Forget "how" to have sex (for 1 min): Investigating the "why" (mapping your erotic values)

Something I love to teach my 1:1 sensual intimacy coaching clients is not HOW to do it, but find out WHY we do it. This can gift us so much more juice when it comes to exploring our sex lives!

As an experiment, I’d like invite you to forget everything you think you know about how to have sex. Bear with me.

When we focus so much on the “how”, we might lose sight of our motivation behind what we are doing.

The how often pertains to the mechanics of sex, the “what body part should go where?”, the “when should I change positions”, and the “who should initiate first?”

If you find yourself in your head a lot during sex, or worrying about the next time it’s going to happen, discovering your erotic values can be a great way to invite more contextual cues to help you let go and ease into intimacy without it feeling so challenging… Fuck the “shoulds” basically.

Our personal “whys” can, in turn, inform and inspire our hows.

This practice of being intentional with your sex life and investigating your raison d’être can also support people who are struggling with mismatched libidos.

1. by delving into our motivations for desire

2. helping us create authentic contexts for informing the “how”

3. aligning with our partner’s wants

Why is sex important to us?

When we think about what makes good sex, one study found 3 dimensions of the depth of involvement in human sexual response:

1. personal engagement - we want to connect

2. transcendent experience - we want to feel pleasure

3. role enactment - we want to be creative

Another study found that there were 237 Reasons to Have Sex. This is a study I often quote with my clients before getting them to think of their own - to which some are stumped to find they had never really given it much thought aside from “to be normal” or “because I was horny”. However, this extensive (but not exclusive) list includes anything from:

1. I was ‘‘in the heat of the moment.’’

2. It just happened.

3. I was bored.

4. It just seemed like ‘‘the thing to do.”

To:

42. I was curious about sex.

43. I wanted to feel attractive.

44. I wanted to please my partner.

45. I wanted to display my submission.

You can start to see how the reasons can become endless and expansive, and I’d recommend checking out the full list just to see if any resonate or if you feel completely separate from them.

Mapping your erotic values

Inspired by sexologist, Cyndi Darnell, there is a gorgeous exercise around mapping your erotic values that can help us dive deeper into our authentic erotic motivations.

EXERCISE: