For generations we raised our girl children to think they’re not sexual, that they shouldn’t be sexual, and if they were sexual - stoning or burning them to death or locking them away in insane asylums. Women didn’t have a chance to explore their sexuality, and neither did their partners.

So, with no alternative, when a man married he basically kept on doing with his wife what he’d been doing with himself for years - masturbating. Since puberty the adolescent boy had been stroking his penis as fast as he could until he ejaculated. So when he got a female partner, not knowing any better, he kept doing that inside her.

Essentially men were masturbating inside their wives.

So the standard approach has three parts:

1. Find yourself aroused - you have to be horny before you start.

2. Stroke genitals rapidly - it's all about the shagging

3. Have an orgasm - we all know the 'rule' that sex ends when the man ejaculates - right?

I call this theAdolescent Male Masturbatory (AMM) Model of Sex.

It’s what we in the West have done for millennia.

Then, a mere few decades ago, we had the sexual revolution. Suddenly society decided that sex was good and that it was OK for women to want and enjoy sex. But, the only model we had was the AMM Model of sex. So now everyone was supposed to want and enjoy sex like a teenage boy masturbating: sudden onset of desire, rapid and intense genital activity, one orgasm at the end, generally accompanied by “naughty” and “sleazy” thoughts.

The problem is though, that most people don’t actually like sex like that. And even if they do, it’s very limited.

Unfortunately, with a lack of alternatives, our society has focused on the AMM Model:
- genital oriented,
- orgasm oriented,
- fantasy features that appeal to adolescent boys, such as pneumatic breasts and abnormally large penises,
- and it’s very youth-oriented.

And it’s total madness for women. In the space of a few decades we’ve gone from lack of sexual interest as being considered the norm for women, to ‘low libido’ being the biggest sexual ‘dysfunction’ of women. And we’ve got women limiting themselves to clitoral orgasms when the female potential is so much more than emulating the limitations of male orgasm. (Not to disregard clitoral orgasms, they are very fine things, but they are just a 'blip', a moment in time compared to what's possible...)

Even for men, as a man matures, his skills as a lover should far exceed the limited thrusts of a penis. Yet men take little blue pills by the bucket load so as to have erections like a young man, without realising that there’s so much more to sex than a hard cock.

When adult men and women realise what their sexual potential is, there’s no way they’d want to limit themselves to the genital fumblings of ‘normal’ (AMM) sex.

There is some acknowledgement that women don’t orgasm the same way as the ‘normal’ male, so now we have the Chivalrous AMM Model of Sex. That is, give her an orgasm first, and then continue with the standard procedure. There’s still an expectation that they’ll both be horny first, the genitals are the focus, the orgasm is the main event, and it’s all over when he comes.

Boring!

It’s time we moved on from this limited view of sex and sexuality. I believe that society is shifting, that people are starting to realise that there’s got to be more to sex than this, that sex is not some brief act of friction between genitals for a momentary climax at the end.

That’s why people are exploring the sensual, the spiritual, the playful, the 'wicked', the energetic aspects of sex. There is so much more to sex than mutual masturbation.

Our human sexual potential is an awesome thing, every human’s birth right and definitely worth exploring.

The secret to a strong relationship is that you merge your love and sexual energies within you and share that constantly. This creates a unique vibration between you, like your own radio frequency. It’s a frequency that has the warmth and support of love yet with a zest, a frission of the sexual. It is a potent energy.

This frequency manifests in myriad small ways throughout the day - in looks, touches, comments, tokens (gifts, surprises, services). I’ve described this in other blogs as sharing ‘quanta of deliciousness’, maintaining the 'mmm' factor, and focusing on the 'beforeplay' .

When you keep this frequency strong it creates a depth of connection, a profound intimacy. It makes it both easier to move into genital sexual connection, as you are already so connected it’s not a great jump (important for people who have resistance or difficulty being interested in genital interaction), and paradoxically genital sexual connection becomes less important because you already have a strong sexual energy flowing between you (important for those who have a strong need or urgency for genital interaction).

Rather than sex being an ‘off or on’ dynamic in your relationship, it becomes a sliding scale. I’ve described this elsewhere as ‘keeping yourselves simmering’: if your sexual relating is like a thermostat with zero degrees being completely uninterested and 100 degrees completely interested, then cultivating this kind of relating enables you to stay in the simmer zone. So it becomes easy to segue into more genital or more passionate sexual relating, and easy to jointly manage how and what you do.

This might be quite a shift from the way you usually think of sex and love. If you’ve found yourself feeling like housemates or ruing the good old days when having sex was easy, then you’re probably stuck in the sex-love duality rather than the integrated approach I’m advocating here. So let’s do a practical activity.

Practical Exercise

Bring your focus to your sense of love. How does it feel? What are the qualities of your energy of love? Does it have a colour? Where do your feel it in your body? Place your hand there and stay with this felt sense of love, this energy of love.

Then bring your focus to your sexuality. This energy of life, creativity, growth, desire. How does it feel? What are the qualities of your energy of sex? Does it have a colour? Where do you feel it in your body? Place your hand there and stay with this felt sense of sex, this energy of sexuality.

Most probably you now have one hand over your heart, the centre of love, and one hand over your pelvis, your sexual centre.

Now I invite you to merge those two energies within you. Bring the sexual energy up and combine it with your love energy. How does that feel? Stay with that sensation for a while, really feel into the potency of merging the two energies within you.

Then share that energy with your partner. Imagine that this is an energy that is constantly being shared between you. Every time you have an interaction, no matter how small, infuse it with this energy. Imagine this right now, think about the difference between these following small things, without this infusion and with:

• a brief kiss on parting or greeting
• coming up to your partner when they’re doing something and lightly laying your hand on them
• handing them a drink you’ve prepared for them
• noticing how attractive they are and commenting on it
• sending them a message during the day
• catching their eye
• simply thinking about them

Can you get a sense of how even these tiny little interactions provide an opportunity to share this energy? How potent this is? This then feeds into bigger interactions - conversations, snuggles, joint activities, and of course, sex.

Well, you come to realise that it’s all sex, not just the genital engagement that we usually think of as sex! But, if we are referring specifically to the physical act of sex, you find that it too becomes so much more profound. That it truly becomes an expression of selves, with a richness and depth that is connection-enriching and life-enhancing.

To learn more about how to cultivate this type of relating I recommend you attend my five-day Couples Retreat in Balior three-day Couples Retreat in the Blue Mountainsor book in for private sex and relationship therapy sessions.

A couple who had been regular clients for most of the year finished their time with me recently. At their final session they told me they realized they were 'fixed' because they'd been out to dinner and found themselves happily talking about their sex life as though it was a normal part of life….

I was so pleased to hear this! For this couple, as with so many people, sex had become a Big Issue. It was a crazy mélange of expectations, obligations, desires, awkwardness, uncertainty, pleasures, confusions, misunderstandings - none of which they were able to deal with as they would with any other part of their lives.

As with other couples who stick with sex therapy, after (in their case) about ten sessions, they had unwound that knotty mess and had learned to speak openly and freely with each other. So sex had lost its “heaviness” and had once again become something light and joyful in their lives - to the extent that it had become an engaging and normal topic of dinnertime conversation.

I see this time after time - the ease with which couples come to see their sex lives after doing work with me, how they find a freedom to talk about sex, with lightness and naturalness.

Once they can talk freely, they can engage freely!

We tend to exceptionalise sex in our society. It's seen as something different from all other elements of our lives and so we treat it differently, as something ‘exceptional’, something not normal.

If you compare sex to say food, if our partner served us a meal that was a bit salty we’d naturally point out that we’d prefer less salt, and we’d consider it very normal to feel free enough to comment on our culinary preferences. We wouldn’t think our partner would be upset if we comment on how much salt they use, we wouldn’t think we’re abnormal for not liking that amount of salt, and we wouldn’t think that food was an awkward conversation and one we felt uncomfortable having.

So, yes, we can say we prefer less salt - but when it comes to sex there are all sorts of difficulties in speaking so freely. It’s so much harder to say: I’d prefer you to touch me a little more softly, or firmly, or just there, or not there, or almost, almost, ah yes that’s the spot…!

Part of the process of improving your sexual relating is to get to the stage where sex is simply a normal part of life. So just as you can comfortably talk to your partner about what you’d like for dinner, how much, what condiments, and all the myriad fine details that go into a meal, so you can speak just as freely about your love life - and with that comes a freedom to express yourself in words and actions with honesty, realness, connection and, of course, pleasure.

It can be difficult to find that language on your own though, difficult to have those conversations, which is why it's so good to work with a specialist like me to help you develop that comfort, either through sessions at my clinic, or by attending one of my gorgeous Couples Retreats. It's an investment that will pay back for the rest of your lives!

I find people's views on sex fascinating, even after over eight thousand hours of talking to people in detail about their sex lives! There's so much diversity around what we think of as “normal” or “abnormal” - far more diversity than you'd think if you based it on the media or general opinion.

I could go on and on about the range of opinions people have about what “normal” is.

But in my considerable experience as a Sex Therapist, I’ve discovered that the idea of “normal” has little basis in anything other than what people themselves have experienced in their own lives.

Interestingly, whether they think that their own experience is normal or abnormal seems to be based more on their level of self-esteem than anything else:

• People with high self-esteem tend to feel that what they do and think is normal.
• People with low self -esteem tend to feel that what they think and do is abnormal. 



I’ve had a client who ended a significant relationship because he felt he couldn’t last long enough to satisfy his partner, even though she disagreed. This was because his experience of women was that they wanted lots of intense sex.

I’ve had another client who was ashamed of his sexuality because his experience of women was that they didn’t like sex and found his desire abhorrent.

These two examples show completely opposite experiences in life, leading to completely different views of what is normal, and their own normality or otherwise.

I’ve had plenty of middle-aged female clients who declare that it’s ‘normal’ for them to no longer be interested in sex, and just as many who see their 40s, 50s or 60s as time to discover themselves and come into the fullness of their sexuality. This seems to depend far more on the conversations they have with their female friends than anything else.

I’ll have one couple come in with, say, the man declaring it’s “normal” for him to want sex all the time because that’s what men are like; then the next couple come in and the man’s declaring he’s “normal” because he works so hard he’s tired and of course he’s not up for it as much as her.

I’ll have one couple come in saying that of course they don’t have sex much, they’ve been married for thirty years so naturally they’ve lost interest; then the next couple come in saying they have sex four times a week because they have been married for thirty years, and now they’ve got the time and space to have sex that often!

I’ll have a slim woman come in saying she no longer enjoys sex because she’s self-conscious about her post-pregnancy tummy; then a size 24 woman will come in to discuss how to manage the complexity of her multiple partners.

One poor person will come in alone because their partner thinks it’s abnormal to want to improve their non-existent sex life, let alone talk to anyone about it; and the next couple will come in beaming about their wonderful sex life and feeling it’s quite normal to keep exploring and find out how to make it even better.

I have:

• Young men coming in wondering what’s wrong with them because they like sensual love-making more than hard shagging;
• Women thinking there’s something wrong with them because they don’t orgasm during intercourse;
• Men feeling inadequate because they can’t last as long as porn stars supposedly do;
• People feeling bad because they ‘only’ have sex four times a week;
• People feeling pleased with themselves because they have plenty of sex - at least once a week;
• Couples where the man is holding back so as not to ‘impose’ and his partner wishing he would ravish her;
• Couples where the man thinks there’s something wrong with his partner because she doesn't like his intense ‘passionate’ approach;
• People who think sex is only doing it like porn stars;
• People who think sex is only under the covers with the lights out;
• People who think sex is only tender and spiritual;
• People who think X is normal and Y is perverted;
• People who think Y is normal and X is perverted;
• People who think sex isn’t important;
• People who think it is…..



Get the picture?

I kid you not, the diversity is huge, and the contradictions are constant. In one day I’ll see a complete spectrum of experiences - and a huge range of interpretations of what that means. And it’s all based on what the individuals think is normal or abnormal.

So, what is normal? It’s all ‘normal’!

The question really needs to be: What matters?

And the answer to that is simply: What is right for you.

As you get clearer on what's right for you, it gets easier to co-create a great love life with your partner.

(And of course when I say 'normal' I mean consensual and safe.)

How do I love thee?

Let me count the ways

1. I say it with words of love and affection
2. I touch you with love and affection
3. I give you gifts
4. I spend time with you
5. I do things for you

I’m sure that Shakespeare in his wisdom about human relationships would have agreed with these five ‘languages’ of love. It’s actually the modern-day author Gary Chapman who came up with them.

All five languages are important and necessary, but the fact is that we all express love differently and we all receive love differently. It’s important that you know your own style of loving, and equally important that you understand, recognize and appreciate the style of those close to you.

If, for instance, your main language of love is words of affection, and your least strong language is doing things, yet your partner is the opposite, then you’re going to have problems. You’ll be declaring your love with words which will just brush off your partner, or even annoy them: “Huh, it’s just words, it doesn’t mean anything”. While at the same time they will be doing all sorts of things to demonstrate how much they love you and you won’t even notice. And because they’re not verbalizing their love for you then you might not feel loved at all.

There are two main types of loving: affective and effective. Affective is saying it in words or touch, effective is doing things for the other, including giving gifts.

Ask yourself which is the most important thing for you to receive from your partner as a sign of their love for you – words, touch, gifts, actions or time?

Now ask them what it is for them. You might be surprised at the difference.

Once you know what your preferred love language is, and what your partner’s is, you can pay more attention to expressing it in a way that they can receive; and you’ll become better at noticing when they are expressing their love, even when it’s not your primary style.

Which makes for more love and understanding all round!

It's the new year, a time for committing to bettering yourself. What better area of life to commit to focusing on than your love life?!

Whether you're single or partnered, we can all focus on that fundamentally important contributor to health, happiness and well-being - your sexuality!

So I'd like to suggest you commit to a Year of Great Sex! Let's call it your 'Great Sex' Project.

The Great Sex Project for Couples
In other places I’ve written about Consensual Non-Monotony. It's a play on words as I've also written about Consensual Non-Monogamy. The latter term describes how to have a successful non-monogamous relationship, but since most people choose to be monogamous, the trick is to overcome the biggest problem with long-term monogamous relationships – monotony - hence the term Consensual Non-Monotony. The important point here is that it's got to be consensual, that is, you both have to agree to be non-monotonous and you both have to commit to doing whatever it takes to have an on-going, great sex life. Make it a project! Why not? You have renovation projects together, holiday projects together, get healthier projects together, so why not a better sex project?

If you don't, there probably won't be much improvement, in fact, the monotony could continue on and on and on and on and on... How many more years till you die...?

There are three stages to this project:

1) Know what you want
2) Communicate what you want
3) Make it happen

The first stage is all about understanding your eroticism - what you like and what you don't like, where and how and when and how often you like it. This is really important.

The second stage is even more important - you have to be able to communicate openly and honestly with your partner about sex. This isn't easy, particularly for many women, who tend to be great at communicating in all other areas of life except this one! However, I've noticed in my work with couples that one of the benefits of therapy is that people get used to talking about sex with each other. Once they get to that point, the miracles start happening.

The third stage is obvious, but not necessarily easy. There's no point just talking about it, you have to make it happen. This will involve ditching myths and making lifestyle changes. I’ve talked about these things elsewhere at length.

And then the cycle repeats, because what you want and how you feel is constantly changing. You need to constantly reevaluate, communicate and change. Forever. It’s an ongoing, ever-changing, ever-evolving process.


The Great Sex Project for Singles: 
What goes for couples goes the same for singles too. You make the commitment to better sex, and then go through the same stages:

1) Get clear about what you like.
2) Be open about communicating this with you new love interests.
3) Make the necessary changes you need to be able to do this.

I’ll admit that this is easier said than done for many people, but like everything else, practice makes perfect. So start small and slow, with baby steps, and gradually, as you get used to this way of relating to each other, you can take ever-more-daring steps until one day you’re flying!

And of course, I'd love to help you along the way with all my offerings!

Free stuff- my blog articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, sharing all sorts of interesting material on Instagram and  Facebook,
Books - Seven Sex Goddesses, Sex Secrets for Busy People and Great Sex After Kids;
Online courses for those who want do develop Sexual Mastery for Men & Sexual Empowerment for Women;
Couples Retreats in the Blue Mountains and Bali;
Women's Retreats in the Blue Mountains; and
Private sex and relationship therapy sessions at The LoveLife Clinic.

So what are you waiting for - get started on Project Great Sex now!

Given how busy and distracted we all are, it's the 'getting to sex' stage that's the most challenging for modern couples. I call this stage of sex 'Beforeplay'. It's the transition phase necessary to remove you from the stresses of the day, and get the two of you connecting, maintaining the 'mmm' factor and building up some of that erotic frission...

• Lounge around the house in sexy and sensual lounging-round-the-house gear that’s both comfortable and sexy.
• Take the dog for a walk together in the evening – maybe knickerless...
• Sit on the back veranda together after dinner drinking wine and looking out at the stars (above dress code applies).
• Read good quality erotica – aloud to each other. Or any book for that matter, reading aloud is quite sexy!
• Cook, eat, and clean up dinner naked, or wearing just a robe and nothing else underneath.
• Hang out in your bedroom together having a cup of tea or coffee and a chat.
• Play backgammon or do a jigsaw puzzle together.
• Sit either end of the couch and give yourselves foot massages.
• Have a bath and have your partner come in and give you a foot massage, or just sit on the bath and chat.
• Take dessert up to the bedroom and finish it there. Who says you need plates?
• Throw away the TV (ok, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but I guarantee you that TV is the biggest anti-sex device ever created).

eforeplay is not the most out there phase of sex, but it is the most important. Most people need time to transition into sex - men as much as women.

So, with these ideas in mind, what gets you warmed up and ready for some lovin’?

Get this phase right and you’ll set yourselves up for sex that is as hot, sensual, tender, wild, loving, kinky, adventurous and deep as it can possibly be!



As the famous quote from John Cleese in “the Meaning of Life” goes: “You don’t just go barrelling on down to the clitoris! What’s wrong with a kiss?”

Too many people wrongly think that the clitoris is some kind of magical on/off button for women’s arousal. Too mainly people wrongly believe that if you start playing with her clitoris then she’ll be ready for “the main event” (i.e, intercourse).

But genital stimulation is not foreplay.

Personally, I refer to any kind of genital interaction as “sex”: oral sex, manual sex, intercourse.

Foreplay is what you do before you get genital...

In the case of most women, foreplay is what’s required to get her aroused enough to want genital play. That’s right, you don’t touch the genitals to arouse a woman, she already has to be aroused to want to have her genitals touched.

It’s the same for many men, not all men appreciate a grope of the penis as the preliminary for sex. The vast majority of men I speak to - and I speak to many, many, many men - like foreplay (by my definition) as much, if not more, than women.

So foreplay is the kissing and the touching and the stroking and dancing and the story telling and the teasing and whatever else it is that you like, that gets you connecting and desiring each other at a deep, and sexy, level. Without this phase, unless you’re very horny, you’re not going to have particularly satisfying sex.

But it’s not just about what you do in the bedroom – desire and connection and intimacy and arousal all start way before you get to the bedroom. I call it “Beforeplay”. It’s about keeping the “mmm” factor alive so that you do want and desire each other. It’s the small things, such as the way you look at each other; the feeling behind a kiss, even a peck; the genuine complements and tokens of appreciation; continuing with gestures of physical affection; maintaining positive interactions; being genuinely interested in your partner and what they have to say; feeling open and safe enough to be honest with each other and never taking the other for granted.

Satisfying, bonding sex means effectively living life as foreplay.

It’s about never becoming complacent.

It’s about treating your partner as your lover all the time.

Sexual pleasure involves so much more than just what your genitals are doing.

Engaging the senses is a crucial element to heightening sexual pleasure.

Just as the experience is more enjoyable and satisfying the more you engage the senses and make it a whole experience when you eat - think grabbing a bite to eat on the run as opposed to a sit down meal - so it is with sex.

Our whole obsession with ‘food porn’ is so much more than just eating. There’s the ‘plating up’ so that the food is beautifully presented, there is the texture and visual beauty of the tableware, the cutlery. Flowers and candles present more visual beauty and olfactory delights. The right music adds auditory ambience. All these elements combine to create a heightened experience of the eating, much more so than if you scoffed the same food on the run.

Within the food itself, ideally there are wonderful contrasts of texture, tastes, smells.

With sex it’s the same. You change the experience by changing the sensory elements.

Music that is serene versus music that is uplifting, trance dance music is different to elegant classical, silence, the lack of sound has it’s own effect. You can get further creatively with other sounds, crystal bowls, chimes and drums.

Scents that are sweet have a different effect to those that are citrusy, which are different again to warming scents. Flowers, candles, incense, scent sticks, perfume and oils on your bodies, not to mention the scents that your own bodies release during love-making.

Including food and drink into your love play adds the element of taste. Blindfold your partner and offer them different delicacies. Or if you want to be a little wicked, mix in contrasting flavours - such as, pickles then chocolate. Blindfold each other and attempt to feed each other chocolate mousse. Bite into a liqueur chocolate and kiss your partner deeply. Pour liqueur over your lover’s body and lick it off. Fill their belly button with vodka and drink it. Don’t just limit yourself to the obvious, your larder has a lot more to offer than chocolate body paint or chemical-filled edible lubricants.

Playing with texture offers endless possibilities. Go and collect six items each from around the house and see how they feel. Try running the edge of a card or the tines of a fork along your skin. Run silk, velvet, fur over your body.

Sight can be the overpowering sense, so try removing that sense, either with a blindfold or simply closing your eyes, and feeling more with your other senses.

Or use the visual to heighten your pleasure. Ensure the environment in which you make love is beautiful. The colours that surround you, the lighting of the space, the use of mirrors, art that is evocative, even erotic - these all influence the quality of the experience.

This is a creative endeavour, heightening the senses requires the best use of your brain and it’s creative abilities. Engage the creative, aesthetic part of your brain, and you’ll engage the senses for heightened pleasure at all levels of sexual engagement.

Sex is one of the great forms of human self-expression. It's a place where creativity, physical movement, pleasure and joy can manifest, just like the other forms of human expression - music, art, design, dance, cooking, sport, writing.


But people don’t often see sex as self-expression. More often sex has so much attached to it that there is more suppression around it than expression.

Hindered by all the myths around sex in our society, caught up in our heads about what we should or shouldn’t be doing, about what’s right or wrong, confusion about expectations and obligations, sex often is more fraught with fearing than open to freeing.

Think about your own sex life: is there more expression or suppression? Would you describe it more as fearful or freeing? If it’s further down the negative end, what can you do to start shifting it to the positive?

• Is it shifts in your head? Do you need to change your way of thinking?

• Is it shifts in your heart? Do you need to change your way of relating?

• Is it shifts in your gut? Do you need to change your way of doing?

Do you have a vision of what a wonderful sex life would be like? Is this vision true to you and your values and your desires, or is it another ‘should’, based on what you think it should be rather than what is right for you?

Sex can, and should (yes, ‘should’, one of the rare occasions when it’s OK to say ‘should’) be a wonderful thing - for you. It can be simple and infrequent if that’s right for you (in fact you don’t have to have sex at all) or it can be your life’s work and passion (then you’d be a sex geek like me). The important thing is that it is life-enhancing, and that by engaging in sex you feel better for it, preferably at many different levels - physically, emotionally, spiritually.

Express yourself!



If you need help moving from suppression to expression, book in for sex therapy at The LoveLife Clinic.