Tips For Spring Cleaning Your Sex Life

Tips For Spring Cleaning Your Sex Life

Is your love life stuck in the same old routine? Are you still in love with your partner -but sex is getting boring? Is it always the same way, the same place at the same time? In a long-term relationship, it’s easy to fall into the trap of comfortable but ultimately monotonous sex with each other. That’s why I wanted to share my top tips for spring cleaning your sex life. While everything else is getting a spring clean, don’t neglect your personal and shared sexual pleasure!

Get Your Health In Order

The first step in spring cleaning your sex life is to do your personal health admin. Getting your health checked out and in order, both physical and mental, will lead to more confidence in the bedroom and greater mutual satisfaction. Then you won’t be weighed down with health worries or medical issues, and you’ll be able to fully focus on your personal sexual pleasure as well as your partner’s.

• Get yourself to a GUM clinic if you want or need to, for a full sexual health check and the eventual all-clear. Find your local clinic at the NHS Choices website in the UK, and at the CDC website in the USA (via ZIP code look-up).
• Book that cervical screening appointment you’ve been putting off. Trust me, they’re not scary, they don’t take all that long, they’ve seen it all before and you’ll feel a whole lot better after it’s done.
• Go to your GP to address any other medical niggles, to order any medication you may need or to arrange referrals.

The best sex starts with loving yourself, which means looking after yourself and making sure you’re as fit and healthy as possible.

Make Sure You’re Still Making An Effort

While we’re just getting to know someone, we’re 100% motivated to make an effort with hygiene and habits in order to appear attractive and keep their attention. We want them to stick around, for the relationship to move to ‘the next level’.

After you’ve been with your partner for a while, it’s easy to slip into bad habits and not bother to make as much of an effort anymore. After all, they’re with you, they love you and you love them… why try to impress?

But here’s the thing: you should still want to impress your partner, even if you’re now in a long-term relationship. Bad personal hygiene is a turn-off no matter how much in love you are, and poor manners in or out of the bedroom are highly unattractive.

To be clear, I am not saying you should aim to be a supermodel, Hollywood starlet or study up on formal dinner etiquette. Be yourself, that’s who your partner fell in love with. Just be a clean, sweet-smelling and considerate partner – it isn’t asking a lot.

A Tidy Bedroom Is A Sexy Bedroom

Most couples have sex in their bedroom, so it makes sense to consider this room carefully when it comes to spring cleaning your sex life.

Bedrooms are multi-functional; they’re not only where we have sex, we also relax, rest and recover in them. Creating a boudoir-style bedroom with heavy sex overtones isn’t for everyone. It could even result in a negative, unintended side effect of applying too much pressure to have sex.

Instead, focus on a clean and tidy bedroom. As mentioned, a bedroom is a multi-functional room, so make sure it’s fit for all purposes. Does your bedroom provide a calming, restful atmosphere? Is laundry scattered all over the floor or hidden neatly in a lidded laundry basket? Are clothes draped across furniture or stored properly in wardrobes and drawers?

Freshen up your bedroom regularly by opening the windows to allow air to circulate.

Is your bed welcoming for both sex and sleep? Get into the habit of changing the sheets on a regular basis, whether that’s weekly or fortnightly. Having a lovely clean bed to get into will have the bonus effect of motivating you both to be fully clean yourselves, before hopping in.

Lose The Sex Pressure, Focus On Rebuilding Intimacy

When trying to improve your love life, it’s easy to allow enthusiasm to overcrowd reality. Being so eager to have the Best Sex Ever™ on a nightly basis can leave you wired, feeling overly demanded-of and have everything coming to a screeching halt before you’ve even begun.

Take things slowly. Lose the pressure to have sex, and that means the pressure on yourself, as well as any expectations from your partner. Revisit the enjoyment of simply being with your partner, one-on-one. Allow yourself to get fully comfortable in these intimate moments without the assumption you’ll be momentarily banging bodies in a race towards the big-O.

Enjoy being with your partner, naked or clothed, in exclusive couple time. Explore what led you to be attracted to them in the first place. Rediscover the uniqueness of their mind and body and communicate what really turns you both on.

In this way you will rebuild the intimacy which is often missing in long-term routine sex, where sex can become habitual rather than a mindful and personal bonding experience.

Discuss Your Sex Life Outside Of The Bedroom

Focusing on sex as a mindful experience means knowing what turns you on and what turns them on – mentally as well as physically. This can be difficult if not impossible to effectively communicate in the heat of the moment, in a (probably) dark bedroom while you’re both wired for an impending climax.

Talk about sex, and in particular your sex life, outside of the bedroom. Obviously you will need to pick your moment, and choose a time and place where you can speak discreetly but openly. Communicate what you’re into, what you’re absolutely loving and anything new you’d love to try together.

It’s also vital to communicate what you’re really not loving and what doesn’t turn you on – which may include things that used to do it for you, and really doesn’t anymore. We all change over time – your partner isn’t a mind reader (& may not be the best at reading subtle body language).

While you’re at it, try broaching any fantasies you’re willing to share. Accessories, locations, positions you’d like to try. If you don’t tell them, they will never know – and you may be denying yourself and them the opportunity to unlock your shared love life’s full potential.

Prioritise Pleasure, Not Orgasms

Great sex isn’t a race to orgasm. When you are both ready to have sex, prioritise your mutual pleasure rather than reaching what many still consider to be the standard ‘finishing line’ of sex.

That said, sex isn’t necessarily over because one or both of you had an orgasm either!

When spring cleaning your sex life, take the opportunity to discover how truly wonderful sex can be when the aim is all-round pleasure for you both.

Fully satisfying sex incorporates both mental and physical enjoyment, which is where the pre-sex communication, and intimacy-building sex-free sessions, come into their own.

Have Sex Somewhere New

Bored of your bedroom? Why not change up where you’re having sex?

Bath or shower sex can be fun to try – just be careful about any slippery surfaces that aren’t your bodies.

Sex in the lounge in the evening before bed can bring back the thrilling feel of when you were dating, and in the daytime it feels decidedly wild! I’d suggest closing the windows and curtains first, though.

Ever had sex in the kitchen? Enjoy a spot of saucy role play by being fingered or fully fucked while ‘doing the dishes’. Defile the breakfast bar or dining table.

Get down and dirty in the hallway – or perhaps you’re adventurous enough to go outdoors… in the garden, or beyond? Doing it somewhere new, even if still inside your home, can really reignite the spark in your sex life.

Have Sex At A Different Time Of Day

A common part of a routine sex life is doing it at the same time of day. Usually this is at night, just before sleep – or perhaps you always prefer early morning, before a shower and breakfast?

Whenever ‘sex time’ is for you, if it’s at the same time every time then it’s worth considering if a simple change in this area could revitalise your entire love life.

Although not everyone is lucky enough to be able to randomly shag on a Tuesday afternoon, you might be able to schedule in a quick fuck on Saturday morning, or after Sunday lunch…

Try Something Wildly Different

OK, when I say ‘wildly’ different, I mean in comparison to what you normally – and always – do. You don’t have to join a burlesque troupe or dive into your first orgy.
(But if you do: massive admiration!)

Experiment with something you don’t usually do or use, something you hadn’t even considered before.

• You might find it weird or a bit of a giggle at first, but an adult board game can be a surprisingly brilliant way to find out about each other’s turn-ons and fantasies in a pressure-free way.
• How about sharing a new type of sex toy together, watching them use it on themselves or enjoying stimulating them with it and watching their reactions? There are couples’ sex toys (click here if you’re in the UK) to use together as well.
• Have you considered watching porn together? As well as ramping up the temperature levels, porn is a great way to get some inspiration for new things to try together. Particularly if you stray from the typical and mainstream porn and head for more of an authentic feel. I strongly recommend the indie, Feminist, ethical-porn site LustCinema, by Erika Lust.
• Or perhaps you’d like to try a little teasing power exchange, whether by just adopting Dominant and submissive roles in sexy role play or by adding in some physical restraint with bondage cuffs too.

Lube Is A Game-Changer

If you don’t already use lube, please try it! Sexual lubricant is a game-changer in sex, whether for masturbation or couple’s sex.

Some people may feel smug that they ‘don’t need lube’, and while it’s true that some use lubricant to counter a lack of natural lubricant from their body, that isn’t the main purpose of lube. If it was, sexual lubricant would be something you go to the doctor for.

Lubricant adds glide and removes the discomfort from chafing wherever you use it on or in the body. That means not just for vulva and vaginal-based sexual activity, but for erogenous zone stimulation such as nipple teasing, penis stimulation such as hand jobs, including testicles into pleasure sessions and any anal-based adventures.

Using lube on aroused skin will make it more readily receptive to stimulation, meaning you will feel heightened pleasure. You can experiment with temperature play by lightly blowing on lubricated skin as well, for example when stimulating their lubricated penis, clitoris or anal entrance. What’s not to love?

Not sure which lubricant is right for you? Check out my big guide to sex lubes – it’s important to get the right type, and a lube which is body-safe.

Try A New Sex Position (Without Damaging Yourselves)

One of the most frequently touted pieces of sex advice when it comes to spicing up your love life, or spring cleaning your sex life, is “try a new sex position!”

That’s all very well – but have you seen some of those sex positions? If I could achieve that, I’d be making my living as a contortionist.

Be mindful of your physical capabilities and limits -and your partner’s. Great sex never ends with a trip to the doctor – or being blue-lighted to hospital!

If you always do it missionary (a perfectly good sex position, by the way, no shade), or doggie-style, or folded deckchair, or stood up in the shower every morning (colour me impressed) – try it another way. The main focus here is doing it differently, changing things up – not necessarily going for gold in your private bedroom Olympics.

While you’re here, why not check out my top tips for how to spring clean your sex toy collection?

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