Take a group of couples who love each other, put them in a  beautiful  environment with no distractions, teach them to connect more  deeply,  inspire them to explore and play, and what do you get…?    

Well, as one man who attended one of my couples retreats put it:

  "I thought this retreat would expand our sex life,  but it didn’t so  much expand as turn our sex life upside down! I’m now  seeing the world  with a new, exciting, slightly bewildering light.”

It’s hard to explain that to someone before they’ve experienced it. “What do you do?” people ask me. My answer could indeed be: “I turn people’s sex lives upside down.”

Adult shops these days can be classy, tasteful, staffed by friendly well-informed assistants, full of a huge range of products to titillate and pleasure. They’re great.

But you know what? You can find a whole heap of stuff in your own home that you can bring into the bedroom to augment your love play.

Come, let’s look around your house to see what goodies we can find…

How do you describe the act of intercourse? Do you call it ‘penetrative sex’? If you do, which wouldn’t be surprising as it’s such a common term, have you ever thought about what the word actually means and symbolises?

Penetration means ‘breaking through resistance’. Which might have applied to sex in the bad old days when a wife was supposed to just submit to her husband whether she wanted to or not, so it may well have been an act of breaking through resistance. But now, in 2020, do we really want to think of sex as an aggressive act?

Worse still, the term ‘penetrative sex’ gives agency to the ‘penetrator’ - the man - who does it to a resistant, or at least passive, recipient – the woman.

Is this really the concept of intercourse we want to be perpetrating these days – that it’s something done to a woman by a man? Of course not, yet we still use the term.

Seriously. Yes, you read that correctly: guys, take your penis for a walk. No not on a leash (unless you’re a bit kinky!)

What do I mean by that rather absurd suggestion? I mean, get connected with your penis.

After a couple of really full and busy years, I had hoped 2020 would be slower-paced, but I wasn’t expecting it to be like this! With the bushfires at the start of the year there was no annual beach holiday to refresh and recuperate, so I thought a ‘stay-cation’ would be good as I could potter at home and get the house and garden looking good (when it wasn’t too smoky to go outside that is). And…I’m still pottering at home. The house and garden are looking amazing! I am fortunate than I can still get out of the house go to my clinic to see clients, mostly online.

It is interesting to see how clients are reacting to the pandemic restrictions. There are couples who are finding that spending more time together is solving their problems as what they mostly needed was more downtime together. Others are finding the forced time together is highlighting and exacerbating existing problems, bringing their troubles to the fore and forcing them to address them. Some single clients are withdrawing from the world while others are reaching out and finding that the longer ‘dating’ required at this time means they are forming better quality connections.

For me, at the start of the pandemic,... read more

Our five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch are wonderful tools to explore sensuality and eroticism. By suppressing or enhancing the senses you can create and experience all kinds of enchanting pleasures.

Here are some suggestions to inspire you in your own sensual adventures:

From my column in Body+Soul

Question: "My wife and I have been married for 10 years. We have a great sex life and we tell each other everything - so why won't she masturbate in front of me? I think that it's hot and would bring us closer together, but she says it's embarrassing. I want to do it in front of her as well but she thinks it's too private. How can she think this when we've lived together for more than 10 years? Am I being unreasonable? Should I just give up or keep trying?"

If you look at all the other sex advice sites on the Internet you’d think the secret to great sex was only through sex toys. If you read the advice in popular magazines you’d think the secret to great sex was only through being in some fabulous position. And if you read the advice in the endless spam that gets past your email junk folder, you’d think it was only in some little blue pill.

 From my column in Body+Soul

Question: "My husband and I have been happily married for 10 years and recently he's wanted a lot more sex. At first I thought it was great, but he can't seem to keep his erection up and I can't help but feel disappointed. He's started smoking marijuana a lot more heavily lately - could this be to blame? What can I do?" 

Answer: There is so much pressure on penises. The poor things are supposed to rise to attention on command, stay hard for hours, only ejaculate when desired - and if they can’t do that, then the sex is considered poor, he has 'failed'. No wonder so many men suffer from performance anxiety!

As a society we’re adding to that pressure with all the porn that’s being watched, with endless footage of big hard cocks that appear to last for hours (never mind the reality that there are teams of women off set whose sole role is to keep the leads hard). And even on a more positive note, now that we quite rightly acknowledge the female partner’s right to pleasure, that can also add to pressure.

So, let’s take the pressure off your partner’s penis by looking at sex... read more

Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote the acclaimed novel 'Love in the Time of Cholera'. Now I'd like to write about 'Love in the Time of COVID'.

It would be easy to say there are more important things to focus on right now, but what is more important at this time than love and relating? And what better time to bring this to the fore, than now, when we are isolating ourselves?

So many of my clients say that they don't have time to connect. They are either too busy, too stressed or exhausted - and their relationships and intimacy suffer as a consequence. With this crisis, we can't be busy (except for our wonderful health professionals who are working so hard to protect us). A client case from this week exemplifies this. They'd had to cancel their overseas wedding scheduled for next month. As sad as this was, there was also a feeling of time and space, time to stop being so incredibly rushed and overwhelmed. Time to refresh and rejuvenate. Time to let their souls catch up.