Sex gives us a chance to absorb new information, as we devote ourselves to our partner’s innermost needs.
Forget everything you ever learned about sex. Whether perched stiffly in the classroom as your teacher prattled on about the finer points of copulation, listening incredulously to the stories your friends told in adolescence, or gleaning inferences from novels, television shows, or movies. There’s only one secret to fireworks in the bedroom.
Unlearn everything.
Why?
Your partner is a unique creature, built in a novel way physiologically and emotionally, whose desires are unlike anyone else’s. From the placement of nerve endings to physical and hormonal differences, your partner needs to be discovered multiple times, as many times as necessary to reach ultimate fulfillment. As do you.
Yes, newbies, I’m looking at you, but this theory (and it is only that) applies to couples who have been knocking boots for years, too. Perhaps this advice is even more relevant to them. Bedroom mechanisms get tired, can seem automatic. A comedian once quipped he and his wife knew how to get each other off quickly, and he was thankful for that, and while this may ring true for issues of physical gratification, robotic interactions may in fact, leave us wanting more.
Sometimes rote gestures can even cause your partner to feel lonely, as if you can’t be bothered to take anymore intimate time than is absolutely necessary. It’s certainly what we don’t want to accomplish or communicate.
When you walk into the bedroom, close the door behind you and commit yourself to surrender. You are with a partner who inspires feelings of safety and support, ideally, and if this is the case, forget your past hurts at the door. Forget those moments where your boudoir experiences were disappointing, or embarrassing. This is an unfamiliar partner in front of you, even if you have been together for years. You are safe. Hold no expectations, but delight. Close your eyes and permit yourself to feel everything. You are in the moment. Urge your partner to unlearn everything as well…feelings of persecution, of being treated as a conquest, feelings their body may not measure up to the standard they have created. Hold each other close, relishing in the skin-to-skin contact and total acceptance of each other. Then learn each other all over again.
Kiss them in different places, introduce new play. Cave in to the urges you want to bring out in the other. You are perfect and ideal in this moment. I accept you. Starting from this foundation allows you to build on what your partner really wants. Hold their face in your hands and if you don’t usually, make eye contact. Don’t shield yourself at your most vulnerable. Tell yourself you will be welcomed in all your complexities. Bestow the same on your partner. Explore.
Unlearning everything is successful because you build trust, enable healing and create fresh, intimate memories only the two of you share. You are also giving your partner your time, which speaks to them, You are important to me. I give you myself and I will do anything to be here studying you.
This connection of the natural desires we have combined with our emotional needs creates magic…especially when you begin from a blank page offering any outcome. Unlearning everything and discovering the uncharted physical and emotional territory of our partners guarantees a closer connection, and a more meaningful sex life.
This article originally appeared on the Good Men Project.
