How to Tell If Your Sex Life Is Good & What to Do to Create One

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What it takes to have a good sex life

If 1,190,000,000 Google results for “ways to know you have a good sex life” tell you anything, it’s that people want to know.

They are rating their own sex life and want to know:

  • Are they getting the best deal in sex?

  • Are they tapping into all that’s available?

  • And is there more?

Being willing to try new things and good orgasms always top the list of what makes for a good and healthy sex life.

Without a doubt, newness adds variety and excitement and orgasms make for a grand finale.

But is that enough?

The common measure of a good your sex life seems to be what you do in it or how big — and spectacular — the experience is. Like fireworks on the 4th of July.

Yet, big actions and hot moves rarely create long-lasting satisfaction on their own. If not coupled with heart connection and an inner kind of freedom and confidence, the moves themselves spell for a physical “get it done” kind of sex — not an erotic or passionate one.

Here is a set of different kind of questions to pose to yourself to gauge the quality of your sex life — how passionate, how connected, how erotic, and how enriching it is for you?

And the “you” part is important. Whatever you do in sex, it has to work for you. You cannot expect to apply cookie-cutter moves and actions to something so unique and delicate as you to create extraordinary results. Nor can you get by with sex that just works for your partner.

You need an approach custom tailed to you and your partner — and the unique connection between the two of you.

Something that you chose to commit and build when you committed to each other in a monogamous relationship, and that is nothing like you will have with another person.

These questions are different because they take your heart into account. Yes, your heart.

Your heart is a barometer to how fulfilling your relationship and your sex life are — how much they add to your heart or take from it. And your heart will never betray you.

Ultimately, if the sex you’re having is not adding to you or your relationship, it’s not worth having.

But that should not be the end of the story if you have a sense that there is more. If romantic and sexual connection are important to you and your partner — if not crucial to your dream of a satisfying romantic love — it is worth figuring out.

It’s worth fighting for.

Read through the questions. Rate yourself: are you at 10/10 on each of these. If you’re not, follow the tips on what you need to focus on to make it to a 10.

 

As a result of the sex that you’re having:

1. Do you feel lighter, freer and cracked open?

Sexual touch and pleasure that works with your body at the pace that stimulates you in just the right way is going to nourish you and add to you. Whether it’s kissing, touching or deep thrusting, when sexual pleasure works for your body, it will leave you feeling better off. And that feeling can be a sense of shedding a layer of stress or releasing old bottled-up emotions.

It leaves you feeling lighter and unburdened.

And it leaves your heart full, like you’ve been met like a Queen, honored, cherished and worshipped.

That literally can mean seeing more color and aliveness around you, allowing yourself to laugh more, or being spontaneous in your actions (I’m known for going swimming naked afterwards :)

Being open also requires that you’re engaging in giving and receiving because you deeply want to do it. Touch that is too much, too fast and too soon will leave you feeling tense, contracted or exhausted from having to bear it out. And it has to be genuinely desired, not forced, or out of obligation. You’re kissing because that kiss is delicious to you. You want to touch his genitals because they feel good to you. You want his hands on you because you love being touched.

What to do if you don’t experience this:

If this area of your sex life does not feel fulfilling, here are some things you need to do.

  1. Incorporate mindfulness practices to learn how to become present with yourself and your partner. Mindfulness is a specific tool that helps you makes you listen to your body, to discerning what desires arise in you and to notice respond to sexual cues better. Mindfulness practices are scientifically known to help you be more present, remove distractions and help you relax into your body and the moment — and that makes sex better. According to sex researcher Canadian psychologist Lori Brotto, women’s sexual satisfaction went up 60 percent as a result of engaging in mindfulness group, including their experience of sexual desire.

  2. Practice the kind of touch that work for you. Touch is a very powerful aphrodisiac that stimulates the heart, mind and pussy. Most people do touch to pleasure their partner without knowing what works for them. Learn on your own or with a partner through partner’s coaching what your body responds to and how to ask for what you want.

  3. Incorporate goal-less Tantric and slow sex practices into your couples routines, including sensual touch, erotic touch and full-body massages. By removing sex as the goal of touch, you get to create (rather than wait for) situations where you get stimulating and nourishing touch that makes you come alive. The ancient female-worshipping societies knew that goal-less touch honors women and makes them come alive sexually, and old Eastern sexual practices still do the trick.

Pleasurable touch is a birthright — and it happens to stimulate all the right things for us to have pleasurable sex.

My self-learning step-by-step NAS Program for Women and the Men Who Love Them and my personalized coaching work incorporate all of these practices and provide the tools and resources to equip you to experience pleasurable touch that works for your body.

2. Do you feel closer to your partner?

One of the most loneliest experiences to befall a human being is to be married to someone and feel so utterly alone laying next to them.

For so many couples, that’s also the experience of sex. Being in your own head, alone, while rubbing body parts together.

When you measure the quality of sex on how much closer you feel with each other as a result, you can be sure that your sex life is top notch.

This closeness is about touching each other’s hearts as you touch each other’s genitals. It’s entering a space, a couple bubble if you will, where you and your partner are the only ones that matter to each other, and you have your hearts open to each other fully. It’s a place where you get to be seen by your partner — and see them — in a way that no one else can see you.

As a result of this closeness, you feel:

  • You feel like a team together, having gone through an experience where you both were there for each other. You feel proud of yourselves.

  • You’ve showed each other parts of yourselves — your tenderness, your voice, your uninhibited pleasure — and feel like you’ve experienced a layer of each other that you don’t get to see otherwise.

  • You admire each other for the courage it took to show up in sex — be it tenderly, where it was hard before, or erotically where there might have been shyness before.

  • You have attained a level of spiritual connection through sexual bliss, where you tapped into a power greater than the both of you propelling you forward. It’s a unique experience that you’ve only with your romantic partner.

  • You simply feel so melted into each other and so connected that it feels like you’re in a protected bubble of joy.

What to do if you don’t feel this:

Deep connection that yields the results above rests on the quality of the presence you have with yourself and each other during the love making:

  • Are you free with each other — with your moves, requests, voice, energy?

  • Are you letting each other in?

  • Are you receiving your partner’s love and desire? And sharing yours?

  • Are you letting your partner enjoy you? Are you letting yourself enjoy them?

  • Are you asking for what you want?

Become a science researcher and notice how you show up in sex: Contracted or open? Giving a performance or vulnerable? Distracted and frustrated or relaxed and playful? Closed off or with your heart open?

While it takes both partners to become present, it takes one to initiate the opening. If you’re contracted, relax your body into it. If you’re frustrated, notice if you’re holding back a request — then make it.

When I work with couples through personalized couples coaching, I point these things out in our sessions, giving them tools and adjustments to do in real time — something that you cannot do on your own.

3. Do you feel energized and at ease in your work and the rest of your life?

The results on the day after do not lie. When your heart is cracked opened and body filled with pleasure to the rim, you have been nourished. It’s natural to experience life as if you’re walking on air as a result.

You might notice nothing having to over-think or effort as much to get things done. The small stuff will actually feel like small stuff, rather that fodder for stress and constant rumination, and you let go of things faster.

Things just become easier and smoother.

You might find yourself more creative in finding solutions or ideas.

When you’re at ease, you might also notice that your partner is more at ease around you too — more playful, flirty and contributing to things you need to get done.

That’s the halo effect of being nourished by sex. If feeds and fuels everything around us. That’s because sexual pleasure and expression is an engine in and of itself — it’s an engine that powers your lives.

Connecting to your sexual engine through pleasure can awaken power that you didn’t know you had.

When you run on a full cup sexually, emotionally and spiritually, you’re literally more resourced. Your brain has more juice to run on and you can find solutions to problems or preempt them altogether faster and with more ease.

We born sexual beings and when harnessed, this engine can propel you to greater creativity, ease and resourcefulness.

What to do if you don’t feel this:

If this is not the effect you feel after having sex, ask yourself:

  • Where did you betray yourself in the process of sex?

    • Did you engage in obligatory sex?

    • Did you go along with touch that was too much, too fast and too soon and before you were ready?

    • Did you shy away from asking for what you truly wanted?

    • Did you hold yourself back from doing what you wanted to do?

  • What was your heart telling you that you wanted and needed that you might have ignored or skipped?

The truth is that the quality of sex we’re having very much depends on us — and whether we showed up for ourselves in the way that honors us. Which is why that is also the 4th question on the list …

4. Do you feel proud of yourself and how you showed up in sex?

How you answer the above questions will leave you feeling good about yourself — or not. It will have you feel proud that you acted in alignment with what you know is your truth. Or you will feel resentful.

And resentment is your heart bleeding.

Common thinking has us believe that women’s libido is purely a barometer of her sexual desire for her partner or her horniness for sex. It’s actually barometer (or lie detection test) of how genuine and in integrity she is with herself and her heart.  How much obligatory relating she allows herself to have versus how much she stands up for her own needs and desires.

Honoring yourself and acting in alignment with your own truth is at the root of female sexual desire. And self-betrayal is the killer.

What to do if you don’t feel proud of yourself:

Find out your own truth and use your voice to honor it.

  • Get comfortable speaking your truth in a way that your partner will listen.

  • Release resentments and hurts from the past to connect to your partner or magnetize partners that you deeply desire.

  • Surrender deeply into relationship without losing yourself and compromising your integrity.

  • Learn the power of authentic communication and desire to turn each other on.

  • Uncover what you deeply want for yourself: the touch, affection, and  communication that turn you on.

  • Remove roadblocks of guilt, shame or self-doubt that stand in the way of you having what you want.

  • Connect to your body's wisdom and sexual energy through somatic (body-based) practices.

  • Learn what feels good to you and how to receive pleasure (and get out of your head while making love).

  • Work through fears, guilt and shame that are holding you back from surrendering deeply into pleasure on your terms.

  • Relax into your body and your sensuality.

  • Nourish your body and soul to bring out your natural radiance and shine.

Committing to having the best sexual experience possible requires removing a lot of roadblocks and letting yourself shine. Like polishing a treasure that’s been buried deep under the rubble — the rubble of trauma, self-betrayal (which is a symptom of trauma), cultural conditioning, and hardening yourself against pain.

It’s the process that I take my private clients through both in couples coaching, where I work with both individuals on their personal challenges, as well as in my structured online NAS Program for Women and the Men Who Love Them that guides you through releasing these blocks step by step.

5. Do you want to initiate sexual connection again?

There is a little-known (even dangerous) secret about women’s sexual desire, and that is that a sexually satisfied woman wants more sex, not less.

Your biology works with you:

  • If you’re enjoying the touch and feel nourished afterwards …

  • If you feeling closer to your partner as a result of entering a special place through sex …

  • If you love the kind of empowerment and energy sex gives you afterwards …

  • If you feel proud of yourself and how you showed up …

… You will want more of it!

Your heart will give your pussy the green light, big time!

Sex that truly fills you up and leaves your heart melted will have entered into the area that I call the zone of generative results because everything that you do generates more desire for more pleasure and fulfillment for the next stage. It’s a virtuous cycle that keeps getting better.

Notice, however, that I didn’t say that you will have more desire for sex. I said sexual connection. Men experience wanting sex and going after it. Women experience wanting a connection with their partners, and that includes emotional, sensual and sexual. She wants to start kissing because that kiss is delicious. She wants his hands on her body because she wants to feels good. She wants to touch her partner because she loves the feel of his skin. And then things continue …

If you’re having sex in a way that honors how your sexual desire works — as opposed to going along with how your partner experiences it — you will naturally want to initiate more of what you enjoyed for yourself.

What to do if you don’t feel this:

Understanding the mechanics of women’s sexual desire is essential in knowing how to honor it.

  • What does your heart crave in terms of connection?

  • What does your body wanting?

  • What makes you come alive?

My structured, step-by-step online NAS Program for Women and the Men Who Love Them takes you through the ins and outs of your libido, at your pace in the privacy of your own home. Not only do you learn the theory, but you get to experience knowing yourself and what your body and heart crave in the experiential exercises with every lesson.

 
 

The Heart Is the Gateway to a Woman’s Genitals

The heart is at the center of all of these questions, which happens to be also the gateway into awakening a woman’s sexuality and sexual desire.

Women have known this all along, but have been too scared (or too busy) to do anything about it.

And the quality of sex for a couple hinges on both people’s enjoyment, not just one.

If any one of these — or all — are missing in your sex life, it certainly does not mean that you are broken.

It does mean that there is room for learning and growth.
It means that it’s time to invest time and energy into this area of your life.

To know and experience this in my own sex life, I had to.

Twenty years before I became a sex coach who teaches people how to create all of these in their relationship, I struggled with every single one of these. I was about a 2 out of 10 in every area. I didn’t know what my body wanted, so I went along with pleasing my husband and performing “obligatory sex.” Sex had the potential to be connecting because I was with the love of my life, and he was inside of me, but in reality, it left me resentful and alone because we were not communicating and leaving so many things unsaid.

My heart knew more was possible.

When my sexless marriage ended in divorce, I made a commitment to myself to never have obligatory sex and find out what more looked like. I made the choice to invest in this area of my life with my energy and financially.

And I found that more — in the sex that I was having and in the person that I became.

Today I work with fellow “intimacy warriors” who make the same commitment and choice to make their sex life be an expression of their love for each other — as well as their self worth. These couples and single women choose to follow their hearts and it’s my honor to support them!

Dare to follow your heart. Dare intimacy.

P.S. When you’re ready to find your way back to yourself and your partner, here are a few options for you:

* Beautiful imagery courtesy of artist www.tinamariaelena.com