Adults have many demands on their time and energy, but take your role as your partner’s lover as seriously as you take your roles as worker, parent, friend, etc. Set aside time to make love properly.
2. Revive the dating game: Remember when you would meet up for dates, go out somewhere pleasant, talk together and look forward to getting up close and personal?
Agree with your partner that you will devote every Wednesday night or whenever to talking, sharing a drink and a DVD, relaxing together.séx must not be compulsory – but there’s a good chance you will both fancy it
3. Make the most of the unexpected: If you suddenly realise you can both be home from work early one day, don’t mow the lawn or clean the cupboards.
Use that precious gift of unexpected time together to add the freshness of variety to your loving.
4. Vary your setting: If you always make love in your good old double bed, look for chances to vary WHERE you make love as well as when.
5. Learn massage: To be touched caringly is one of our most basic human needs – as crucial as food and drink – but all too often touching gets cut down to a minimum, even by couples having séx.
Sharing skilled, all-over body massage brings great physical pleasure and relaxation to both the giver and receiver.
6. Separate séx from the rest: No relationship is perfect. Do be careful not to let petty irritations get in the way of making love.
7. Take a trip: Don’t let cheats have all the fun. At least once a year, get away with your legitimate partner to spend as long as possible alone together in a pleasant setting.
8. Share a bath or a shower: Not just séx in the shower. The bathroom has an atmosphere of relaxed intimacy. Make it a habit that one of you sits and chats while the other baths or showers.
9. Sort out the turn-offs: Sometimes husbands and wives develop habits or traits that put off their partner séxually. Talk honestly about what the problem is.
10. Change positions: Often you tend to settle for one or two which work.
The trouble is this can lead to a growing sense of monotony.
Promise yourselves that at least once a month you will try a different position.
11. Relax together: You generally need at least an hour together before séx to tune in to each other, relax, forget the other pressures of the day and to start to think about the pleasures you could share.
12. If you argue over how often you make love, negotiate a compromise: One of the most common séxual conflicts is how often couples are going to have séx.
It can lead to a tremendous easing of tension all round to bring the issue out into the open and work out a compromise. Agree which nights you will have séx and stick to it.
13. Remember there’s more to séx than intercourse: Don’t feel that séx always has to end with intercourse. It helps tremendously to break that deadening feeling of routine if at least sometimes you give each other satisfaction in other ways.
14. Don’t rush: To discover the more intense pleasure and passionate intimacy which in a good, lasting relationship, will more than replace the thrill of the new, you have to take your time.
Try slowing séx down and savouring each moment and each touch.
15. Dress up – or down: It helps to re-stimulate séxual triggers if our partner can’t always be sure what we will look and feel like when we make love.
If you usually go to bed in nightclothes, for example, surprise them by appearing stark nakéd.
16. Take up a new interest together: Don’t lose sight of one another as people.
Find a spare-time activity you can regularly share – going for a swim, bowling, badminton, a film club or drama society.
17. Take turns making love: At least once a month take it in turns to caress one another while the other is free simply to enjoy.
18. Make love over the phone: It doesn’t have to be heavy, but an occasional hot text or séxy voicemail brightens the day.
19. If you’re depressed, DO something about it: Even quite mild depression leads to less interest in séx – as can the medication to treat it. If you haven’t felt like making love for some time and there’s no other obvious reason, talk through your life with your partner and work out what might be getting you down and why. Don’t just let some unhappy situation drag on.
20. Ring the changes: At least once a week try to think of some little extra to add a touch of glamour to your love life – a bottle of sparkling wine, scented oil, a flower.
21. Beware undies! Any underwear department can tell you that in December they sell all their red and black ultra-séxy numbers to men who dream of partners in stockings and suspenders, lace and tight elastic. In January lots of women take them back.
If your man keeps trying to pressure you to wear his fantasy though it’s your nightmare, ask him how he would feel in lace-trimmed Y-fronts with see-through panels.
22. Start the day with a kiss: Even a little peck can set the right mood for your day.
23. Tune back in to séx: Don’t let séx become abandoned territory in your life. You can’t wind back the clock but you can tune yourself in to what’s new and interesting. Many men find séxy films exciting while lots of women seem to find the written word more arousing.
24. Deal with desire: The most common séxual problem among women in settled relationships is loss of desire.
Don’t get trapped in a cycle of blame and guilt. It can usually be sorted out – as long as you both have the commitment and willingness to change.
25. Don’t let the sun set on a niggle: If you’re harbouring a grudge, say something. It’s the first step towards clearing the air and opening the channels of communication to love each other again.
26. Experiment: Each of you make a note of three or four things you’d like to try – techniques, positions, touches, dressing-up, whatever – and swap ideas.
27. Share your fantasies: Many of us have images and scenarios that flash through our minds as we make love.
It can deepen your intimacy and be very exciting to share these fantasies – but only if you can trust your partner not to use them against you some time.
28. Is Big Brother watching you? If some of these suggestions strike you as too bold or embarrassing, ask yourself why. Remind yourself you are grown up now and free to have as much fun as you and your partner desire. You have nothing to lose but your inhibitions.
29. Who makes the first move? Does one of you always initiate séx? It can often liven up a dull patch to surprise your partner with an invitation.
Be careful not to make them feel threatened though.
30. Accept there are highs and lows: No one can live their life on a high of ecstasy.
Be realistic and you are far less likely to end up disappointed.
31. Do you need a boost? If you often avoid séx when your partner feels like it, it can often be because you are out of love with yourself rather than with your partner. Get out of this self-punishing cycle and give yourself as big a treat and ego boost as you can afford.
32. Time for a change? If you are often rebuffed by your partner when you feel like making love, don’t dig in defensively and blame their lack of séx drive. Ask what’s wrong. Suggest they describe what would be their idea of a perfect evening making love.
Then try to come as near to their outline as possible.
33. Fuel your desires: You won’t feel lively and energetic – séxually or in any other way – unless you provide your body with the right food to run on Eat sensibly and remember, too much alcohol can be ruinous for your séx drive and performance.
34. Stop smoking: Smoking makes people smell and taste horrible. As you get older, smoking can seriously lower séxual responsiveness.
35. Start exercising: You don’t need to take up serious sport or hard exercise, but a toned body is a more séxy body. Get out for a good long walk once or twice a week, swim or join a yoga class.
36. Stop comparing: No more comparing your present relationship with ones from your past. Don’t lament what you’re missing but look at what you have and how you can build on it.
37. Take a break: Plan your lives so you have one day a month off alone together. You don’t have to do anything expensive.
A bus ride into the country and a peaceful walk will do you both a power of good.
38. Turn off the technology: Switch off all gadgets for a special hour or two when you give one another 100 per cent attention. Your relationship may die without that breathing space.
39. Say “I love you” at least once a day: But only if you mean it! We reserved British tend to think our partner must realise, but no one is a mind reader and it’s always a turn-on to be told.
40. Don’t let rows freeze over: If you do have a row – most of us do sometimes – don’t let it settle down into frosty silence.
41. Give each other a makeover: We are often very timid in our ideas of how attractive we could or dare to look.
Save up to give yourselves a joint treat and spend a day at the shops choosing outfits for each other.
42. Don’t take each other for granted: Don’t wait until disaster strikes your relationship – if it hasn’t already. Imagine how it would feel and take all those enjoyable precautions now.
43. Write love letters: Remember how wonderful it was to receive a love letter and restart the habit.
The occasional card or note will be treasured and more than repaid in love.
44. Focus on sensation: Just as we experience pain more intensely if we think about it and picture the hurt, so it is with pleasure.
The most important organ of séxual pleasure is said to be the brain, so use it to concentrate when you make love.
45. List the goodies: If you hit a patch when it all seems like too much trouble or you are tempted to stray, list the good things about your relationship that make it worth preserving.
Think what it is you’re missing and looking for elsewhere.
It often comes down to a break from routine, more fun and appreciation.
All this can usually be had at home if you make a few changes.
46. Need quick thrills? Some of us are adrenalin addicts and need adventure and excitement in our lives.
Look for ways to supply that thrill other than through playing around with people’s feelings.
Sports can be the answer – playing anything competitively can add a thrill to life without breaking hearts.
47. Hand in hand: If séx seems to be losing sensation for you and you find it harder to become aroused, try placing your hand over your partner’s hand as they touch and stroke you.
This way of focusing on your lovemaking can make it come doubly alive.
48. Turn off the TV: Try a week without television – on holiday or at home.
Playing games and talking more together often leads to our loving more together.
49. Don’t feel defeated: Go through this list and mark those you feel you could manage now, even if it’s only to suggest a day out and to eat more healthily.
Promise yourself you will add one more each week.
50. THIS IS IT: Remind yourself every so often that what matters is what’s happening now. Life isn’t a rehearsal. Let’s live it to the full.
