Download Audio: Plugging In - Sex Without Movement

Can I make this very clear?

SEX MUST NOT HURT! NOT EVER!

If it does hurt, change what you’re doing.

Just to be even clearer. I’m not talking about consensual pain, which some people like and are perfectly entitled to like. I’m not talking about what for some people is a turn on.

I think this should be obvious, but plenty of women come to me trying to push through the pain.

I’m talking about hurt, pain that feels off, pain that feels as if there’s something wrong.

First off, get a medical check-up in case there’s a problem that might be able to be treated medically.
Quite often though, it’s either mismatched genital size or having intercourse too soon.

When he’s too big
If the man has a long penis and the women has a short vagina, then positions where he’s going in deep will be painful. You need to experiment to find out what positions work for you as a couple. Generally you need positions where he can’t get in too deep. Some suggestions are:

• Positions where she has her legs together and his are wider,
• Avoid positions where her back is arched, such as deep doggie where her chest is low, try it in a bridge position with her back flat,
• When she’s on top, face towards him rather than away from him.

When she’s not ready
If your genitals are well-matched in size and it still hurts, you may be moving to intercourse before she is ready. I've written a lot on this, so I won’t go over too much of that here. The important thing to remember is that you can tell when a woman is ready for intercourse: she’ll really want it. She’ll have a desire to invite the penis in.

The physiological signs that she is ready are: her outer labia are full and puffed up and she’s lubricating. (Additional lubricant can be used, as long as she does actually want intercourse and her lack of lubrication is not due to a lack of desire). Most important though, is her mental and emotional desire to have the penis inside her. If she thinks she “should” be or “ought to be” ready but she’s not, the sex could be painful.

Pushing through if there’s pain or discomfort, in the hope that it’ll get better, just won’t work.

Applying pressure to pain generally causes more pain. It’s much better to slow down and take your time to get her body receptive to penis in vagina activity.

Inserting the Penis
Different angles of inserting the penis can make a difference if there is some discomfort around the opening. If it’s sore at the back end of the vaginal opening make sure the insertion angles in from the top, so there’s no pressure or pulling on the sore area. Once he’s in, it may well be fine.

And very importantly, make the penis insertion slow and gentle. Be relaxed and focused on the feeling. Once the penis is fully in, rest there a moment or longer to allow her vagina to relax and accommodate the penis.

Honing Your Pelvic Floor Muscles
This is really important - both toning and relaxing. A well-honed vagina is more responsive; it can receive and relax. There is more information in other blogs, here and here, on how to do this. One additional, enjoyable activity to help here is for the woman to have the penis (or a dilator/dildo) inside her, and to slowly and rhythmically draw in and release out with her vagina, breathing in and out as she goes. Breathe in slowly and deeply as you tighten your vagina around the penis, then release the breath out and release the hold with your vagina. This needs to feel smooth and flowing. You can also do this while he is thrusting, starting with slow gentle thrusts - pushing out with the vagina with his inward thrust, inviting him in, then squeezing as he withdraws.

And always remember that there are plenty of other ways to enjoy sexual connection other than intercourse if the penis-in-vagina thing just isn’t working for you at that particular time.

Whether you feel bad about it or good about it, if you’re the lower desire partner (LDP) you have a major impact on how often and how well the two of you have sex. I get at least as many heterosexual couples where the man has the lower level of desire as the woman, so it’s not just “a problem that women have” and in same-sex couples there's always a difference too.

So guys, let’s start with you. If you’re not feeling it, there are some main reasons:

• It’s easier to just masturbate in front of porn. True, but the experience is not the same. Saying “Yes!” to sex with your partner is saying “Yes!” to love and connection and intimacy and a very happy partner!

• If she’s too overbearing, always complaining about the lack of sex. Well, she’s got a point! She’s crying out for intimate connection, so focus on doing good stuff together so that you actually want to be with her.

• Even if she has a higher desire, she never initiates so why should you? The more you show your desire, the more likely she’ll initiate more.

• If you don’t feel good about yourself, don’t take it out on your partner. Get fit, change jobs, give up smoking, take responsibility for your life, and start ravishing her!

Now for the ladies. Why should you say “Yes!” to sex?

• It feels good!

• Your partner will feel closer to you. Men love to connect sexually with their partner.

• You’ll become more in tune with each other, so he’ll get better at asking at the right times, and he’ll get better at doing what you need to get to “Yes!”

• Good regular sex makes you look and feel younger, more vibrant, more vital and sexier. It’s a positive feedback loop.

So to LDPs of any gender I say:

If sex is just too boring to be bothered you need to make some changes. Sex is most definitely not meant to be boring!

We haven’t been blessed with enormous brains as well as bodies riddled with pleasure receptors in order to have boring sex!

Sex is meant to be creative and playful and pleasurable and ever-changing and satisfying.

Make it so!

Download Audio: Planning for Pleasure

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.

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.

Download Audio: How Often Should We Have Sex?

In the Tantric and Taoist traditions, it's often recommended that men should abstain from ejaculating, which is a challenging concept for modern men!
 
I believe it’s not about you should or shouldn’t, but how you orgasm. So here are some thoughts from a man who practices mindful lovemaking and agrees with me that it's not what you do but how you do it. 

“I find my orgasms to be very different from before, very meaningful. I feel grounded, very complete and even more connected during and after the ejaculation.
 
 “Everything leading up to the orgasm - our interaction, the setting of the room, the approach to foreplay and all the stages, it doesn’t matter how long we make love for, at the point of orgasm it’s just completely different.
 
 “Before, it was more a carnal thing, there wasn’t so much intimacy and connection. At the moment of orgasm, I felt disconnected. It was a big release, then ‘I’m done.’
 
 “Now at the point of ejaculation it’s like, ‘Hey!’ I come even closer. We’re even more connected. I feel: this is amazing, ‘Wow! This is a whole different level! I don't want to pull out, I don’t want to be disconnected from that moment.’
 
 “Most of my energetic experiences happen after the ejaculatory orgasm. The real orgasm, the whole-body orgasm, the energy surges, happen after the ejaculation.
 
 “It’s like a passage, a door that opens, bang, into a new place, leading deeper and deeper into the experience.
 
 “And afterwards I feel rejuvenated, alive, like I’ve had a recharge. It’s not draining like it was before. I don’t want to roll over and go to sleep. I want to get up and conquer the world! Or at least talk and snuggle and keep the connection going.
 
 “It makes me whole.” 
 
 Such is the value of greater connectedness and the Tantric approach to sex. 

One of the main differences between 'standard' modern sexual practices and the more alternative, spiritual sexual practices is the attitude to orgasm.

In the mainstream, orgasm is generally considered a highly desirable, usually necessary, part of sex, and generally the bigger the better and the more the merrier.

In the Tantric/Taoist approaches there is a strong emphasis on not having an orgasm. Which to many modern Westerners seems crazy, especially for those who think the whole point of sex is orgasm.

So, who’s right? Should we or shouldn’t we? Is it more healthful/spiritual/ecstatic/pleasurable/fulfilling to come or not to come?

Well, to me it’s less about whether you come or not, and much more about how you come.

You see, nothing in life is black and white, particularly when it comes to sex.

To believe that we shouldn’t come is as limiting as believing that you have to come.

I certainly encourage everyone to move away from the mindset, firmly entrenched in the Adolescent Male Masturbatory Model of Sex: that sex is about a sexual excitation that has to result in an explosive genital orgasm. I definitely encourage people to expand their sexual repertoire and explore styles of love-making that don’t lead to orgasm.

The ‘orgasm at all costs’ approach to sex is very limiting and not always satisfying. Having explosive genital orgasms can be debilitating and can lead to feelings of emptiness and either neediness or distance afterwards. The big ‘O’ is not the holy grail of sex.

It’s actually very liberating to open yourself to the reality that there are many ways to approach sex and to realise that making love in a way that doesn’t lead to or require orgasms, can be just as satisfying, if not more so, than sex with orgasm.

However, to then extend that argument to say that orgasm itself is ‘bad’ and that we shouldn’t orgasm at all, is falling into the either-or trap.

Orgasms are a natural part of being human and having orgasms can be a highly beneficial thing.

If the orgasms aren’t beneficial, if they do leave you feeling drained, distant, grumpy, needy, then the problem isn’t ‘orgasm’, the problem is the way you orgasm.

If you see orgasm as just part of sex, not the point of sex, and certainly not the end-point, then you can play with the orgasmic experience. You can use orgasm to take you deeper and further. You can experience orgasm in different forms, not just genital. You can orgasm in different parts of your body, you can experience it throughout your whole body, you can feel different kinds of energies and sensations, it can be brief or it can last for minutes or longer, you can enter into orgasmic ‘states’ where you feel the bliss for very long periods of time.

To experience orgasm in this way you need to approach love-making in a non-linear way. This means you go with the flow of what feels right at each and every moment. There are no ‘shoulds’, there is no expectation, there is no defined sequence.

When you approach sex like this it doesn’t matter whether you have no orgasm, one orgasm, many orgasms or whether you enter a blissful orgasmic state where you don’t know if you’re orgasming or not because it just feels soooo good.

I call this Third-Level Love-Making: it’s not just genital excitation, the ‘peaks’ of sex, it’s not just love and spiritual connection, the ‘valleys’ of sex: it’s all and everything. If orgasm is part of that, great, if it’s not, great. If it’s real, true, an authentic expression of self - it’s all great!

How often do you like to have sex? Are you into a daily morning quickie, or are you happy to wait for weeks until the perfect time arises, and you can have hours of quality lovemaking? Do you like to have sex at fairly regularly spaced intervals, or do you tend to have a few sessions close together and then you’re done for a while?
 
 Or don’t you know?

It does help to know what your natural rhythm is. We often talk about two people in a relationship having mismatched libidos because one wants it more than the other. That’s natural and pretty well inevitable, and the couple need to work with it. Your sexual rhythm is important too...
 
 I know that I, for example, am more of a few good sessions and then I’m done for some time kind of a person, whereas my partner is more of a regular type. I like to have a few good sessions over a few days and then I'm good for a week or more, at which point I get desirous again and want it a few more times, then a break. That’s my cycle. My partner on the other hand gets antsy if he goes more than two or three days without.
 
 So that’s something that we have to work with, as do you with your unique situation. Just to share a bit more about me as illustration, once my partner realised that it was never going to be a long-term drought, and that when it’s on it’s really really good, he could relax into the drier spells knowing that the rain was on its way! (And which stopped him being fretful about it, which had made me less desirous and so the breaks longer!)
 
 That’s me though, I’m into quality not quantity. I’m the same with food, I’d rather go hungry than eat bad food, and I won’t even consider bad sex. Personally, I can cope without sex when I’m feeling sated and there’s not the opportunity for the equivalent of a gourmet repast. But my partner’s not the same, so I’ve learned to have quality snuggles, simple sex, in-between.
 
 I’ve shared a lot of personal information here, just so you can see how one couple work with their different sexual cycles to mutual benefit.
 
 Other couples I’ve worked with have: 

• learned to have lots of sex during her horny mid-month week, and avoid sex in her monstrous pre-menstrual week; 
• learned to have more sex in the evenings when she’s in the mood so that he’s not ravenously hungry for sex every morning at 5am when she’d rather be asleep; 
• studied his or her variable work shifts to identify good opportunities for lovemaking in advance; 
• learned to have sex before dinner after they get back from the gym, when they’re both feeling aroused and before they get too tired; 
• started having sex earlier in the evening as one has to get up very early, so the night owl gets up after sex to do other things leaving their partner to sleep. 

Get in touch with your sexual cycle, and then get open and creative together, figuring out how to work with your cycles for maximum mutual pleasure.