Fulfill Your Sexual Fantasies

"Sex isn't just
about gratification," I found myself explaining to my wife, Erin, one night. "It's about overcoming your inhibitions and conquering fear and shame on behalf of a shared pleasure."

Stay with me, guys: This preamble was meant to lead to a list—our sexual goals—that I wanted us to write together. See, we had fallen into a routine, as couples sometimes do, and I consulted a sex therapist, who suggested this experiment as a way to break us out of it. But I couldn't just assail my wife with such a list. We needed to have a discussion. So I did what any man would do: I went out and bought a fancy bottle of wine.

Then I cooked Erin a gourmet meal, with plenty of salt to facilitate drinking. Pretty soon the wine was gone and we retired to the boudoir. Then I suggested, as casually as possible, that we make a few erotic resolutions. And with that we sat down, compared our lists, and uncorked a second bottle.

Erotic Massage
Erin kicked things off. "We need to do more massage," she said immediately. I nodded thoughtfully. But honestly, I was hoping she'd start with something involving a buxom dominatrix. Massage, to me, has always been a kind of sweet but exhausting form of foreplay.

"Okay," I said. "Sure."

The edge of petulance in my tone was not particularly subtle. "I don't think you're getting what I mean," Erin said. She was speaking the same way she does when our children struggle to connect two dots. "Two words: happy ending."

Develop a Magic Touch
Ask her where she likes to be massaged and focus on those areas first, says Debby Herbenick, Ph.D., MH's sex advisor. Then steer her toward your own hot spots. Sexual satisfaction for men is often tied to the level of affectionate touch they receive, Herbenick says.


Outdoor Sex
My first suggestion was that we have sex outside. I had in mind a very public place, like the Boston Common. The danger of getting caught, the adrenaline surge, a cool breeze on naked flesh—I could see it all.

I was drawn to this scenario, I told Erin, because our sex life, with its scheduled date nights and same old venue, had come to feel a bit safe.

Erin was not entirely convinced. In fact, she laughed. "Now that I think about it, I've never actually had sex outside, if you don't count a car."

Test Her Boundaries
Try to balance adventure and safety just right the first time you hook up outdoors. "Start with your backyard or a place where you can exercise control," says Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D., a relationship expert and professor of sociology at the University of Washington.

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