There’s the everyday, and there’s the erotic. And there’s a shift between the two.

There’s a physical shift where your body stirs.  It’s not just genital arousal, it’s a shift in your physical state, a rich warm spread of feeling throughout your whole body. And there’s a shift in consciousness, from the everyday waking state to something altered, with less active cognitive thinking, to a more right-brain, bliss-like awareness.

To have good sex, you need the erotic shift, physically and consciously.

Sure, you can engage in sex without it, you might even have genital orgasms, but you won’t have that rich altered state of consciousness. Which is fine for a quickie, but for a fully satisfying experience right to the depths of your soul, you need to access the erotic shift.

What leads to that shift? What are your gateways?

For some it might it might be sensual engagement through touch and sound, for others it might be a sense of deep love and devotion.

Some might get there through a sense of the transgressive, going to the edge, in their minds or in their actions, for others it could be through the simplicity of an eye gaze.

Some might find their way through erotic storytelling, others with erotic images.

Some might be led there through role-play and pretend, others through admiring the beauty of the naked body.

For some the right atmosphere alone can be the gateway, for others a flirtatious lead-up of hours or days.

Whatever your gateway, is unique to you, and will change with time, age, mood and energy. There’s no right or wrong, just what is authentic for you, at that time, and what you co-create between you.

When the shift occurs, you can engage with your entire being. And this way sex becomes whole - truly bodyful, mindful and soulful.  

It might not sound particularly sexy, but without safety you don’t get sexy, at least, not quality sexy. 

Safety is needed to be able to trust, be vulnerable, open up and let go, and that is what’s required for good sex. 

Safety comes first.

It’s often overlooked in sex though. We want to jump straight to the good stuff, the behaviours, rather than making sure the conditions are safe. It would be like going skydiving without checking the parachute is packed properly. It’s dangerous! And not pleasurable. And in fact, like with skydiving, the more ‘dangerous’ you want your sexual encounter to be, the more you have to focus on safety.

You’ll actually find that those who engage in the kinkier sexual activities have very thoroughly well-packed “parachutes”. You’re safer in a BDSM dungeon than in the average bedroom, because there you don’t engage without a thorough understanding of what each is wanting and setting your boundaries very clearly. In contrast, I’ve had clients who have been together for decades, who have never discussed their sex life.

If your partner doesn’t know what you’re feeling and wanting and fearing and hoping, it’s not safe, and it’s not going to be good. Either you’ll exceed your boundaries and get hurt or you’ll play it safe and limit your experience so it’s not as pleasurable as it could be. The latter is obviously better than the former, but it is limiting.

I’m talking about both physical and emotional safety here. Physically, you need to make sure you’ve got contraception and preventing STDs covered; and you need to make sure sex doesn’t hurt. If it does, stop and/or change what you’re doing. Sex must never hurt.

The emotional side of things is just as important. To make sex emotionally safe you need to know what is going on for the other person. That requires communication, the type of communication that allows you to be heard without judgement, so you can share your desires and fears. Though this discussion you create safety and allow for authentic expression and exploration. 

Interestingly, the discussion itself can ignite an erotic charge. So it’s not that you create safety first and then you can be erotic, the creating of the safety though discussion can in itself be erotic!

I see this all the time in the couples I work with, the ones who are best at creating safety through open supportive communication are the ones who have the best, most profound sex lives.

As one female partner said to me: “Our bed is the safest place in the world”. 

Followed not long after by her male partner saying “I keep thinking our sex can’t get any better, but it just does.”

So often when I talk with clients about their so-called  “mismatched libidos” it has nothing to do with the quantity of desire and everything to do with the pace.

They are simply going too fast.

And so often I find that they are letting the one with faster arousal lead the way, with the other feeling or being labelled as inadequate because they’re not aroused quickly enough. Seriously, the stories I hear – no wonder so many people are not enjoying sex, often with one obliging even though they are not ready and the other feeling bad because they can tell their partner isn’t into it.

I often say to these couples, if you were going for a walk together, would you expect the slower walker to race along at the speed of the faster, or would the faster slow down to accommodate the slower so that you could enjoy the walk together? Or if you were enjoying a good meal, would you wolf it down and think that it was better because you ate so quickly – or would you take the time to savour the experience?

Of course we know that taking our time to enjoy activities together makes the experience more enjoyable. Yet when it comes to sex we often think faster is better, both in the lead-up to and during the encounter.

The fact that in movies we see so much fast intensity and passion, and of course in porn you never see the ‘getting in the mood’ part of things, reinforces the idea that lust should just descend out of nowhere and we should be able to get straight into genital engagement with minimal if any preliminaries.

But our bodies and minds don’t generally work that way. We need to get in the mood. We need to destress, calm our nervous systems, sink in to ourselves and sync in with our partner. We need to take our time for a chilled build. It’s not just women - even though it’s generally considered that women need more time to warm up, I have to say in my clinical experience of thousands of clients (not to mention my personal experience), plenty of men do too. It’s not a gendered thing. And, importantly, it’s an ever-changing thing.

You have two people coming together, in different states of mind, with different physical states, so the pathway towards sexual intimacy is going to be different for each of them. To make it good for both of you it has to suit both of you. So, you need to pay attention to where you are within yourself and what you are wanting and needing, and communicate that with your partner so that you can co-create in the moment.

If your partner is going too fast, slow them down! But make sure you do it kindly. Even better, do it in a playful flirty way. Make the negotiation of the pacing part of the experience, part of the dance.

Similarly, if you want to speed things up a little, you’re going to have to do it in a way that your partner responds positively to, otherwise it’s not going to work. Again, doing that kindly and positively, is more likely to engage your partner in an arousing way.

For both of you, the art of seduction is the art of getting your partner to do what you want, for your mutual benefit. You both want to have a mutually enjoyable sexual encounter, so the art is in how you can both contribute to how that comes into being and how it evolves. The pace is a hugely important part of that.

Just like slow cooking, sex is better when you’ve taken your time to ‘cook’ the encounter. Sex starts way before the bedroom. Let the connection flow between you all through life – sometimes more kind, sometimes more romantic, sometimes more flirty, sometimes overtly sexual – and learn how to pace it just right so that you both can sink into a rich erotic state for quality, deep satisfying sex…

What happens in a sex and relationship therapy clinic? What cases are discussed? What insights are uncovered?

Well, now you can be a 'fly on the wall' with my new video series - Fly on the Wall Friday!

In this series I reflect on cases I've seen through the week at the LoveLife Clinic and share insights from them, to inspire you in your own love life.

The first seven episodes in the series are:

1.  The Case of the Missing Partners

In episode one I compare two cases where two men were sent to me by their wives to 'fix' their sexual problems. The outcome was very different in each case, depending on the attitude of the wives...

2.  The Case of the Missing Libido

In episode two I discuss the case of one partner of a same-sex female couple who, like so many clients I see, had 'lost her libido'. In solving this case, we look at issues like: what is libido, how arousal does not equal desire, and the difference between spontaneous and responsive arousal.

3.  The Case of the Disembodied Clients

In episode three I discuss two cases of clients who weren't 'in their body' and therefore weren't engaged with their sexuality. In solving these cases we look at the two types of disconnection - being in your head and judging your body - and ways to become embodied.

4.  The Case of the Obligation Sex

In episode four I discuss two cases of clients who engaged sexually from obligation rather than from true desire. One case is a married woman who was engaging with her husband out of duty and the other was a woman who started a sexual encounter with a friend and then felt she couldn't back out part-way through. In solving these cases we look at how submitting to a sexual encounter if it's not truly what you are wanting is a type of sexual trauma. Of the fight, flight, freeze or befriend trauma responses, it's the last one, which is very common in sexual encounters. It's not dramatic trauma, but it is trauma, and often it is cumulative trauma.

5.  The Case of the Client who "Got It"

In episode five we look at the case of a client who after many months of working with me with her husband, came in one day saying she 'Got it!'. She realised what it is to be in touch with her sexuality, let go of the heavy weight of obligation and felt free to be herself! It's a great story

6.  The Case of the Clients who Created Time and Space for Intimacy

In episode six we look a case where a couple became intentional about their sexual intimacy and how they were able to purposefully create both the physical space and create the time for it.

7.  The Case of the Clients who Saw Each Other as Lovers

In episode seven we look at a case where a couple learned to override the brain's tendency to get complacent with well-known things - like a partner - and to see each other more intentionally. Not just as housemates and co-parents, but as lovers.

They are all fascinating and illuminating videos - so subscribe and watch them all on my YouTube Channel Jacqueline Hellyer! 

It's inevitable that you will have wobbly times in your relationship. You are different - always have been, always will be! Sometimes you’ll have different wants or opinions, sometimes you’ll have inadvertently annoyed the other, sometimes stresses will come in from outside the relationship, and sometimes there will be a misunderstanding.

Whatever is the cause of the wobble, you need to do things:
 1. Assume the best of your partner.
 2. Get curious.

You have to assume that your partner is not deliberately trying to hurt you or annoy you or piss you off in any way. You have to assume that your partner loves you and you’re on the same team. So if they are acting in a way that seems unloving or not on the same team, get curious as to why. Ask them open-ended questions to understand what is going on for them. “Babe, I’m curious what’s going on for you…” “Honey, can you tell me more about that…” “Sweetheart, I’m feeling a little confused, could you take me through that again more slowly…”

This might sound simple, but it’s not always so as we can easily trigger our nervous systems and become emotionally dysregulated, so it’s hard to stay calm enough to assume the best and get curious, rather than respond to threat and get defensive (either by going on the attack or by putting up your walls or by succumbing to the other to “keep the peace”).

When you get that familiar little internal jolt of annoyance or anxiety, take a breath to help keep your nervous system calm, remind yourself that this is your beloved not your enemy, you’re on the same side (you might need a few more breaths here!) and then reach out to them with calm, loving curiosity.

If you’re both doing this, then you’ll find it so much easier to prevent wobbles escalating into full-on earthquakes – and all the damage that ensues.

Now I do need to stress that this doesn’t apply to full on physically and emotionally abusive relationships. If you’re in one of those, you need to get out. Nevertheless, I’m often amazed at how really quite toxic relationships can turn around when both parties are committed to changing their ways, individually and as a couple. When a couple come to me and want to make it work, when they each can acknowledge that they are on the same team then there is hope that they can learn to relate better. If they can’t take that first step, if either is making the other wrong, or they are totally hating on each other, there’s no hope. But sometimes all we need is just a little crack for the light to start coming through…

My clients often wonder if they are really suited to each other. They thought they were at the start but over time the differences have become more apparent and they worry that they’re not compatible.

So how similar do we need to be to have a good relationship?


Well, it depends on what aspect of relating you are considering. In some cases yes, in others no.


In brief:


• You need to have common values.
• You need to have shared, but not the same, interests.
• You can have very different personalities.


It’s actually good to have different personalities, different ways of seeing the world, of being in the world. Different ways of thinking, different ways of feeling, different ways of expressing – these all broaden the ways you as a couple can live and experience life.


A big caveat here though is that you have to appreciate the differences, not make each other wrong for being different.


And you have to realise that the same qualities can have both good and bad aspects. Let’s take an example of a couple where one sees the other as “my rock”, solid, dependable, someone who makes them feel really safe and secure in the world. Yet, those same positive qualities also makes them a little dull, lacking in initiative, low in risk-taking and not very spontaneous… In contrast, the other partner sees the first as exciting and adventurous, bringing lots of energy and excitement into their life. Yet, those same qualities can also get overwhelming, confusing, exhausting and make them the ‘downer’ for always trying to slow their partner down….


When you can understand and appreciate your differences, it broadens possibilities. In our fictitious (but very real) couple described above, when they accept each other’s personalities, and work with the benefits, they can see the adventurous one as bringing energy and ideas into the relationship and the dependable one as bringing a sense of caution and pace to those ideas. They will welcome what each brings to the relationship. They will also reassure when needed – if the adventurous one is being too out-there and making the other feel insecure, or if the dependable one is being too cautious and causing the other to feel stifled or unexpressed.


So in terms of personality, yes you can be very different and have a very successful relationship. In terms of interests though, it helps to have an overlap. If you don’t have any interests in common, it will limit what you can do together and what you can talk about. It’s hard to feel there’s a strong ‘us’ if you have nothing in common (other than perhaps the kids and the mortgage…) It’s good to have a sport or activity that you do together – tennis, hiking, cooking, travelling, learning languages, restoring furniture, gardening, scuba diving, volunteering, dancing. Or topics of common interest, such as politics, social justice, current affairs, history, astronomy, financial investments, art, ecology – things you like to learn about, discuss and get involved in together.


On the other hand, it is also good to have different interests. If it’s an activity it gives you time apart, it gives you something that invigorates you, and you come back to your partner with fresh energy. You go and play golf for a few hours and come back with a big smile, or you go off to your yoga or French lesson and come back refreshed and ready to engage with your partner. And in these cases the other partner sees your interest and happiness and that makes them feel good, because we like to see our partner happy!


So, different personalities are good, overlapping interests are necessary. Then what about values? Well, they need to be very aligned or you are going to have problems. It’s very difficult for a very right-wing person to have a happy relationship with someone who is very left-wing. It’s possible, but not great. It’s difficult if one values health highly and the other smokes and drinks and doesn’t look after themselves. It’s possible, but not great. If one values city living and the other wants the isolation of the countryside, it’s not going to work. If one values family and children and the other doesn’t, nope, it’s not a good match. If one views ‘success’ as power, money and status, and the other sees ‘success’ as a life of creative expression, you’re going to have problems. If one has strong religious values and the other is a staunch atheist, well, that could be problematic over time. If one has a very laissez-faire approach to parenting and the other believes strict rules are good for children, that too is going to make your relationship difficult.

So, get in touch with your values early in a relationship so that you can be sure you’re aligned; focus on keeping interests in common; and appreciate and work with your personality differences.

Then, you will have a great life together!

Close your eyes. Take a breath in, exhale slowly and sink into your body. Keep breathing slowly and gently and allow your mind to wander around the inside of your body.

What do you notice? What do you feel? Is there a sense of comfort, ease, contentment? Do you feel at home in your body?

We really are turtles, carrying our ‘home’ around with us. We inhabit our bodies. We travel through life in our bodies. We experience existence through our bodies.

Yet how comfortable do we feel in this “home”? So many people don’t. They are disconnected from their body. There are two main reasons for this.

Firstly, through being too much ‘in our heads’. Prioritising thinking over feeling, the brain over the body. These people live their lives in their heads, they are a head walking around with a body ‘down there somewhere’. There is little integration. These people rely on their brains, yet by being disconnected from their bodies, they aren’t getting the information their brains need to be in the world. This leads to anxiety at worst, and a reduction in pleasure and enjoyment at best.

The second reason is when people have negative emotions associated with their body. Unlike the first type who are in their heads and not feeling their bodies, this second type aren’t in their bodies because they are observing their bodies from the outside. With this external observation comes a great deal of judgement and with that feelings of shame and disgust, even loathing.

Both attitudes to the body are completely understandable in our society, where we separate mind from body, lauding cognition over feeling. And where for so many centuries the body was seen as base and bad, particularly the female body. Add to this the fact that bodies are judged on how they look, particularly female bodies. If you don’t look a certain way, your body is bad and wrong and you should be ashamed of it. So we ‘look at’ our bodies with judgemental eyes rather than feeling into our bodies.

When you can truly inhabit your body, it feels so good! To be able to do this though can be a process. There may well be psychological processes in order to understand why you are disconnected, where those messages and beliefs came from that led you to being separate. And there are somatic processes to enable you to re-enter your body, to live from the inside out. I say re-enter, because you were certainly in your body as an infant and small child. The separation came over time.

The simplest, yet most powerful, way to reconnect with your body is to breathe, and to notice the feeling of breathing in your body. Add to that body scans, where you slowly allow your mind to wander through your body. You can start at your toes and move up, or you can direct your mind to certain parts and go from there.

If there are parts of the body that have a negative charge associated with them, if you don’t want to go there or it feels bad when you are there, that’s ok, simply pay a short visit and send love from your heart. All it means is that part of your body has been the recipient of negative energy during your lifetime. It’s time to heal it gently, start to love it again, to reintegrate it into your mind and being.

The more you inhabit your body, the more you sense in the world. Simple, subtle things bring more ease and joy. You feel and enjoy your body moving, the senses are heightened, you enjoy tastes and smells, sounds and sights, touch. And certainly physical, sexual pleasure is greater – not through intensity but quite the opposite, through savouring the gentle, soft, rich. Very little is needed for a depth of feeling that is deep and rich and blissful. Sex becomes not something that you ‘do’ or that is ‘done to’ you. It is something that is experienced on the inside, with a letting go and openness to the feeling that wells from the inside.

This is living , and loving, in a state of mindful embodiment. Living and loving not just mindfully, but bodyfully.

• If you’re having a quick peck hello or goodbye, really feel it. Let your lips transmit your love so that that moment is rich with feeling;
• If you have a few seconds to spare, let yourselves enjoy an extended kiss. Let your lips convey more feeling, allow something enticing and erotic in the connection;
• At times really make-out, like teenagers, like you would have done at the start of the relationship. But don’t necessarily then race off to the bedroom, even if you are already in the bedroom making out, just enjoy that experience for its own sake. Feel how delicious a good kiss is, without racing on to the ‘next’ step.

I was talking to a female client recently who has become very sex averse. As she described her sexual history, I pointed out that it sounded like she’d been engaging in obligation sex with her husband for a long time and therefore had been subjecting herself to low-level sexual trauma.

“Oh, no” she immediately replied, “I consented to it.”

 She paused.

 I waited.

Then she softly added: “But not on the inside.”

She realised that she was ‘consenting’ to sex due to external pressures. She thought it was something she should do and so agreed to do. But in fact, on the inside, she was screaming a big “NO”.

And because she wasn’t wanting it, she wasn’t enjoying it, so it became a traumatic experience, which of course led to her never wanting it, ever, ever again.

What I find so interesting is that this is a highly educated professional woman. I see this so often. Women who in all other areas of life are independent and assertive and empowered, but who when it comes to sex, fall into the old patriarchal trope that sex is something a man does to a woman and her only options are to succumb or run. Either she goes along with his expectations (or what she thinks are his expectations) or she says ‘no’, either directly or more passively by avoiding any possibility of it happening.

And it’s not only something women experience with their male partners, I also see plenty of men who dutifully perform sex even though they don’t really want to, or who avoid the possibility of it happening. And I see it frequently in same sex couples.

So regardless of the gender and orientation of the couple, the problem is the lack of co-creation. Without that mutuality, there is no intimacy, there is no connection, and so the sex is at best mundane and at worst traumatic.

Whenever you find yourself asking: “What do I think my partner is wanting and how can I meet that real or supposed need?” – it’s going to be bad.

The question you need to ask yourself is: “What am I feeling right now? What I am wanting right now?”

Once you’ve identified that (and if you’re not used to paying attention to your own feelings that might not be easy), then you need to share it with your partner.

That sharing of yourself is a vulnerable, intimate act. So therefore it’s also scary and not easy if you’re not practiced at it. But that vulnerability and intimacy, that sharing of self,  is the precursor to quality sex and love-making. Without it you are not present to the engagement and it just becomes your body doing things or having things done to it, which to repeat my point above, makes sex either mundane at best or traumatic at worst.

In contrast, when both people are in touch with what they are feeling and wanting, and when both are sharing that, then the couple can co-create experiences that are good for both of them moment-by-moment.

Now sometimes, it is true, there may be disappointment if one person wants something that the other doesn’t; and there may be times where we might give things a go even if we’re not sure we’re into it at that moment – but always knowing that we  can change our minds, redirect the encounter, or bring it to a close at any time. So this sharing of self and co-creating is not some idealised version of sex where it’s all perfect and there aren’t any wobbly moments. Not at all. Sex, like the rest of life together, means there will be difference – whether it’s difference in what you want for dinner, how you want to spend the holidays, how frequently you want to visit the in-laws, etc, etc.

It’s never a ‘perfect flow’. But it is real and authentic and in that is freedom and creative expression from both sides. That is consent on the inside, and that is what makes for quality experiences.

Be polite!

I’m not talking here about persistent unwanted advances at a party or bar, in those cases you may well need to be less than polite. I’m talking about how you say no to your partner’s sexual invitation.

With so many couples I work with, often one has been the ‘initiator’ and they can find it hard when they get rejected a lot. Often to the point of giving up initiating altogether. It can feel really rejecting when your partner says no a lot.

Now I want to stress that of course you have the right to say ‘no’. No-one should ever do anything sexually that they don’t want to do. What I’m focussing on here is how you say ‘no’.

For a start, think of the offer as a positive thing. Your partner finds you desirable and wants to share a pleasurable connecting experience with you. This is a good thing (just ask all the people who I work with whose partners don’t find them desirable, that’s really horrible).

So just as if your partner was offering you a slice of cake, or suggesting a date at the movies, take it as a positive offer. And just as if you didn’t feel like a slice of cake or going to the movies, you would say: “Thank-you, that’s a lovely offer, but that’s not what I’m in the mood for right now.” That way you’re letting your partner know that it’s not them that you don’t like, which is what feels rejecting, you’re letting them know that you don’t feel like that activity. Of course, your partner might feel disappointed, but that’s very different to feeling rejected.

I also suggest you follow up your ‘no’ with an authentic ‘yes’. What do you feel like?

• It might be no to sex but yes to a conversation and then spooning together as you fall asleep.
• It might be no to bedroom activity but yes to a bath on your own (and then the potential for bedroom activity).
• It might be no to sex tonight, but yes to creating the time and space on the weekend.
• And it might even be no to sex altogether because it’s not working well, so let’s go and see a sex therapist to sort us out!

So, when you receive a suggestion or request from your partner, and your first response is a ‘no’, that’s ok. Say ‘no’ politely. Then check in with what you do want. Share that with your partner and you may well find that you can create something together that is connecting, intimate and pleasurable, whether it involves your genitals or not.