The Nine Ingredients of Great Sex

Enjoying great sex isn’t all that complicated. Just embrace these nine elements. Each of us is sexually unique. We all have complicated personalities and highly individual lovemaking preferences. Put two erotically unique individuals together, and the sexual differences may become as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon.

But with all due respect to individuality, it’s not terribly difficult to enjoy great sex. All you need is a reasonably functional relationship and these nine ingredients.

Nine Fundamental Ingredients of Great Sex

Get in shape. Mention getting it on, and you probably don’t imagine meditating, yoga, hiking, eating salads, or getting extra sleep. But boring, old, standard health advice significantly boosts libido and enhances sexual function and pleasure:
Get regular moderate exercise, the equivalent of a brisk, 30- to 60-minute walk a day. (Regularity is more important than intensity.)
Eat mostly plant foods—at least five daily servings of fruits and vegetables, preferably more. Cut down on meat. Consume fewer whole-milk dairy products. And eliminate junk foods.
Maintain the recommended weight.
Incorporate a stress-management program into your life: exercise, meditation, gardening, yoga, quality time with family and friends.
Don’t use tobacco.
Don’t have more than two alcoholic drinks a day. And don’t make love drunk.
Finally, sleep at least seven hours a night.

Physiologically, great sex requires a robust cardiovascular system (heart and blood vessels) that brings extra blood to the genitals, and a healthy nervous system so you can enjoy erotic sensations. Traditional health recommendations deliver both—plus longer life, so you have more years to enjoy sex.

Masturbate regularly. If you have trouble making love with yourself, it’s difficult to do it happily with anyone else. Solo sex is everyone’s original sexuality. It introduces children to erotic pleasure. It provides free, convenient joy and comfort throughout life. Assuming it doesn’t interfere with school, work, relationships, and other responsibilities, masturbation causes no harm, except possibly genital chafing. (Use lubricant.) Solo sex is also fundamental to recovery from child sexual abuse. It’s key to the sex therapy programs for resolving premature ejaculation in men and orgasm difficulties in both genders. And showing a lover how you pleasure yourself is one of the most intimacy-deepening activities couples can share. If you’d rather not masturbate, you’re free not to. But if you’re less than thrilled with your sexual responsiveness and pleasure, solo sex can’t hurt and usually helps.
Value genuine consent. The bedrock foundation of great partner sex is genuine mutual consent offered freely, without pressure, coercion, alcohol or other drug impairment, or fear of shaming or retaliation for refusing. Great sex requires deep relaxation, which necessitates authentic consent. Sex with anything less than genuine consent is unlikely to produce sexual satisfaction. If you want great sex, you need to hear some variation of, “Yes, I want to make love with you.”
Touch gently. In a great deal of porn, the men treat the women roughly. Big mistake. Unless rough play is part of an explicit BDSM contact, always err on the side of gentle playfulness. The skin contains two kinds of touch-sensitive nerves. One detects pain, the other pleasure. Trigger the pain nerves, and the stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, flood the bloodstream and interfere with sexual desire and function. But the pleasure nerves boost sexual enjoyment and satisfaction. What triggers the pleasure nerves? Slow, gentle, loving touch.
Coach one another. Many people embrace the romantic notion that the moment lips lock, lovers somehow become clairvoyant with each intuitively understanding what the other person wants, needs, and enjoys. That’s naïve. Neither momentary infatuation nor falling deeply into life-long love bestows magical powers that turn couples into mind-readers. Unless you clearly state your likes and dislikes, your lover doesn’t know and can’t know which erotic moves excite—or repulse—you. At every step up the ladder of erotic escalation, sexual initiators should ask, “Is this okay? Or would you prefer something different?” This invites coaching—and learning what your other half enjoys. Meanwhile, sexual recipients need only one or two words, “yes” and “ohh!” Invoke one or both when you like what’s happening, and remain silent when you’re less than thrilled. Most initiators quickly provide more of any moves that elicit a yes or ohh!
Use lube. The myth is that vaginal dryness is the sole province of menopausal women. Actually, many perfectly normal women of all ages don’t produce sufficient natural vaginal lubrication for comfortable nookie. Lubricants to the rescue. Use saliva, vegetable oil, or a commercial lube available at pharmacies near the condoms. Apply a thimble-full and voila! Better sex almost instantly.
Give and receive oral (fellatio and cunnilingus). Way too many people believe that sex equals vaginal intercourse. Actually, many people enjoy oral play just as much or even more. Only 25 percent of women are reliably orgasmic during intercourse no matter how long it lasts and no matter what the size of the man’s penis. Women’s pleasure organ, the clitoris, sits outside the vagina, an inch or two above it beneath the top junction of the vaginal lips. The old in-out just doesn’t provide sufficient clitoral stimulation for most women to come. The path to most women’s orgasms involves direct, gentle clitoral caressing by hand, mouth, or toys—but for many women, oral is at the top of the list. Indiana University researchers tracked who gives and gets oral. The men received more than women. How unfair. Gentlemen, unless she specifically requests otherwise, go down on her every time, and when she says she’s ready, camp out down there and kiss her genitals until she comes.
Cultivate novelty. Compared with sex at home, doing it in hotel rooms usually feels more exciting. Why? In hotels, you step out of your daily routine. Hotels represent something new and different—and novelty is a potent, reliable turn-on. The reason is the neurotransmitter, dopamine. When people fall in love, dopamine levels soar and remain high during the initial hot-and-heavy period of relationships. But after six months to a year or so, dopamine levels fall and sex typically loses a good deal of zing. Boosting dopamine can coax cooling embers back to hot flames. What raises dopamine? Novelty, anything new—sex at different times, in new places, and in different ways. Anything novel helps. Surprise your honey with something new regularly.
Enjoy hot fantasies. Novelty boosts dopamine by doing new things. But dopamine also increases when lovers think new thoughts when they have new, exciting erotic fantasies. The most common fantasy is doing it with someone else. This is not mental unfaithfulness. It’s erotic meditation. During meditation, all sorts of thoughts cross the mind, some strange and unwelcome. Meditation teachers reassure meditators that they’re not responsible for their thoughts. Teachers advise: Notice them, accept them, then gently slide them out of your mind. Lovemaking is similar. As lovers shed their clothing, fantasies bubble up that may be welcome or unnerving. Either way, accept them, enjoy them, and ride them to greater erotic excitement. Their newness tweaks your dopamine and makes sex more enjoyable.