Em & Lo | EmandLo.com
True love and deep intimacy aren’t a guarantee of hot sex. In fact, being in long-term love might be the reason your sex life is dull! After all, it’s hard to get excited when you know all your partner’s moves, when you know they’re not going anywhere, when you know every bad bathroom habit they have. Where’s the danger, the mystery, the suspension of disbelief? So here are five ways to recreate some erotic tension in your relationship without sacrificing all that good love and stability.
1. Find ways to admire each other.
Admiration is something that happens early in a relationship, as you are learning each other’s talents and qualities. And to truly admire someone or something, you usually have to step back a little—imagine trying to appreciate a painting when your nose is an inch from the canvas. So the next time you’re out with friends, take a seat at the opposite end of the table from your partner and sneak glances at the way he or she makes your friends laugh. Break out a board game with friends and get competitive together. Or hit a karaoke bar and admire your partner’s awesome rockstar voice (or just that they don’t care how silly they look).
2. Give each other space.
Encourage your partner to go on boys’/girls’ nights out — and make sure you do the same. Join a book club without your partner, or sign up for a boot camp workout group. Go on a weekend away with your siblings or old college buddies. Sure, we all know that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but time apart has an even more magical effect on your genitals.
3. Get out of your comfort zone in bed.
You probably feel incredibly comfortable in bed with your partner, which is awesome in its own way (yay for reliable orgasms!), but sometimes what you want to feel is a little discomfort. Push each other’s limits in the bedroom so that you’re exploring new territory together — this creates a kind of erotic distance as you discover the way that your partner reacts to something new. For example, try a new kind of toy, share a new kind of fantasy, experiment with roleplaying, experiment with orifices… basically, do something that makes you both a little nervous. Remember, you can stop at any time!
4. Be adrenaline junkies together.
An adrenaline rush feels a lot like desire, both emotionally and physiologically. Getting high (on life) together can have a spill-over effect into your sex life — that brief brush with danger, no matter how manufactured, can increase erotic tension. Speed is the simplest way to get a natural high: Go biking together, go downhill skiing, learn to surf. Or just go out dancing somewhere that plays really loud fast music! Another way to get an adrenaline rush is to conquer a fear — whether that’s giving a toast at a party, acting in a local play, or just riding a rollercoaster together.
5. Learn a new route to each other’s orgasm.
Forget everything you know about your partner’s orgasm and teach yourself a new way to get them to their happy place. It may be frustrating initially, but the rewards are fantastic! So if you always rely on a certain position or hand technique or toy to push you over the edge, try anything but that one thing. It’s kind of like that game Taboo, except instead of avoiding certain words, you’re avoiding favorite sexual habits.
This article originally appeared on EMandLO.com.
More from Em & Lo:
Top 10 Reasons for Being — and Staying — Non-Monogamous
Top 10 Reasons for Being — and Staying — Monogamous
Would Most Men Accept a Free Pass for a One-Night Stand?
Em & Lo like to consider themselves the Emily Posts of the modern bedroom. They have co-authored six books on the topics of sex and love: Sex: How to Do Everything, three A-Z guides, Buh Bye, Rec Sex and Sex Toy, the sex manual The Big Bang: Nerve’s Guide to the New Sexual Universe, and the handbook Sex Etiquette for Ladies and Gentlemen. They have contributed to numerous magazines including Glamour, Details, Allure, Marie Claire, and GQ, and wrote columns for New York magazine and The Guardian in the U.K. They currently post daily on their own blog, EMandLO.com, as well as on SUNfiltered, the Sundance Channel blog. You can follow them on Twitter at #EMandLO.
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