This sex tip has had many variations over the years, but the central theme is about disrupting your regular sexual patterns. If that doesn’t sound like that much fun, stick with me, regardless of the outcome, trying this one out usually brings interesting (and sometimes hilarious) results.
Most people who have been in long term monogamous relationships experience a feeling of being stuck at one point or another.
For some it’s a steep or gradual decline in sexual activity, for others it’s a feeling of boredom after doing the same thing over and over again. One of the theories about why this happens is that humans naturally learn and habituate their sexual behaviors and sexual response, so once we find something that works for us we simply do it over and over again. Not surprisingly, we can end up feeling like we’re in a sexual rut, as if this is our one and only way of having sex, or getting sexual satisfaction.
But nothing could be further from the truth. We just don’t force ourselves to expand what sex could be like, or explore our own sexual potential, because we quite reasonably are drawn to what’s comfortable and what works.
This sex tip is designed to jolt you out of your comfort zone. The idea is to do things that are completely unexpected and incongruous with your usual sexual patterns. The results may not be immediately apparent, but if you stick with these exercises eventually you may find they inspire new thoughts and desires.
The first tip involves breaking up the way you physically have sex.
Take random breaks
Most people start sex play and then follow it right through to a conclusion (usually one person or everyone having an orgasm). This pattern relies on the expectation of where sex will go, and a conscious or unconscious map of how you get there. It’s like a short story with a beginning, middle, and end. But it’s like a story you’ve read a thousand times, so you know what happens just before it starts, you know the clues that it’s about to shift from beginning to middle, and middle to end, and of course you know how it’s going to end.
To try something different, for a week or two, agree that both you and the person you’re having sex with, will randomly stop sex in the middle of it for a short break. The break shouldn’t be so long that you lose your interest or momentum (so probably no more than a few minutes), but it should be long enough that you pull yourself out of the moment. Regardless of what’s going on, how hot and heavy it is, each of you should stop the sex at least twice during a single sexual encounter. Call a break, stop what you’re doing, and just be there together for a few minutes. You may just hold each other while you’re catching your breath, you may take this moment to talk about something, or you may lie there silent. You should stay together physically during the break even if you don’t talk. Don’t feel pressure to say something during the break, just pay attention to what you’re thinking, and what your body is feeling.
At some later point, when you’re not having sex, try to share with your partner what the breaks are like:
- Do they just feel stupid?
- Do you notice anything that you hadn’t before about what you were thinking or feeling?
- Do the breaks change the way the sex feels?
- What’s it like to not know when the other is going to call a break?
Remember that the point of this is simply to be disruptive and stretch out the possibilities of what sex can be. There isn’t a specific goal of changing your sex life in one way or another. It may seem a ridiculous thing to do (particularly if you’re at a really good part) but you can always make sure you end with a bang, even if it takes you longer to get there.
Disrupting Your Normal Sexual Patterns
This second variation on the theme of disrupting your normal sexual patterns involves the kinds of communications we have during and after sex.
Despite the fact that there are no rules for how to communicate about sex, and how to communicate while having sex, most of us develop a certain way of being with our sexual partners, and rarely step out of that comfort zone.
For example many people will feel that some conversations are appropriate to have during or immediately after sex, and other conversations may be “inappropriate”. These ideas, which are to some extent arbitrary, can influence the way we end up thinking about sex and what we think is appropriate and inappropriate to the topic of sex in general.
Also, in the same way that we get stuck physically, only having sex in a few positions and a few different ways, we can get stuck in communication, only using certain words, phrases, or tones. This can have the effect of narrowing our sexual options, and can get in the way of exploring other ways of being sexual.
For the first sex tip you had to disrupt your actual sexual behavior. For this one, try to use language to disrupt your sexual patterns.
Over the period of a few weeks you and your partner agree to say completely random things both during and after sex. It could be a conversation, it could just be a few words of nonsense, it could be one word repeated over and over again, but it should be actual words, and it can’t be something you usually do or say during or after sex (so it doesn’t count if you just moan in a different pitch).
The exercise is designed to disrupt the cognitive processes that we fall back on when communicating during sex.
One part of this exercise that is tricky is to not let the things you say distract you from what you’re doing. The point is not to take you or your partner out of the sexual moment, but rather to shake up your brain a bit by using language in a completely different way during sex.
This can feel like a strange thing to do. You may have a word you like and choose to repeat it several times at a particular moment during sex. Or you might want to say something that has absolutely nothing to do with sex immediately after finishing. The point is that there are no rules, and hopefully what you say will eventually be spontaneous (although to get started you may want to have something planned).
This exercise can make you feel embarrassed and a bit silly, but that is part of the point. Most of us forget that sex is a form of play, and it’s meant to be creative, goofy, and fun.
Remember that the point of this is simply to be disruptive and stretch out the possibilities of what sex can be. There isn’t a specific goal of changing your sex life in one way or another. It may seem a ridiculous thing to do (particularly if you’re at a really good part) but you can always make sure you end with a bang, even if it takes you longer to get there.
Have fun!
