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We get a lot of emails from married individuals and couples who get along with each other just fine, but don’t have the awesome sex life they long for. What can you do if your marriage has entered the dreaded “friend zone”?

This video from Charlie Houpert at Charisma on Command is primarily focused on single people who are trying to escape the friend zone with a person they’re attracted to, but the principles in the video are also applicable inside a marriage. The main difference for married couples is, of course, that “just move on” isn’t an option — but on the plus side, it’s very likely that the couple already has some level of mutual attraction!

After the video I will offer some thoughts on each of the main points.

Point 1: Take responsibility — you put yourself in the friend zone when you aren’t transparent with your feelings.

This point is really the most important and we’ve written it before: be specific and explicit about what you want. Your spouse can’t read your mind, and you can’t read theirs. You have to use actual words to express your desires. If you don’t say what you want, your spouse is very likely to think that you are satisfied and everything is great. Or maybe your spouse has unspoken desires too!

Point 2: The most reliable way to escape the friend zone is to focus on bettering yourself.

Rather than begging for more attention, make yourself more attractive. We’ve written posts like:

In addition to the things above, if you want more and better sex then you should invest time into making sex with you more fun for your spouse: enthusiasm and responsiveness can go a long way. (Yes, your spouse can and should work to make sex more fun for you also, but that’s less under your control.)

Point 3: Steady your nerves so you can be transparent with as much confidence as possible.

You’ve got to be bold! Pray. Be humble. Be direct.

Point 3a: Clearly imagine the worst case scenario of “going for it”.

What’s the worst that can happen? Most likely the worst outcome is that your spouse will be uninterested or noncommittal, either towards your specific request or your general desire for a closer sexual relationship. That would be disappointing, but at least you’d know where you stand.

The biggest fear is that your spouse will react with contempt, disgust, or rejection. Ouch. But you can probably set up the conversation in a way to avoid that reaction, which we describe in How To Talk With Your Spouse About Sex. In What Does Your Spouse REALLY Want Sexually? we write about the importance of “saying yes” and being open to your spouse’s requests, which is critical if you’re the spouse who is being approached.

Point 3b: Spell out what “not going for it” is costing you.

Sometimes we’re afraid of saying something, but we lose sight of the fact that saying nothing also has consequences. Do you want to live out the rest of your life wishing that you had said something decades ago? We have received emails from couples who have been married for 30+ years and are only now learning how to communicate about sex and build the awesome sex life God intends for them. They could have been having great sex that whole time, but they didn’t go for it.

Don’t let time slip away.

Point 3c: Avoiding rejection actually lowers your self-esteem, whereas facing your fear increases your self-esteem.

You can praise God and feel good about yourself no matter how the conversation goes. When you act in faith, your faith grows. Each time you talk with your spouse about sex it gets easier and more comfortable.

Point 4: Reveal your feelings without being needy.

This is about how you close out the conversation.

“I love you, and I want to have a great sex life with you. I will do what it takes to be a great lover and to bring you pleasure. Let’s take our sex life to the next level together. What do you say?”

And then just listen and accept the response you get. If your spouse is on board, then awesome! If your spouse is hesitant, then reaffirm your love and keep working on yourself. If your spouse rejects you, bring your tears to God.

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This guy is rad — you can tell from the girl’s eyes that she is surprised and impressed with his mastery. The man’s thumbs-up at the end says it all: no big deal.

Nothing’s hotter than expertly popping off your wife’s bra and getting your hands on her sweet, sweet breasts. It’s true: men love boobs. But unfortunately, our wives’ breasts are often imprisoned out of our reach.

Sure… your wife could remove her bra herself… but that’s like letting someone else unwrap your birthday present! No, you must have the glory of uncovering her breasts… but there’s a problem! Your wife has been unhooking bras for years and is very experienced at it. If you fumble, you’ll look foolish during your moment of victory! What to do?

Step 1: Scout the terrain. The “hook and eye” is the most common type of bra clasp, but as you can see in the diagram below there are many others. I know bras aren’t that interesting when your wife’s boobs aren’t inside, but go check out her collection and see how her various bras work. Take special note if she has any front closure bras — these are the worst! You can fumble with the strap in back forever until she delicately informs you that the clasps aren’t even there. Get familiar with her bras, and you you won’t be surprised later when the pressure’s on.

Step 2: Practice before the game. Now that you know what kinds of clasps are on your wife’s bras, take a few minutes to practice opening them. Then do it with your eyes closed! Learn to recognize the clasps by touch, because when you do it for real you may be in the dark or reaching around her body. Lucky for us husbands, bra clasps are all designed to be openable with one hand, so practice that way. To practice: lay the hooked bra face-down on a flat surface (with the clasp up) and reach out to open it in one smooth motion. You may need to put some tension on the straps while they’re hooked in order to create a realistic simulation.

Step 3: Go slow to go fast. This part is key! When you’re actually in position to take off your wife’s bra, don’t rush yourself. You don’t have to flick the clasp open the second your touch her bra. Your wife doesn’t know that bra removal has begun until your fingers begin manipulating the clasp! So before you start trying to open it, run your fingers over the clasp in the course of rubbing your hands across your wife’s back. She’ll think you’re merely touching her for arousal, but you’re also using the opportunity to identify her bra. After you know what kind of bra you’re dealing with, practice opening it in your mind. When you’re ready for the big moment, move your hand away from her bra for several seconds (or longer), and then move back in and unclasp her bra with a single confident motion. Moving your hand away after scouting and then back will make the unclasping seem like a fast, expert, effortless maneuver.

Step 4: Enjoy! Your mastery of her bra has impressed your wife and earned you access to her intimate delights. Claim your just reward and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Do you have any tips to share for husbands trying to conquer that most frustrating of undergarments? Leave a comment!

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If you’re a husband like me, then you love giving your wife a huge, body-shaking, scream-inducing orgasm. There’s just about nothing better. Most advice for more and better orgasms focuses on techniques you can use in the bedroom, but some researchers have looked in a different direction: qualities of men who give great orgasms. Here are the male traits that lead to more and better orgasms for their partners, as identified by the study, along with some related links from our site.

The researchers wrote: “Orgasm intensity was related to how attracted (women) were to their partners, how many times they had sex per week and ratings of sexual satisfaction.”

“Those with partners who their friends rated as more attractive also tended to have more intense orgasms.”

“Sexual satisfaction was related to how physically attracted women were to their partner and the breadth of his shoulders.”

“Their partner’s sense of humor not only predicted his self-confidence and family income, but it also predicted women’s propensity to initiate sex, how often they had sex and it enhanced their orgasm frequency in comparison with other partners.”

It’s important to realize that all of these qualities are relative. You don’t have to be the richest, handsomest, funniest man in the world — you just have to display some measure of these qualities to your wife! Husbands, however you rate yourselves now, consider ways to move up a notch. Lay off the snacks. Lift some weights. Do some power poses in the bathroom before you go to bed. Buy some shirts that fit.

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Some great posts to link to this week. I almost linked to a post about spanking that was pretty explicit, but then decided not to.

Gain confidence in the bedroom — Nothing is sexier than enthusiasm and responsiveness: embrace your sexuality!

“And felt grateful my husband and I had made love last night. God must have known I needed it.” — Making love makes more love.

Does the way you avoid sex add to the emotional disconnection? — “Not right now” is an acceptable answer sometimes, but it’s better to just say so than to passive-aggressively avoid sex.

Why did God make sex so hard? — (Haha, “hard”. Ok, I’m childish.) But why should something great be easy?

“It’s Getting Hot in Here” Sex Game — Who doesn’t like sex games?

Husbands, do you text with your wife from work? — SC and I text pretty much every day, but it’s mostly mundane rather than sexual.

Why do men think sex is a reward? — Because it’s something we want, and sometimes it’s scarce. I previously wrote that sexual favors can be one kind of prize for the winner of a sex game, but that idea is controversial. Should sex never be used as a reward?

Female anatomy and orgasm from PIV sex — “your ability or inability to orgasm during intercourse is because you were born that way”.

Ten 30-minute date ideas — Or spend five hours doing them all in a row!

On the topic of edging — Edging is fun and can lead to huge orgasms.

Got another link to share? Leave a comment!

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Amy Cuddy describes how your body language can affect your hormones, thoughts, and behaviors. Tiny tweaks can lead to big changes.

[ted id=1569]

The specifics of her experiment apply to feelings of power and confidence, so they’re at least indirectly applicable to sexuality. Here’s an excerpt that describes some of her results. The 20-minute video is worth watching in full.

So this is what we did. We decided to bring people into the lab and run a little experiment, and these people adopted, for two minutes, either high-power poses or low-power poses, and I’m just going to show you five of the poses, although they took on only two. So here’s one. A couple more. This one has been dubbed the “Wonder Woman” by the media. Here are a couple more. So you can be standing or you can be sitting. And here are the low-power poses. So you’re folding up, you’re making yourself small.This one is very low-power. When you’re touching your neck, you’re really protecting yourself. So this is what happens. They come in, they spit into a vial, for two minutes, we say, “You need to do this or this.”They don’t look at pictures of the poses. We don’t want to prime them with a concept of power. We want them to be feeling power. So two minutes they do this. We then ask them, “How powerful do you feel?” on a series of items, and then we give them an opportunity to gamble, and then we take another saliva sample. That’s it. That’s the whole experiment.

So this is what we find. Risk tolerance, which is the gambling, we find that when you are in the high-power pose condition, 86 percent of you will gamble. When you’re in the low-power pose condition, only 60 percent, and that’s a whopping significant difference. Here’s what we find on testosterone. From their baseline when they come in, high-power people experience about a 20-percent increase, and low-power people experience about a 10-percent decrease. So again, two minutes, and you get these changes.Here’s what you get on cortisol. High-power people experience about a 25-percent decrease, and the low-power people experience about a 15-percent increase. So two minutes lead to these hormonal changes that configure your brain to basically be either assertive, confident and comfortable, or really stress-reactive, and feeling sort of shut down. And we’ve all had the feeling, right? So it seems that our nonverbals do govern how we think and feel about ourselves, so it’s not just others, but it’s also ourselves. Also, our bodies change our minds.

Take-away: try some power poses before sex and see how it affects you and your spouse. Bonus points for posing together!

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