So you want to be the world's greatest lover? Build into your mind and heart the following character traits possessed by all great lovers. These guidelines, gleaned from the Bible, will lead to great sex. Their effective use will show you how to truly arouse your mate's desire. Success is practically guaranteed, but it will take some real prioritizing and practice to incorporate them into your life.
Playfulness is perhaps best described by the words excitement, curiosity, laughter, eagerness and spontaneity. Playfulness is the ability to be unpretentious and unashamed as you demand things with enthusiasm and childlikeness. In your child ego state, your needs are important and fun and you expect pleasure.
You cannot work at creating better lovemaking-you and your mate have to play at it. This character trait can be practiced in other areas of your life and the lessons brought back into your sex life. Get silly; anticipate an event for a week or more; risk a new behavior; laugh until you have tears in your eyes or roll on the floor; tickle and chase each other around the whole house; get wide-eyed with awe and wonder about something. You are becoming a great lover.
The Bible says you are to love your neighbor or your mate just as you love yourself. Fun sex depends on a husband and wife who have learned to love themselves. This means you take care of your health and exercise your body to keep it in shape. You also need to work through to accepting and enjoying the body God gave you. Self-acceptance, self-esteem, and a good body image are healthy parts of sexiness and Christian self-love. Think of how difficult it is to sexually focus on your mate when you are embarrassed, inhibited, or self-conscious.
Another important part of love is respecting and unconditionally accepting your mate. If you want to find and focus on flaws, you will put a damper on your partner's sexiness and the whole lovemaking process. You reap the benefit (or destructiveness if you stay obsessive) of nurturing and helping your lover revel in sexual appeal. Every time you affirm some particular aspect of masculinity or femininity that you admire and enjoy, you lovingly increase your mate's sex appeal. Unconditional love and acceptance and affirmation set the temperature for some fantastic sex.
This may actually need to be emphasized as a separate virtue, but a loving person is a humble, forgiving person. If you really desire a fantastic love life, let go of the mistakes your mate makes and heal the disappointed expectations. Cut each other slack and gently, graciously acknowledge that you are both just human. Learn to laugh over shortcomings and revel in the intimacy that comes after working a problem through to an intimate forgiveness.
Love creates trust so you can try new behaviors and risk appearing silly. Love produces warm excitement and fun companionship. Love helps you to remember and desire to meet your mate's needs. Learn to be a lover! The best sex is long-term, and love is the oil that keeps this type of lovemaking running smoothly.
Second, be and informed and sexy lover by knowing your own body and sexual responses. You are the teacher of your mate. Do you know what turns you on and increases your desire? It will be difficult teaching your erotic needs to your partner if you are not aware of them. Tune in to your sexuality, and keep expanding your repertoire of sensual delights. Learn to become more easily and strongly orgasmic.
Third, develop a technical knowledge of sexuality. Sexual technique is not the be-all and end-all of a great sexual relationship, but its importance cannot be denied. Several chapters of this book are about technique. The couple with their act together sexually know how to create ambience and be uninhibitedly sensual and playful. They understand various positions of intercourse, and they have built a comfortable, exciting repertoire of sexual moves.
In making love, dishonesty destroys trust, allows boredom, and creates confusion and hostility. Great sex is based on mature lovers who can be honest with themselves and their mates. They are self-aware and can assertively communicate.
Many couples find it uncomfortable to initiate sexual conversations and openly discuss individual needs and desires. The wife may be upset because her husband gets defensive or pouts if she openly refuses sex or makes a small suggestion. The husband may be angry because his wife turns him down after he plays the romantic rituals like taking a quick shower or rubbing her back. These are times for great air-clearing, honest discussions, and confrontation as the couple openly express feelings and needs.
Sexy lovers take the time to develop the sensual, romantic parts of their minds and personalities. Mates can be surprised how talented and creative they are in planning sexy surprises for each other. This may include gifts, foot and leg massages, verbal demonstrativeness, mutual showers, or dinners with candlelight and soft glances. Of course, romantic lovemaking doesn't always involve completely new techniques and experiences. There are certain positions, ways of caressing, places, rhythms, restaurants, moods and vocabulary that remain enjoyable favorites.
Sexiness comes from your imaginative creativity and romantic inspirations-and the discipline (time and energy) to carry them out. You want to be a great, sexy lover? Become a creative romantic who invests time and energy wisely.
Discipline may seem an odd character trait to include for a lover, and the opposite of spontaneity, playfulness and creativity. The truth of the matter is than an undisciplined lifestyle will end up with very infrequent sex. Perhaps you think that discipline would completely destroy the fun and spontaneity of sex and put pressure on you. But if you don't plan sex into your busy schedules and find those optimal times, you will never make love! The ambience, activity, place, timing, and technique are up to your romantic creativity. Just keep a time sacredly (one definition of sacred is: "dedicated to a special purpose") reserved for sex.
Enjoy the incompatibility of gender differences. "So God created man in His own image; . male and female He created them" (Gen. 1:27). It is fascinating how often in marriage counseling that gender differences come up. Ways in which the genders vary sexually will be developed more in Chapters 8 and 9. From dating days through the honeymoon and into years of marriage, you will be continually amazed how different you are.
Men need to be made significant and their egos stroked, while women need to feel secure and special. Men tend to be more one-track, whereas women can multitask more easily. Men have a narrower band of emotions, and wives self-disclose and express feelings more adeptly. Women overall desire emotional connection and physical affection as a way to connect their souls and then sex can blossom. Paying attention with phone calls and doing the vacuuming can increase female sexual desire. Men connect their feelings and souls through sexual activity. Being a student of the opposite sex and understanding how your spouse is similar and different from these stereotypes are crucial as you develop into a great lover.
Understand that enjoying sexuality and connecting with your mate are gifts each brings to the other willingly-not by demands or coercion. Please don't use God's loving guidelines as weapons on each other. First Corinthians 7:3,5 tells about the importance of keeping sexually united in marriage: "Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband . . . Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time . . . and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control." Some husbands and wives club their mates with this passage and say things like, "If you don't have sex with me tonight, you are sinning." The real sin is theirs because they usually have never taken the time, lovingkindness, and energy to make changes needed to appeal to their mate romantically. Making love is about giving-not demanding.
