For Men: How to Be a Better Lover with an HSP Woman

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How men can be better lovers to an HSP woman

When I wrote my blog post on sex and being an HSP woman, I received an outpouring of letters from a specific audience … men. They wanted to know how to be better lovers with an HSP woman and help her be more sexual. I promised these men a whole article on these very important questions, so here it is.

First, I want to acknowledge the sentiment of the men who wrote to me. They want to be better lovers to their wives, partners and girlfriends, so a huge kudos to them for wanting to learn how to bring her more pleasure and satisfaction in the bedroom.

Second, kudos to them for wanting to learn more about what it’s like to be with an HSP woman. One thing that people don’t realize is that sensitivity is both a blessing and a curse. HSPs feel things deeply and have access to a range of magical super powers of detecting and experiencing a level of nuance that many miss — including in sex and intimacy. It also means that we also get easily overwhelmed by the intensity of feelings and the multitude of them, which causes us to turn off sexually and often look like we’re not interested in being sex at all. In understanding how we are, you are learning how to appreciate us as we are and support us in bringing out our best selves.

So let’s get to it.

3 Things Men Need to Know About Being Better Lovers with an HSP Woman

 

1. She Is Not Broken.

Just because she does not respond sexually the way you do or when you do, does not mean that she is broken. It means that she needs a different approach to being turned on.

Being sensitive in a world that is much less so can often mean HSPs look like they’re broken, slow or simply alien. While we might not respond to things that other people do, we over-respond to others with greater sensitivity. For many HSP women, that is true in the bedroom. As I talked about in the article on HSP woman, HSP women tend to be sensitive on three levels, all of which a woman with “response” sexual desire will be responding to when it comes to sexuality and wanting sex. Her desire arises as a response to stimulus, and that stimulus lies on three levels:

  • Sensory: HSP women can become overstimulated and turned off by a sensory overload of noises, strong smells, tastes, touch and electronics before even stepping into the bedroom. Getting to becoming sexually open means recovering from the overwhelm and gaining energy to be able to connect physically, emotionally and sexually. That might mean that she needs more time to rest sleep and recover, and more time to get into connecting on a physical level.

  • Emotional: Being sensitive emotionally means reading the nuances of and often taking on other people’s emotions around us. That includes being in a bad mood, or withholding yourself emotionally, be it from not wanting to talk about something to hiding information you don’t want your partner to know (such as information that might make her mad about something you did/didn’t do.) Emotionally sensitive HSPs need to clear and acknowledge emotions — theirs and their partners — first before being able to open up sexually.

  • Energetic: While similar to being emotionally sensitive, energetic sensitivity is more specific to the kind of attention a woman receives — whether you’re present and engaged with her vulnerably and heart-to-heart, in a surface or absent way, or wanting something from her. Women who are energetically sensitive need a deeper level of connection to feel safe and excited to open up sexually; equally they need to be met and engaged with to be turned on. The absence of that energetic connection can mean sexual apathy or even shut-down.

Don’t expect her to respond the way you do, or the way you think a woman should respond. The more you can learn to engage your partner on these three important levels, the more it can help her be herself and respond reciprocally.

She is not broken or wrong. Find out what is healthy and right about her — and allow these aspects to flourish.

2. Be Her Partner, not Helper.

So often, I hear from men the intention to “help their partner” … to want sex, be more sexual, be turned on, etc. If you’re a responsible and caring man, it would completely make sense that you would want to help her in the best way you can.

It is a noble notion. Except, when it comes to women’s sexual desire, it breaks down and becomes its killer.

Helping her want sex or be more sexual often times can look like helping her along, nudging her along, or getting her going. It means speeding or hurrying up what is happening for her to get her to a desired state.

And it is precisely the kind of pressure that will shut a highly sensitive woman sexually — often to the point where she will be highly sensitive to any such attempt in the future and will want to avoid them altogether.

Women do not respond to this kind of help. In fact, she needs no help at all. She is not broken, slow or in need of a nudge.

What she needs from you is your engagement. She needs you to connect with her, emotionally, energetically and physically in a pressure-free, playful and flirting way that does not signal “I am only playing with you because I expect it to lead to sex.” To know what that can be like, look no further than the way you showed up with her in the beginning of your relationship, interested in her in all these different ways, wanting her, without expecting sex.

It’s about brining out your playfulness, letting her feeling desired and appreciated, and giving her your heart’s attention and affection. Touch her heart and her genitals will open.

So, before you delve deeper into learning to be a better lover, shift your intentions away from “helping her” and towards engaging with her. Become her partner, not her helper. Partnership is sexy.

3. Initiate Connection, Not Sex

I know it’s going to seem counter-intuitive what I am about to say, so please bear with me. If you’ve been stuck in a cycle where your partner is rarely ready or interested in sex when you initiate it, and you are sick and tired of initiating and getting rejected, the last thing you want is to initiate some more. You probably draw your hands up in the air with exasperation and make it clear to her: “Just come to me when YOU are ready for sex.”

While that logically makes sense from a man’s perspective, it does not work to cultivate a woman’s sexual desire. It works against it. Here is why.

If you withdraw the ways that you connect with her emotionally, energetically and physically and wait for her to initiate, you pull away that very things that she needs to be responding to to cultivate her sexual desire — your playfulness, feeling desired and appreciated, your attention and affection. Without those, her “responsive” sexual desire has nothing to respond to, which yields no sexual desire. “Just come to me when you’re ready” puts pressure on her to manufacture on her own what can only be produced together out of your mutual connection.

It is in the coming of both of you towards each other that magic happens.

Don’t pull away your playfulness, flintiness or your attraction to her just because you’re tired of being rejected. The opposite — put yourself out there. What is important to hold back is the pressure to make it lead to sex.

For that, you have to trust that when she is engaged with you in an attuned way, it will contribute to her wanting to be sexual with you. Maybe not right away, maybe not on the timeline that you expect it — so in the meantime, enjoy her and trust that you’re moving in the right direction.

Most importantly, that trust comes from a sense of abundance, not scarcity — an abundance that you will get what you need and you don’t have to push for it. That is the biggest and most powerful internal shift that you can bring to your marriage — to come from abundance. The alternative is one of the biggest reasons why women resist sex — because when you come from scarcity, you become demanding, pressuring and scary.

Read this article to get ideas on how to initiate connection in a way that turns on HSP women in particular.

All in all, the way to create magic with a highly sensitive woman is to understand her sensitivity and work with it, not against it. Be curious and discover her, and she will take you to magical destinations.

Dare to follow your heart. Dare intimacy.

P.S. When you’re ready to create a sex life that reflects the deep love for each other, here are a few options for you: