I don’t know about you but I can’t believe that we are already talking about the end of the year. Just a year ago, I was wishing you three cheers to a happy, healthy and succe-sex-ful New Year and urging you to remember the acronym P.A.I.R (Purpose, Act, Indulge and Resist) for a better sex life. One year later, let us take a brief look at your success or ‘failure’ but first, let’s us do a quick review for those who may have missed it or forgotten about it.
P - Purpose to have good sex
Good sex does not just happen. Regardless of your age, gender or sexual orientation, you must want to have good sex and then make a point of contributing to the outcome that you want.
A - Act on the choices
The choices you have made regarding your sexual experience. It is not enough to want a better sex life; determine what that would look like and what it would feel like. Is this about more/less frequent sex, more/less adventurous sex, more/less connected sex or perhaps there is something else that you want. Whatever that is, action is part of the deal, pun intended.
I - Indulge
This year was to be an opportunity to allow yourself to sink into yourself and the kind of context (marriage, relationship, dating experience) that would allow you to have the sex life that you would love to have. This is also about having fun, in and out of bed so…play!
R - Resist the temptation
Try not to engage in anything that is not helpful or supportive of your life, in and out of bed. This would include comparing yourself to others, criticising yourself or your partner especially when it is not anchored in love, respect, kindness or truth. Resist the temptation to look elsewhere instead of putting in the work necessary to improve your situation, or leave it with dignity.
Resist the temptation to believe your current - often temporary - reality too much. In a nutshell, things change all the time; children get older, relationships get easier and finances get better, all the time. Trust that, instead.
Now that we are on the same page, how would you rate your success in 2018? Did you apply P.A.I.R? Did it help you? Did you struggle with some aspect of it? Whatever the case, please do write me at the e-mail address below and let me know. If you forgot about it, here’s a 2019 tip: cut it out and paste it somewhere that you can easily and quickly access it.
As we look into 2019, and the kind of sex life that you hope to have, I would like to encourage you to do one main thing: determine a theme. I know that many of you will be making all kinds of resolutions for the New Year, and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, I encourage you to make the sorts of resolutions that can add joy and fullness to your life. However, what I am talking about here is having an over-arching theme for the year 2019.
What’s the difference? Well, resolutions are rather specific. What I like about the idea of having a theme is that it becomes one overarching umbrella that can be easy to remember and easy to assess your sex life against for example,
“I would like to have sex four times per week” is specific while “I want my sex life to be more adventurous” is an overarching umbrella. In addition, the responsibility of having more of what you want begins with you instead of leaving it all to the ‘other’.
Think about what your school themes were, for example, and what that meant for you. If your theme was “leave a place better than you found it”, it meant that whenever you dropped a piece of rubbish on the grass, you felt more inclined to pick it up and discard it properly because littering did not match your stated theme.
In terms of your sex life, you can have any kind of sex four times per week but with a theme in mind, you can go further and ask yourself, “does this look/feel like adventurous sex? What do I need to do/feel/see/experience to feel like my sex life is adventurous? What can I do about that?” In other words, you not only take responsibility for increasing your frequency to four times, you have a built-in measuring stick against which you can assess your sex life. By the way, this has also been successful in non-sexual areas; try it and let me know.
As we look forward to a new year, and as you make resolutions and/or decide on themes to guide your life in and out of the bedroom, I wish you better, sweeter, deeper love, joy, peace and sex. I wish you an abundance of all the things that make your heart, mind, body and soul come alive, in and out of bed.