This “bible”has pepped up her love life after many years of marriage.
It’s not easy to keep your love life fresh and exciting through years of even the most loving relationship.
Love idea and love tips
Most affairs are linked with sex lives in settled relationships falling into the tedium trap.
Here are 50 ideas for fun for the faithful – to give a loving, lasting relationship sexual staying power too.
1. Give your love life priority.
It’s amazing how many couples would say that making love is or should be one of the most important parts of their relationships, yet actually devote just 20 minutes at the end of the occasional busy day, when he’s gone through that extra work and the football’s finished on the TV, and she’s done that extra washing and phoned her friend who’s going through such a bad patch, etc.
Most adults these days do have many demands on their time and energy, but take your role as your partner’s lover as seriously as you take your roles as worker, parent, friend, etc.
Set aside time to make love properly while you have energy to share and enjoyment to bring.
2. Revive the dating game.
Remember how before you were a settled couple you would meet up for dates, go out somewhere pleasant, talk together, in fact spend a whole evening going through a ritual designed to put you most at ease together and most looking forward to loving?
Agree with your partner that you will devote every Wednesday night or whenever to talking, sharing a glass of wine, a video, relaxing together.
Sex must not be compulsory after these evenings – no more than it should be on a conventional date – but there’s a good chance you will both fancy it.
You must both also promise not just to abandon your date if “something crops up”, as it often will.
Try to avoid letting any other arrangement get in the way. If you do have another commitment which you both agree must have priority, agree on a date for another evening the same week.
3. Make the most of the unexpected.
If you suddenly realise you can both be home from work early one day and have the house to yourselves, don’t decide that’s just the chance you need to clean the covers on the three-piece suite or paint the bathroom.
You’ll fit those tasks in somewhere one day – and won’t end up in the divorce courts if you don’t.
Use that precious gift of unusual time together to add the freshness of variety to your loving. It’s a wonderful change to make love in daylight if the demands of work and family life usually confine you to after dark.
4. Vary your setting.
If you always but always make love in your good old double bed a hint of tedium can set in even before you’ve touched one another.
Look for chances to vary where you make love as well as when. If you’ve the house to yourselves at least occasionally, you can revive the fun of the sofa or living-room floor of your courting days.
If privacy is a problem, use the remedy of countless courting couples – the back of the car or some other quiet spot.
Half the fun of an affair is often seizing even uncomfortable opportunities. Faithful couples shouldn’t miss out on it all.
5. Learn massage.
To be touched caringly is one of our most basic human needs – as crucial as food and drink – but all too often touching gets cut down to a minimum, even by couples having sex.
Sharing skilled, all-over body massage is one of the most wonderful gifts you can give one another.
It brings great physical pleasure and relaxation to both the giver and the receiver of the massage.
You don’t always want to go on to have sex straight afterwards but when you do make love it will immeasurably enhance the quality of your physical relationship, make it something special just you two share. You can find guides in any good bookshop.
6. Separate sex from the rest.
No relationship is perfect and without friction. Women especially have a tendency to feel they can’t think of making love with their partner if they’re fed up with him over something else.
Of course you can’t – and shouldn’t – try to ignore important areas of conflict, but do be careful not to let petty irritations get in the way of making love and set up a vicious circle of rejection and revenge.
If you really enjoy his loving, do you really want to miss out on that because he forgot a card for your wedding anniversary or couldn’t be bothered to mow the lawn?
Instead tell him what a horror he is and that he’d better make it up to you with extra special efforts to thrill you to bits.
There’s a better chance that way he’ll want to make up to you for his sins tomorrow as well, so you’ll win on both fronts.
7. Take a trip.
Of course people starting affairs enjoy it – if they’ve half a chance they go away together and devote a weekend or a few days to fun and sex.
At least once a year, get away with your legitimate partner to spend as long as possible alone together in a pleasant setting.
Don’t feel you have to spend all of your time in bed. It’s just as important for the quality of your sex life that you should share some hours of talking together about your feelings, hopes and fears.
Learn to appreciate one another again as people without all the demands of work and family life.
Apart from the sex, a major reason why people have affairs is that their lover listens to them in a way they find their marriage partner doesn’t bother to.
8. Share a bath or a shower.
I’m not so much talking about the cliché of making love in the shower, though that’s fun when you’re in the mood.
Bathing and showering sets up an atmosphere of comfortable and relaxed intimacy. It helps keep you close if you make it a habit that one of you sits and chats while the other baths or showers.
A simple friendly gesture such as scrubbing the other’s back helps keep warm feeling flowing between you.
9. Sort out the turn-offs.
Sometimes husband or wives can develop habits or traits that put their partner right off sexually.
Bad breath, greasy hair, tatty underwear etc., can all lead to a partner finding excuses to avoid sex or not making love with their old verve.
That in turn sets up suspicions of infidelity, loss of sex drive, falling out of love, when what’s really needed is to say honestly what the problem is.
You may be holding back because you worry about hurting your partner’s feelings, but the result is that you hurt them and yourself more, because you don’t give them the chance to put the problem right.
Wouldn’t you want to know if it were you?
10. Change positions.
Most couples have a fair idea of a reasonable range of positions in which you can make love.
You don’t need a sex book to spell out the basic variations. Most while young try out a selection but then often tend to settle for one or two which they find “work” for them.
The trouble is this can lead to a growing sense of monotony, especially if your loving usually ends with intercourse, that no matter what else you try, you always seem to end up in the same place.
Promise yourselves that at least once a month you will try a different position. Our bodies and reactions change.
You can suddenly find that a position that was once useless for you now results in startling sensation. Even if not, it will make returning to your old favourite that more enjoyable.
Go to Part 2 for the next 10 tips
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