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Building intimacy with your lover can be fun if you follow these 3 hot tips.
By Maci Daye — Written on Feb 25, 2020
Falling in love is the greatest turn on. We feel high when we're in love, thanks to a potent passion cocktail of biochemicals that stimulate the reward centers of the brain.
Essentially, this is nature's trick to nudge couples to build intimacy, form romantic and sexual relationships, and reproduce.
Soon after — somewhere between six months and two years — nature turns us from love-crazed paramours into nurturing cuddle bunnies. We are now flooded with oxytocin, the bonding hormone. This is nature's next trick: Compelling us to stick together at least long enough to raise the kids.
The cost is that intimacy, desire, and sex takes a serious nosedive! As a result, our partners lose the halo effect, and we start seeing our partner's flaws for the first time — even though they've been there all along.
When this happens, it's critical to find things you can do to make sex fun so you can keep the dulling spark in your bedroom alive.
According to anthropologist Helen Fisher, breakups, affairs, and divorces happen in record numbers at the two- to four-year mark of a relationship, no matter how much love, chemistry, or intimacy there was at the beginning.
Too close, or too far for sex and intimacy?
Couples often become "fused" (too close) or "estranged" (too distant), causing breakups. Successful couples choose to recalibrate their "near/far" relational dynamics frequently because they know if they stay fused or estranged for too long, passion, desire, intimacy, and sex die away.
Sex expert Tammy Nelson explains that when we feel fused with our soulmate, there's no obstacle to connection, no sense of specialness or scarcity, and the chase dynamics that spur hot pursuit extinguish. There is a much greater dopamine reward for catching an object of desire and intimacy than actually having it.
In other words, chasing and dating is more exciting than the comfort of capture and companionship. Our initial passion means we desire intimacy and togetherness every evening and sleeping in the same bed every night, but this reliable closeness dampens our passion.
At the other extreme, some of us become so estranged over time that we can't imagine rekindling our intimacy and making love to each other again.
Meeting your love again for the first time: reconnecting, rekindling, and renewing intimacy.
Certainly, it's difficult to give up the high and easy to become bored with bonding. This is why so many long-term relationships end despite a rocket-fueled start.
So, what's the secret to a sizzling sex life even after many years? After working with countless couples that successfully reconnected and rebuilt intimacy and passion, we encourage couples to consciously choose to meet anew through the practice of mindfulness, which helps us come off of autopilot and meet each other in "real time."
Here are the 3 most powerful approaches for women to spice up their sex life and rekindle intimacy and desire in with their husbands, regardless of whether you feel fused or estranged.
1. Actively see your partner with fresh, loving eyes.
Seeing each other with "fresh eyes" during the bonding phase is when becoming present — truly seeing, hearing, and feeling each other — becomes possible. Genuine intimacy is only attainable "in the now," moment by moment.
Paradoxically, hidden behind all the routines and banality is the chance to reconnect in a deeper, more authentic way. The real challenge — and the real gift — is learning how to love the person you have chosen as they are, not an impossibly flawless version you may have once idealized.
2. Make time for each other as lovers.
Yes, set those date nights. Get away from your kids, work, and chores on a regular basis. It is so easy to forget that our partners are also our lovers, in addition to the other roles they play, such as parent, cook, driver, cleaner, gardener, dog walker — you get the drift.
Esther Perel explains that lust breeds in the shadows of clandestine places, not in banal domesticity. So, invite some mystery back into your lust-less relationship by spending time with your partner in a new, undomesticated setting.
3. Create a state of novelty.
Many counselors advise couples to try new sex toys or positions because novelty tricks the brain into producing exciting chemicals of desire. The problem with this is that it becomes too easy to forget to attend to each other's emotional state. Instead, we recommend creating a state of novelty where couples enter each erotic, intimate encounter as if it is the first (and possibly last) time.
Without a rote template, lovemaking and intimacy remains fresh rather than scripted, conscious and creative rather than automatic. When we surrender our expectations, we open to the pure potential for rekindling intimacy and deepening our wild desires for each other in the here and now.
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Maci Daye, Certified Sex Therapist and creator of Passion and Presence®, leads webinars and retreats for couples and helping professionals on "Tending Eros in Long-Term Relationships." Learn how to revive the passion in your relationship by visiting her website for more information.