learn ways of moving forward together.
 
 The very first step is to admit the pink elephants exist and commit together to doing something about them.
 
Note: If the analogy of slaying elephants is a bit gruesome, just think of rounding them up and herding them away! 
 
 
If you need help slaying your pink elephants, book in for private sessions with me. 

It starts this week!! Yes, the launch program of my new radio show, The Tantric Lounge, on Voice America’s Empowerment Channel, is this Friday!
 
 Here's the blurb:
 
Join me, renowned sex educator, therapist and coach, on the Tantric Lounge and discover the missing link to complete empowerment: your sexuality!

The Tantric Lounge is a space where sex is an art and sex is a science. It’s where sex, science and spirituality meet, and everything in between.
 
In the Tantric Lounge you’ll explore the third wave of sexuality: beyond shame, beyond sleaze, heading towards true understanding and liberation. It’s sex for the seeker, for the explorer, for the thinker.
 
I present sex like no one else, it’s fascinating, funny and above all inspiring. Tune in to my wisdom and entertaining conversations with engaging guests from the leading edge of sexuality, as we discuss everything to do with sex, love and intimacy.
 
Discover your sexual potential, become truly empowered and get more out of your sex life than you ever imagined! The Tantric Lounge, Thursdays at 5 PM American Pacific Time, Fridays at 10AM Australian Eastern Time, on the VoiceAmerica Empowerment Channel.
 
Go to www.voiceamerica.com/show/2234/the-tantric-lounge.
 
So please join me either live or listen to the podcasts!
 
See you down on the Tantric Lounge... 

I’ve spoken to hundreds of heterosexual men at the most intimate levels about their sex lives. I always ask them what it is they love most about sex. And do you know what the answer is?

If you have an old-fashioned view of sex, that ‘men have their needs’ and that really they are just animalistic creatures who need to get their end in to get their rocks off then you’d probably say something like: having an orgasm.

But no. All the men, bar a couple of complete jerks, have told me that what they love best about sex is their partner’s pleasure. Yes: the more pleasure she has, the more pleasure he has...

This makes sense because women have greater potential for sexual response than men. Men are a bit limited in the sexual response area, especially if you think of sex as penis activity - penises can only last so long and can generally only have the one orgasm and then they’re done.

Women however can last and last. Women can really go places sexually. And when a woman goes places sexually, she takes her man along with her.

So it makes sense that men love to please sexually - they’re doing it for their own pleasure!

It’s hard for a lot of women to believe this though. The number of times I’ve had couples sitting on the couch together and the man is saying: “Yes, I want her to enjoy sex, I don’t enjoy it if she doesn’t.” And she’s replying with a disbelieving: “Nah, that’s not true, you just want to have sex.”

Or a wife will say: “But I’m giving you sex twice a week, what’s the problem?” And the man will reply: “I don’t want you to give me sex, I want you to want it and enjoy it!”

Over and over again the men say to me that if she’s not enjoying it, then he’s not enjoying it.

Men are not animalistic creatures. To some extent they were forced to in the bad old days when society thought women weren’t sexual and men were, so a man needed to be ‘serviced’ regularly. It was nothing more than men masturbating inside their wives.

More aware modern men, who know that women are sexual, don’t want that, because it is just masturbation. In fact it’s worse than masturbation because it leaves him feeling unloved and undesired. He might get some stress relief at a physical level, but at an emotional level it can be damaging. Far better to actually masturbate. Which is what a lot of men do in preference to unconnected, unwanted obligation sex.

This is why advising that women should ‘just do it’ and ‘take one for the team’ will never satisfy either sex, because men don’t want obligation sex.

Men want to be wanted. They want sex to be good. They want her to have a great time, and they’ll do their best to make sure she does - for both their benefits.

Most of us have fetishes of some kind or another. If you’re lucky, they’re socially acceptable, and not even considered fetishes - such as if you’re a woman who gets turned on wearing lace knickers or stiletto shoes; but if your fetishes are not socially acceptable - such as if you’re a man who gets turned on wearing lace knickers or stiletto shoes, well, then you’ve got problems. For example, in our society in general:

• Women are permitted to find wearing lacy knickers erotic, men are not.

• If you’re a man who has a fetish for women’s breasts, you’re considered completely normal. If you’re a man who has a fetish for women’s feet, you’re considered abnormal. Simply because society considers breasts to be sexual parts of the body, but not feet. Feet lovers are considered to be deviant.

• If you’re a woman who feels sexy in a tight silk dress, you’re normal. But if you’re a woman who feels sexy in a tight latex dress, you’re abnormal. Simply because society deems silk to be acceptable material for dresses, but not latex. Latex wearers are considered to be deviant.
  
  
• If you find the sensation of a feather tickling your skin pleasurable, you’re normal; if you find the sensation of a leather paddle striking your skin, you’re not. Simply because tickling sensations are considered sexually normal, but not spanking sensations. Spanking is considered to be deviant.

What is considered problematic, is if the fetish interferes with the person’s life so that they can’t function in society normally, such as if it becomes compulsive. Interestingly, it’s often the fact that the fetish is considered abnormal that it causes problems.

Take cross-dressing. If the cross-dresser lives in an ‘alternative’ part of town and can freely walk down the street dressed in women’s clothing without anyone batting an eye, then it’s not a problem. If he lives in a conservative area, that can cause difficulties. If his partner is fine with his desire to dress in women’s clothing, then it’s not a problem; if she finds his fetish repulsive, then they’ve got a problem.

If one person has a fetish and the other doesn’t share it, then as with any other interest, you need to work with it. If one likes golf, the other doesn’t have to play golf too, that partner can play golf with golf-loving friends. If one is a vegetarian and the other loves meat, then you work together to create meals that both can eat.

In the case of fetishes, it’s the same. If he likes wearing women’s clothing, he can dress alone, or with other cross-dressers, or if she’s into it, they can dress up and go out together! The key point is that you accept each other for who you are, with honesty and respect, and work with that. Chances are you can work with the fetish. If not, you can separate without animosity. Often when people first allow themselves to enjoy their fetish, they can be a little like a kid in a candy shop and become very excited, but over time it generally normalises and becomes part of life. It depends on the individual. It certainly doesn’t get worse and lead to more and more depravity! That argument is no different to the assumption that if you take one drug you’ll become an addict, or one drink and you’re an alcoholic: most people manage their pleasures without compulsion or addiction.