Corrie on loving..
Follow Street couple Sally and Tim’s lead to get a boost in bedroom
research. There are some fantastic YouTube talks by experts such as Emily Nagoski or Esther Perel and they talk perfectly normally about the subject of sex. They show no images whatsoever, they just talk about it. Hearing someone else talk about sex and realising the world didn’t suddenly end helps you start building up a bit of confidence to talk about it.
Try this game..
I encourage couples to have a drink, plan a Friday night and try a game. Take a large piece of paper and both write down as many words you can that mean sex or body parts. The older you are, the more inhibited you might be, so treating it as a laugh means it might becomes fun, silly and make you giggle. It takes away all the anxiety.
X Maybe you have never tried different positions or had sex anywhere apart from in bed. So talk about things you’ve seen, read or heard about sex.
► The second game you can play is writing the sex things you’ve heard that might be fun, strange, or you don’t know what they mean.
► For the third game, look at the lists and each pick the top 10 things that you would like to try. Cut the list into individual slips, then crumple each one in a ball. Find a jar to hold all these little bits of paper.
Then say: “Next Friday we’re going to have a drink and at 7pm we’re each of us going to put our hands in the jar, pull out a piece of paper and whatever’s on it we’re going to have a go.”
ADVICE Keeping things fresh will make it fun
► It has to be on the understanding that it’s an experiment so might go wrong – but what’s the worst that can happen? You’ll have a laugh about it.
► The following Friday, put your hand in the jar and pick out another piece of paper. Either have a dice and whoever rolls the highest score goes first. Or one person says they want to go first.
► Set things up to succeed. Make sure you are not expecting and calls, put your phones away, lock the door, make sure the children are occupied or out, and have a shower. Then you each decide where you’re going to do it and how.
► If you have the bit of paper, you’re the one in charge, you set the rules. The other person has to go along with whatever you suggest but if one of you feels uncomfortable it’s their right to say stop. The other person has to respect that and not interpret it as rejection.
► The rule of experiment is that, because it’s something new, you might not like it, so each of you has the right to say, “I don’t feel comfortable” or “Can we just stop?”. But agree either then, an hour later or the next day to talk about what happened to get you to the point where you said no. You have to talk it through so you both understand what’s going on, rather than thinking, “Is it something I did?”.
►Let’s say you chose to have sex downstairs rather than in the bedroom. You march downstairs and you say, “Do you want to take your clothes off or do you want me to undress you?”. Talk through how you want to do it and try doing it. Afterwards, however it goes – good, bad or indifferent – spend half an hour lying down, cuddling each other and after 15 minutes say what you really enjoyed. Don’t say what you didn’t enjoy or didn’t like, just what you enjoyed. Say whether you would like to do it again – and that’s it. You can put your hand in the jar every week.
► Some couples might like to take the jar away with them to a hotel because it feels safer for them to do it away from their normal environment. That’s an enhancement on the game.
► After writing your top 10 things you might like, try writing your top 10 fantasies. Maybe you’d like your partner to wear different underwear or play a role. When you pick out the paper, share with your partner what that fantasy is about. It doesn’t mean you’ve got to do it, just describe it. Out of that comes ideas of things that you do want to incorporate as you start to develop your sexual relationship.
If you do feel conscious about your body perhaps have a shower together first
PETER SADDINGTON ON GETTING OVER INHIBITIONS