In case you’ve missed it- we are talking all about sex this month as part of our physical touch love challenge- to have sex every other day for a month!

Last week, I talked all about how our sex life went from ‘meh’ to ‘awesome’ about two years ago.

In this post, I asked YOU what the best changes were you’ve made to your sex life, so we are going to learn from all your wisdom this week 🙂

Which is excellent, I have the best readers.

Sorry if I didn’t include your response. I read and appreciated each one!

Many couples said similar things and some couples’ responses were just a little, ahem, steamy for my audience 😉  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with steam, but I don’t want people’s internet filters not allowing readers to read this post 🙂

So without further adieu, here are your responses to the question, “What has been the best change you’ve made to your sex life?” (I threw in some of my own commentary to break things up 🙂 )

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“Adding ‘make love night’ to our busy schedule. Because if it’s not there, it doesn’t happen.”

Scheduling! Yes! I’m such a fan of scheduling.

“Having good communication. Like, making sure we talk and connect FIRST. This does way more for me to put me in the mood than foreplay.”

You’re not alone there friend. Its almost impossible for me to get in the mood if we haven’t connected all day.

“At the risk of sounding obvious, the change for us happened when I actually started to want to have sex. LOL! The want was there in droves before we were married, but then basically after the honeymoon, my want waned big time.

The change happened for me when, in a rare moment, a good friend of mine opened up to me, and said she had been married for three years with really painful sex before she went to her doctor, who actually recommended a vibrator for their problem, and she said now she actually loves sex! It opened up a whole new world for her and now she wants sex for her and not just for her husband or for strengthening their marriage. 

I didn’t even know that could happen!! LOL!

I had spent so many years in my lack of wanting or even thinking about my own physical desire, I didn’t even know what that would be like to really love sex. And I thought– I want to experience that– I want to feel what it would feel like to love sex. 

That was what changed everything for us– wanting it for me– instead of duty sex.”

Wow, what a great story!  Thanks so much for sharing it!  Reminds me of things I learned from the Art of Desire e-course (duty sex doesn’t usually lead to great passion).

“Playing “strip” Trivial Pursuit or other board games has been the best way for me to transition from normal life to thinking about sex and has been the key to playful foreplay for us, maybe because we both already enjoy board games outside of the bedroom…It connects our different love languages, I think.”

Love this one. This is one of my tips in my “making intimacy fun” prompts (which you can acquire via this post). Making sex fun was a total new concept for me before I read 31 Days to Great Sex, but I too found it was SO much easier and more my style to ‘get in the mood’ from having fun and laughing and connecting than from doing something more ‘conventionally sexy.’

“The fact that we are extremely open and honest to what we like and dislike. We share our fantasies frequently. Something I never thought we would do, but now we experiment a lot. We are both very aware of our own and each other’s sexuality.”

Good for you guys. Its hard to have a satisfying sex life if you both aren’t open and honest and in tune to each other.

“We do it less often with more feeling then ever before in our lives. It’s amazingly rewarding for both.”

Awesome. Figure out what works for you both and go for it.

“Going to therapy!!  For YEARS both of us were so frustrated by our sex lives. We BOTH wanted to be more satisfied and we thought the problem would be solved if we learned some new techniques, new positions, or maybe went on vacation. BUT after some other issues led us to therapy, we finally realized, the answers to our problems in bed did not lie in TECHNIQUE, it was our other marital and personal issues that were getting in the way all this time. These were SO much harder and took SO much longer to work through than finding new positions or toys, but since we’ve been working our long-standing issues out both on our own AND together, we’re finally able to connect in bed in a way we just couldn’t all those years when so many issues were bottled up.”

This is SO true. There are WAY more obstacles to a satisfying sex life than just behaviors in bed! Even though that seems like the obvious and easiest solution to more passion. Its true what they say- the brain is the most important sex organ. So happy you guys are doing well! And thanks for mentioning therapy. I think everyone should go.

“Being able to relax more. I’m not sure if this has come mainly from lowering our expectations or communicating more or just feeling more comfortable in my own skin as I get older, but I have found that relaxing expectations of myself and our time together has been important.”

Absolutely. Expectations can ruin desire. Particularly when they go un-met or differ greatly from our partner’s expectations.

“For me as a woman, we’ve discovered that we’re so much more likely to have sex if a: we connect on an emotional level earlier that evening and b: we get to bed earlier!”

Similar minds think alike. And if you leave sex until you’re both in bed, getting to bed too late will certainly take its toll!

“Just changing my mind set. I ordered the ‘boost your libido’ e-course from Sheila Gregoire and it was really helpful in realizing it starts in my mind. :)”

Awesome resource – thanks for sharing! I’ve been wanting to take this course!

“Well, we’re luckier than most from the outset because neither of us have sexual trauma in our past and both of us actually like sex, which I’m realizing the older I get is pretty rare.  Our biggest obstacle has come from having a bunch of little kids that take all our time, attention and energy.

This isn’t anything profound, but the best change for us has just been just making it a priority. Its so easy not to, but I was struck by something said on your blog actually in answer to a reader who said their biggest obstacle to a good sex life was tiredness and the therapist said its probably actually NOT tiredness but just not prioritizing it. That really struck me and got me out of my excuses of always being ‘too tired.’ We make time to do all sorts of things, so once we got it in our head that sex was really important to prioritize, we actually DO have time for it if we make time.”

Perfect. Thanks for sharing. That post they are referring to is this one.

“I haven’t been married for long, but its been a realization for us that we don’t have to be “in the mood” when we start. I guess I got this mistaken idea from media??? I don’t know, but often we’ll get there even if we don’t feel like having sex at first. For us, having sex puts us in the mood for more sex!”

This was a revelation to us too.

“This might sound weird, but I think internally I had to accept that sexuality and passion isn’t bad. I grew up in a very conservative culture where it was constantly preached to repress any and all things related to sex, sexual thoughts, desires until marriage. But then when we’re married, nothing else is preached on the matter, so those repression tendencies or this underlying feeling like we should be very weary of desire and where it will lead sticks around. These feelings don’t promote passion in a marriage. So, my first step was to realize that sexual desire isn’t inherently bad and in fact we’ve been given the body parts and desires we have by design by God for our enjoyment. Embracing my own desire and confronting and questioning my own mental obstacles regarding sex has freed me up to ACTUALLY FEEL PASSION.  Then of course, we had to learn some new skills and figure out what we like and don’t like, but changing my previously unquestioned and unconscious negative ideas about sex was the first step. My husband was oh-so-happy I worked on this.”

Ah! I’m so glad someone said this!  Thank you! I went through a similar realization two years ago.

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There you have it. Thank you to everyone who contributed your wisdom to this post and if you have more wisdom to share- let us know in the comments!!  Thanks guys!