While men's sexual energy tends to be like fire, it comes on quickly, burns brightly and extinguishes quickly, women's sexual energy tends to be like water: it takes longer to warm up, but once it’s hot it will boil and boil and boil…

The warmer a woman’s 'water' energy is, the more open and ready she is for sex. If she enters the sex act with icy cold-water energy, even frozen, then it’s going to take an awful lot of work to warm it up. She’ll either be averse to having sex or it will take so long to heat her up that one or both of them will give up before she gets anywhere, or she'll engage even though sh'es not ready and won't enjoy the experience.

So the common scenario of a busy modern couple, hard at work all day, occupied with kids/housework/work brought home/etc in the evening and/or vegetating in front of the TV for hours watching people being murdered and cut up on mortuary tables, getting into bed late at night and then thinking about sex…. Well, it’s not surprising that she’s not interested; her water energy is stone cold. (In fact, this scenario also causes many men to be unable to ignite their fire energy, but that’s another story.)

My feeling is that when women have high libidos, it’s not because they have masculine fire energy, it’s because they keep their water energy simmering. (Although there are some people who have predominantly the opposite sexual energy.) What “keeping her water energy simmering” means is that a woman and her partner do things to keep her open and interested in sex.

Too many people think high libido means having lots of spontaneous lust, always being ready and gagging for it. That can happen, but if you're waiting for two people to have the lust descend at the same time, you could be waiting a long time...

In the early days of a relationship women do generally feel more desirous. This is simply because all the conditions are there to keep her water energy on the boil! There’s so much anticipation, always thinking about her new partner, they're on their best behaviour, treating each other well, they pay attention to the way they look, what they say, what they do. It's so exciting!

But as time passes, they get complacent. There’s no anticipation, there’s no going out of their way to make themselves special to the other. There's nothing 'heating up' the woman's water energy (and often not much flicking the switch for the man's fire energy).

A woman’s desire tends to be contextual, it’s not simply a biological urge. It depends enormously on how she feels and what’s going on around her.

What a woman needs to “keep her water simmering” is fourfold:

•  She can’t be too tired. Fatigue kills a woman’s ability to get in the mood.
•  She needs to be in a pleasant environment, somewhere that makes her feel warm, safe and sensual.
•  She needs to be feeling good about herself, attractive and desirable and
•  She needs to be getting on well with her partner.

Some of these elements she can focus on herself, and others depend on the interaction between her and her partner.

The good news is that it’s a positive feedback loop - the more these four elements are improved, the better the sexual desire and the better the sexual response, and therefore the more life improves and the sex improves!