A review of book “31 Days to Great Sex” by Sheila Wray Gregoire.
By Celeste
This post is part 5 of the series: Improving Intimacy
Part 1: How to Agree on How Often to Have Sex
Part 2: Waiting for Sex Until Marriage- Can I Really Do It?
Part 3: When Sex is Painful: One Woman’s Story
Part 4: A Therapist Answers Your Questions About Sex First Half and Second Half
Part 5: Resources for Improving Intimacy: “31 Days to Great Sex” and “The Art of Desire“
For Married CouplesThis is an e-book written by Sheila Wray Gregoire. I’ll admit at first I was a little skeptical. It’s sounds a little too Pinterest-y for me. Like all those pins that boast “the 5 most helpful things ever ever!!” And then you take the bait and click and it turns out those things are so surface-level and not helpful at all? You know those?But guys. This book is not like that.It was SO helpful! Rich and I read it together about a month ago and I can seriously point to reading it together as a springboard to what has been, for a lot of reasons, a wonderful month in our marriage. A turning point of sorts that we will look to for years to come as something awesome we did for our marriage.
The number one thing that has surprised me the most from reading this book and then working to improve both the quantity and quality of our intimacy, is how much it has impacted EVERY OTHER ASPECT of our relationship. Seriously, we’ve been more forgiving, more compassionate, more flirtatious, more fun and more loving to each other. I mentioned this in my last email newsletter (sign up on the sidebar- I talk about a marriage “win” I had every other week!). This book directly resulted in a lot of unexpected “marriage wins” for us.
Working to improve our sex life has helped us resolve long-standing disagreements that are completely unrelated to intimacy. We’ve been more willing to see each others side and give each other the benefit of the doubt.
If I had known that this was going to be the result, I would have read a sex book together A LONG TIME AGO!!!
Although, I have to admit, without this blog I don’t think I ever would have because both Rich and I have mostly been happy with our love life throughout our marriage. No terrible issues so no need for book reading and research, right? Wrong! Whether you have great big issues regarding intimacy or no visible ones, I would really suggest you read a book and do some research on how to make your sex life even better. You may be surprised at the result.
So, on to the book. The book is short- we read most of it together in an afternoon. There is a challenge every day, but also a short little chapter for each of the 31 days discussing the topic of the day. The book is divided into three main sections:
- Emotional Intimacy (the power of your thoughts, making sex fun)
- Physical Intimacy (how to make sex feel wonderful)
- Spiritual Intimacy (true oneness in the bedroom)
She also has an intro section called “turning sex into something positive” and a concluding section called “keep the momentum going.”
First off, Sheila is a Christian author, and I’m glad because the spiritual aspects of intimacy really resonate with me and I feel like she dictates those aspects really well. I mentioned in this post how much it bothers me in our culture that we look to sex as just a physical experience, so highlighting the emotional and spiritual aspects of sex was important to me in a sex book.
In the very beginning of the book she says that you may be tempted to skip ahead to the physical challenges but not to do those until you go through the first ones. She says we need to think the right things about sex and feel the right things about sex before our bodies will behave the right way. This was a good warning, because that’s what we were going to do. But we rolled our eyes and started at the beginning. And it was the right move! In the end, we gained the most by talking through the non-physical chapters.
Rich and I thought ourselves pretty well off when it came to communication on this topic (it comes up frequently in our weekly companionship inventories), but wow! We’ve been married for years, but we were talking about things that we never once had questioned before (Fun fact: Did you know your spouse might prefer wetter kisses or drier kisses than you do? I do now!). As the book went on, she often described our erroneous thoughts and attitudes about sex so spot on that we had to laugh out loud.
Largely because of this book (and the Art of Desire e-course), we have literally talked for hours and hours and hours this month about intimacy and about thoughts or hangups we didn’t realize we had (also we’ve discussed each post in this series at length 🙂 marriage blogs are fun!).
Anyway, here’s a sampling of the chapters you’ll find in the book:
- Challenging the Lies You’re Telling Yourself
- Hitting the Reset Button on Your Sex Life
- Loving the Skin You’re In
- 14 Ways to Play Together as a Couple
- Preparing for Sex Throughout the Day
- Little Changes That Feel Amazing For Her (and the next chapter for him)
- Trying New Positions
- 8 Ways to Spice Things Up
- Quickies Can Be Fun
To say that I REALLY recommend this book would be putting it lightly. It’s short, it’s cheap and it’s so helpful. Plus it would make an AMAZING Christmas present (particularly if you are the low-desire partner- this just may be your spouse’s very favorite gift 😉 ). Plus it’s only five bucks. Buy it here.