It takes a lot of hard work and effort to keep that fire burning and maintain a healthy long-term relationship with someone. If you’ve kept that fire alive, good for you, but if you can feel the ebb coming — or if you’re not in a long-term relationship one of the things that might be keeping you from taking the plunge might be something that afflicts even some of the best of them — and you can feel yourself (or your partner) losing that passion in the bedroom and finding your sex life suddenly . . . Leaving a little to be desired.
But how do you go about keeping that from happening? It might seem like it slowly trickled away, or that suddenly a switch got flipped and its gone. Either way, you can look toward just a few tips to get that fire burning again and maybe brighter than ever.
In order to get any or all of these tips working for you though, you have to put the effort. You can’t just sit back and hope that your sex life will just explode with passion again. Spontaneous combustion is more likely to happen to your relationship if you just sit back and wait for things to work themselves out.
So, where should you go first to turn around your sex life? Set the mood. Light some candles. Put on some music — a slow jam, some Barry White, something to get the juices flowing. Get those phones set on “do not disturb” — there’s nothing worse than a sudden phone call from mom or the in laws to totally destroy your efforts. Limit the distractions and get the two of you focused on each other and only each other.
This leads into the next step: enhance your sexual communication. This is more than dirty talk (but should definitely include dirty talk). Make sure the two of you are on the same page about sex. If you’re on the same page about the details, the time, the place, etc, then you can limit your distractions. No abrupt calls about family, work, reminders to give your dog his ear medicine, because that’s all been taken care of beforehand.
Open communication about boundaries is important to any relationship in general, and the idea of open communication should continue into the bedroom. That way there are no boundaries being crossed and everything that can get the two of you going — and anything that’s an immediate turn off — is out on the table. And if it’s all out there, then you can start to incorporate some new things into your sex life.
As the old saying goes — variety is the spice of life. Variety will add spice to your sex life too. Corny sure, but totally true. You know that the same thing over and over again loses its flavor and it loses its effectiveness — it gets boring! You need to change it up to have any hope of keeping yourself and your partner interested. If you need to reawaken your own or your partner’s interest in sex, then you need to throw in something new.
Of course, communication is key here. You both need to be on the same page and consent to what’s going on or you could totally kill the mood. (See how these all work together?)
Your brain detects patterns in things. When you first try something new, and you like it, that’s your brain releasing positive hormones like dopamine to make you want to do it more. And you will. But, your brain sees you developing a pattern, and craves new stimuli. So, now, your brain releases less and less dopamine each time you repeat the same pattern. That is until you find your mind wandering when you’re doing the things that you used to love. Your brain is bored. You need to keep it engaged and active.
One thing you can do if you’re spicing it up is add one of the things that empirical research shows more long-term couples do who consider themselves to have happy, healthy sex lives: engage in giving more oral sex. You know you like getting it. But so does your partner. It’s an unselfish act that shows your partner that you’re willing to give something up for their pleasure, not necessarily expecting anything in return — but now you’re much more likely to get something in return. Open communication here is also key. Find out what your partner likes and how they like it and you can adapt that to the rest of what you do together in bed.
You can add other varieties to your sexual routine to make it less routine. Other ideas include adding sensual massage to your bedtime patterns. The physical embrace of your partner, and your hands roaming over their body, engages the parts of your brain that’ll get you — and her — in the mood for sex. Another potential break from the routine is to get out of the bedroom. Having sex in the same place, over and over and over again, your brain will get bored with the same set of stimuli in the same room over and over and over again. One way to fool your brain is to change it up in the bedroom. Light some candles or change the lighting to give the room a different ambiance. Move it to the couch if you’re on a budget (and want to keep it legal), but a night away in a hotel room, or — if you really need a break — some time away at a resort for just the two of you can really break up the patterns that are keeping your desires docile.
These are just some quick tips, but they can all easily be incorporated into your daily life. I’d try to work all of them into your routines since they all work hand-in-hand with one another. As with anything in life, you need to put in the work to get great results.
