You need a dance of initiation. You need to move towards a sexual encounter with playful, flirtatious, sexy, romantic exchanges. It’s part of the setting up and getting in the mood. In the early days of a relationship, it’s all the dance, but in a long-term relationship people very often stop dancing. Without the dance, with just a dry ‘Do you want to have sex?’ the response is just a “meh, nah” because there’s nothing there to entice, to create the exchange, to create the mood.

The language you use, and the style of interaction is so crucial to creating this dance. It’s the art of seduction, the art of getting the other person to do what you want – for your mutual pleasure of course!

Let’s start with what not to do. There are two common approaches that don’t work:

• Don’t ask permission.

Framing the approach with “Can we… [have sex/have an early night/get naked in the bedroom/etc]?” is not sexy. It feels like you’re begging, asking for permission, and it puts the pressure on the other person to say yes or no. Even if you ask politely – Can we please…? It sounds even more pleading!

Sexiness comes from mutuality, not one person feeling like a supplicant and the other having a power to say yes or no that they don’t actually want. It leaves them with a binary response that is either letting you down if it’s a no or potentially agreeing to something that they’re not really wanting so as not to let you down. This is not happy making for either person.

• Don’t ask if the other person wants to do what you want.

Questions like: “Do you want to … [have sex/have an early night/get naked in the bedroom/etc]?” like the asking permission approach, is putting the pressure on the other person. This is not fair, not sexy, and doesn’t get what you want.

Now let's look at what you need to do. There are five steps to the approach that does work.

• Share of self.

You’re the one who wants it, so say that it’s what you want. That sharing of self is showing a vulnerability that draws the other person in. You’re not pressuring them to want what you want, you’re just sharing.

“Hey babe, I’m feeling like…” “I’m in the mood for…” “I was thinking that while the kids are off with your mother that I wouldn’t mind…”

• Offer a suggestion

When you share of yourself, it’s important to state it in a way that sounds like a suggestion rather than demanding. Notice the examples above sound like suggestions, offers, rather than demands. You’re not saying: “I want to have sex now.”

The suggestion allows for that most arousing of things – anticipation. It might just be a small moment, but when that moment is rich with potential, with anticipation, it gives it an erotic charge that is the essence of the dance.

• Let them respond

Then you invite them to respond with where they’re at. Make sure you ask an open question, not a closed question. A closed question has a yes/no answer, which in these situations can create pressure: “I’m thinking I wouldn’t mind spending some time in the bedroom. Do you want to?” Can you see how that puts the other person in the dilemma of answering with a yes or no?

Instead, ask how they feel about your suggestion: “I’d like to… How would that be for you? How does that sound? Where are you at with that suggestion? Thoughts? I’m curious to know how you feel about that suggestion…” Can you see how those phrases allow the other person to express how they really do feel about your suggestion. There’s no pressure to say yes or no.

It's from here that there can be a playful, flirty interaction to create a situation where you both want to proceed, or to postpone for a while, or to not go ahead with that suggestion but come up with some other mutually pleasurable option.

• Be enticing in vocabulary, tone and body language

Notice how the language I’m using here is soft and suggestive. It’s a little vague, not too direct. This makes it enticing. It enables the other to engage without pressure and opens the possibility for the dance, for the erotic feeling to emerge, for desire to grow and the mood to be created. When you also make sure you are looking at each, smiling, it draws the other in as an equal, and allows the two of you to have a light interaction that starts creating the mood. Even if the dance leads to postponing or doing something else, the erotic connection lingers and is still hovering when the right time does occur.

• Know it’s the non-linear model

Remember that it’s a non-linear model of sex. I’ve written about this in many other blog posts. There’s no pressure to go through all the steps until you “finish”. You just engage where you’re at in that moment. A kiss is just a kiss, not an entrée to intercourse, unless that’s where the encounter mutually leads you. It’s simply about connection through pleasure, moment by moment.

When you engage in this way, you do it all through life. In fact life becomes a dance. And you’re living in the ‘simmer zone’ of connection!

When a wine ages well it becomes more complex, layered, subtle. You want to savour the experience of drinking it, not guzzle it down. Sex that ages well is the same. Mature sex takes its time, appreciates all aspects of the experience, doesn’t set out to hit ‘goals’, just enjoys the experience as it unfolds.

Actually, ideally sex at any age should be like this, an experience you savour and appreciate moment by moment, rather than consuming it rapidly to get to the ‘end point’.

Yet I do think that this kind of sex, actually making love, can become easier with age.

That is if we’re aging well. If you’re caught up in the belief that only youthful physicality is good, that anything different from what we were like at 25 is somehow less, then you won’t age well. You’ll feel inadequate, slow, ugly, sexually ‘past it’. To age well you need to notice and appreciate all the positives that come with age – qualities like wisdom, confidence, patience, not to mention things like financial security and more time. When we take all of those good qualities into our sex life, we really can engage in the way I always promote – with a chilled build, with mutuality, without expectation, no KPIs other than pleasure and connection. With this comes the ability to have self-awareness to express what you want and like and the safety and compassion to hear what your partner likes and wants. From that you co-create beautiful, meaningful experiences, whether they are simple, brief loving encounters or hours of erotic interplay. A whole realm of sexual engagement is available to you, depending on what is right for you at that time. It’s what you co-create moment-by-moment.

That is an experience to savour, one to finish on a high with and to take that goodness out into the rest of life. If being able to afford and appreciate a good wine in this way is a benefit of age, well then, the holistic, life-enhancing advantages of mature lovemaking take the benefits way beyond those of a mere wine!

It’s amazing how when you focus on improving your love life, the whole of life improves. Health, wealth, career, friendships, family – it all starts shifting when you start looking at yourself, your primary relationship (if you’re in one), your sexuality and everything that goes along with connection, love and intimacy.

Sometimes it is just about sex and engaging in it from a more authentic, more meaningful place. But that’s rare. More commonly I find that life shifts far more broadly and deeply.

You see, in the process of examining connection, meaning, relating, understanding, pleasure, purpose, there comes a clarity and a freedom to be your authentic self. It allows for clearer communication and deeper understanding, you find more mutuality and support. This brings joy and openness, so there’s a greater pleasure in the existence of life. While life and love doesn’t necessarily become easier, there is a greater ease. There’s less stress and more flow, less worry about what’s ‘not’ and more appreciation of what ‘is’. More mindfulness. More love.

And along the way there’s a lot of letting go of things that are no longer aligned. A client just this morning used the analogy that it’s like in nature where there’s a burning off of the undergrowth to allow new growth to come through. He has been finding that strange things are happening around jobs, projects, friendships. Stuff is clearing. What’s emerging for him personally and within his relationship is clearer, simpler and richer.

Another young woman I’m working with is finding the same thing. She was stuck in anxiety caused by belief systems that just weren’t aligned with who she is really is. As she becomes clearer about herself and her truth, old friends and old ways of being are going and she feels lighter and free to welcome in new people and new possibilities and to create an authentic life for herself.

I recall a client who once said “I came to you for premature ejaculation but it’s been an entire existential shift!” or an attendee at a couples retreat who said “I was expecting you to improve our sex life, but you’ve turned it upside-down and inside-out and I’m looking at the whole of life in a slightly bewildered but exciting new way!”

It’s why I call my brand LoveLife, because by transforming your love life you really do transform your love of life.

Download Audio: What Comes Before Consent

Consent has become an important topic, one that is absolutely necessary, important and overdue. 

However, as an accredited Psychosexual Therapist who has spent over ten thousand face-to-face hours talking in intimate detail with people about their sex lives, I know that as well-intentioned as the consent conversation is, until we start addressing what comes before consent, we won’t solve the problem of people being able to give consent. 

We tend to assume we know what sex is and what it is we are consenting to or not. But do we? We can’t consent if we don’t know the parameters, our own internal assumptions, of the thing we are consenting or not to. 

The first question I ask people when they come to me with their myriad issues, the essence of which comes down to being able to navigate sexual relating, is ‘what is sex’? The immediate response to which is generally a puzzled-look followed by, ‘oh, I’ve never really thought about that before.’ 

This is the problem – what do we mean when we refer to sex? What are we consenting to? So many people have a very limited view of sex, one that is generally framed in a patriarchal manner – that sex is something that men do to women and the woman has to agree to or say no. Even in same sex attracted couples I often see this approach: I have to agree to what you want, or what I think you want, or I say no. 

Our language is riddled with words that promote this. Take the term ‘penetration’ – who on earth thought that such an aggressive word was appropriate for the act of sex. And who does the ‘penetrating’? The penis owner! Why not call it ‘envelopment sex’ and move the focus to the vagina inviting, welcoming in and embracing the penis? (I can assure you that I’ve solved a lot of ‘women’s sexual dysfunctions’ simply by changing the language.) 

This tends to be accompanied by another unhelpful belief that sex is a linear process. It has a ‘green light’ early on followed by a series of KPIs that have to be met, leading to the ultimate and final one of the male ejaculation. Then the act is complete – and hopefully she’s had an orgasm along the way.

So many people say they have sex because ‘that’s what you do – don’t you?’. So many young people I see view sex as what they see on porn, they feel they are consenting to those behaviours. So many people in long term relationship view sex as something they have to do to keep their partner happy. Interestingly, aside from a small proportion of entitled folk (and that’s just as often a woman as a man) most people are more concerned about their partner than about themselves.

Let’s take this a step further – not only are people not conceptualising what sex is for themselves, they’re not discussing it with their partner. Even couples who have been together for decades don’t talk about sex much beyond the ‘sex tonight dear?’ – unless it’s a problem, in which case they can talk about it endlessly in a most unsexy way. Even though most people would say that they want a positive sex life, very few go anywhere near the depth of discussion that is required to be able to co-create something meaningful.

Note the language I’m using here. Firstly, “co-create”, yes, sexual intimacy needs to be co-created. It needs to be ‘where are you at’ and ‘where am I at’ and from that we co-create. Not just at the start of an interaction, but all the way through. And secondly, “meaningful” – what is the meaning of sex? The model of sex as ‘getting each other off in the way that we think we should be without talking about it or even wondering why’ doesn’t work. We need to understand the why. 

And to do that we need to step outside the model of sex that we inherited from the millennia of patriarchy, which, while it’s been around for a very long time, does not represent what really drives humans sexually. Let me be brief: most other mammals only have sex to reproduce, when the female is fertile, and there is no ‘fatherhood’, their infants are self-sufficient enough for a mother to manage them on her own. But humans have big brains and big skulls, so we have to give birth to our young when they are very helpless or they wouldn’t fit out the birth canal. A prehistoric mother couldn’t raise an infant to a viable age on her own. There was evolutionary pressure for the fathers to stay around. Men who embraced fatherhood were more likely to have offspring who reached reproductive age and continued their gene line.

Parents who bonded and loved and supported each other and their vulnerable young were the ones whose genes survived. How, in part, did this bonding happen? Through activities that released the bonding and pleasure hormones – sexual intimacy, from touches, hugs, kisses to all kinds of genital engagement.

Sex in humans is primarily a bonding activity, the emotional component is an essential part of quality sex in humans. We need to embrace it as such and teach our young people that. It is something that two people do to create connection through pleasure. There are no other KPIs. It is a moment-by-moment co-creation where each brings to the moment their true selves

I know clinically that this shift in attitude changes everything. It moves it from performance to self-expression, from a physical behaviour to an emotional, dare I say spiritual, connection. Let’s move the consent conversation in society at large in the same direction. Let’s talk about the beauty and the goodness and the mutuality of sex and inspire our young people to engage in a way that is pleasurable and life-enhancing. And as their parents and elders, let’s sort out our own sexuality so that we can model and discuss sexuality as the important and wonderful part of life that it can be.

The days when sex was seen as bad have passed. We’re pretty sex-positive these days. I rarely come across anyone who thinks that sex is a bad thing or that it’s a wrong thing. Which is great. But it seems to me that the main challenge these days, now that we’re positive about sex in general, is to feel comfortable with sex in the personal.

We don’t live in a sex-comfortable society. We might be sex-positive but we’re not necessarily sex-comfortable. We don’t talk about it, we’re not raised with much information. We only have either the bio-medical information or porn, both of which portray sex in a very physical, limited way. It’s not at all surprising that we’re not comfortable about sex, because what makes us comfortable about our sexuality is being able to understand what it’s all about in an holistic body-mind-heart-and-spirit way, to be able to talk about it and to be able to sink into our body and really know what we want and be able to express it. So, I think this term sex-comfortable is more what we should be aiming for now.

It should be like food. You know me, I like my food analogies, and I say we should be as comfortable about our sexuality as we are with our food. Of course, some people have food issues, we often eat too much or too little and not necessarily the best food, but nonetheless, most people are pretty in touch with what they are feeling in terms of how hungry they are, what they want to eat, how much, when, how and why. If I said to you: “What do you want for dinner tonight?” you could probably answer quite readily, “well, I feel like this or that, or I’m not so hungry or I’m very hungry…” We can readily tap into our food desires, know what we feel like. And so importantly, we’re very comfortable with sharing our food desires with our partner. “What do you feel like for dinner sweetheart?” “Would you like a piece of this cake?” Really not an issues at all. And if you want to eat different food -  say, one wants curry and the other wants a salad – well, that’s not a disaster. If one knows they’ll want dessert and the other doesn’t know if they’ll want dessert yet -  it’s not the end of the relationship! We don’t have mismatched food libidos!  You’re not going off to a food therapist to sort out your food incompatabilities. Even heavy carnivores and vegetarians can eat together.

Now I know sex is a little different to food and you need to be engaged with the same thing at the same time, so the analogy is not perfect. But there are three important things we’re good at in regard to food that we need to be just as comfortable with sexually: 

1. Being able to know what’s going on with you and what you are wanting;
2. Being able to express that with your partner;
3. From that awareness, to co-create something that suits both of you. And as I keep stressing, that is a moment-by-moment thing, not an assumed fixed process. 

That takes time and focus;

• approaching the concept of sex and sexuality openly, confronting our inevitable negative emotions of fear, shame, guilt, as well as any sense of entitlement;
• identifying our expectations and assumptions;
• learning to be comfortable asking for what we want and giving feedback;
• being open to exploring and learning and creating; and
• always maintaining an intention of pleasure and connection.

We need this level of comfort for our own personal wellbeing, to be able to co-create a healthy supportive relationship, and to model comfortable sexuality to support our children and young people. Then we will have not just a sex-positive society, but also a sex-comfortable one.

Download Audio: More than Sex-Positive, We Need to be Sex-Comfortable

So many people are looking for love, seeking it as though it is something outside of them, separate from them. 

Singles trawl the dating apps, date after date, hoping that this time it will be the one who will bring love into their life…

Couples engross themselves in their individual lives, becoming complacent, losing their connection. They feel the lack of love and seek it through work, children, or external lovers…

Yet the love is already there. It’s within us and it’s around us. Single or partnered, know yourself, love yourself. We need to do the psychological and spiritual work to clear negative patterns, to develop understanding and compassion for ourselves. It can be hard, and a life-long process, but so rewarding. We come to realise that ‘I’m ok’. We learn to let down the barriers, remove the armour that we created to keep us safe from the large or small hurts and neglects we experienced as children, to deal with the conditioning we received even though it didn’t feel right – ‘boys don’t cry’, ‘be a good girl’ – the message that we aren’t good enough unless… that we aren’t loveable unless….that we aren’t lovable.

Yet humans thrive on love, we are a bonding species, we need to connect to others, and to have stronger bonds with small numbers, particularly with our parents as children and then with our partner as adults. It is hard-wired in us, our evolutionary drive was to bond so as to raise our helpless slow-growing young and therefore survive as a species. Our human evolutionary drive has always been love.

The more we are able to love ourselves, the more we can let ourselves open to the love that is around us. Having that internal sense of self-love gives us strength to be vulnerable and authentic, allowing others around us to be the same, allowing us to connect as the fragile, beautiful people that we are, bumbling along in life the best we can. Single people then meet those who are a good match to their true selves and the love flows. Couples stay attuned to each other, really knowing each other and through that supporting and loving each other through life.

With the self-love you feel the external love. The experience of life is inevitably challenging, yet with the love it is experienced as safe, joyous and fulfilling.

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.”

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!