Three Ingredients to the Best Sex Ever

Arguably, this is one of my most favorite subjects. If you’re wondering what a 31-year-old, Christian, mother to four, could possibly know about sex, stick around…

I grew up in a sexually silent home. I was never really given “the talk” apart from how it related to my monthly cycle. As an adult, watching all the unedited episodes of Sex and the City was my education. While informative on the perils of serial dating, the show failed to teach me three essential ingredients to consistent, mind-blowing sex: monogamy, practice, and laughter.

My husband and I are coming up on our 11th wedding anniversary. We married young. He was 22, and I was 20. We have four children under the age of ten now. I’ve spent the better part of our marriage, either pregnant or postpartum. Anyone who has experienced either can testify to the formidable challenge those situations pose to a couple’s sex life. If you thought sex was tricky with someone you’ve never met, try doing it without novelty, alcohol, and with a woman who feels like a beached whale. Satisfying a woman who knows all your moves is absolutely a bigger challenge than a one night stand. As a friend put it,

“A real man knows how to please the woman who’s dealt with screaming kids all day, who went through the day with peanutbutter in her hair, wearing sweatpants and grannypanties because the laundry is stacked to highheaven. A real man can’t rely on a couple of cheap sex tricks to please a woman, running the same two plays on an unsuspecting defense, a real man has to play the same team night after night and the things that worked last night aren’t good enough for today.” (source)

If you can’t imagine married sex being the height of sexual pleasure, consider this:

MONOGAMY: It is within the safety of a monogamous relationship that a couple has the time and freedom to focus on their craft. A committed relationship is the only place you don’t have the concern of contracting an STD or being dumped for someone younger, more attractive or exciting. Ben promised to love me “til the wheels come off” in front of God and everyone. I’m completely free to be me with him, not because of some fickle impression of “love” professed in the backseat of a car, but because we signed an ironclad contract over a decade ago. Neither one of us are going anywhere.

PRACTICE: I danced classical ballet for seven years as a teenager, and I’ve found that sex is not unlike learning how to dance. You can learn all the steps, but merely knowing how to perform them won’t make you Baryshnikov. Sex is an art form and practice is essential for mastery. My husband and I have had many years of practicing the steps and now, as our youngest child is three, we are beginning to find the time to enjoy what we’ve learned. One of the many benefits of married sex is that you are always with the same partner. While some may think this is not an advantage, I have got to say, I’ve been dancing with the same man for well over a decade now, and we are getting pretty good! He knows what to do to warm me up slowly or go from 0 to 100 in a couple minutes. He knows what positions work best depending on what kind of mood I’m in and if I want a quickie or several hours of satisfaction. He has learned how to do it all exceedingly well. Similarly, I’ve learned how to read his body language, what positions he favors and exactly how to achieve the response I desire. We never wonder anymore whether we will achieve orgasm, the question is simply what route we want to take to get there.

LAUGHTER: Sex is funny!! God has a sense of humor; he put our fun zones next to waste disposal! Two years ago, Ben and I sat down with one of his medical textbooks and our daughters (ages four and seven at the time). They generally knew where babies came from; daddy’s seed and mommy’s egg. We’d even covered how the baby gets out of mommy’s tummy. But the question how the seed got in there hadn’t been asked yet. We started using a diagram of male and female anatomies and telling them the official names of everything.

Our younger daughter started giggling when we got to the function of a rectum, and I don’t think she heard anything after that. But our older daughter listened carefully, processing all the information. Finally, she looked my husband in the eye and asked seriously, “But why would anyone want to do that?” Ben started into the when-two-people-love-each-other response, but he didn’t get far before I butt in, “Honey, we do it because it is fun!!!” If you don’t have a sense of humor about sex, if you can’t laugh at yourself and enjoy the ridiculousness of it all, you’ll never be very good at it.

I know a lot of people won’t agree with or believe me, but I think that is because they can’t imagine how good married sex can be. If you are a virgin, take my advice and wait until you are married to take the plunge; then be patient. Anything worth having is worth waiting for and working at. If you are married, but good sex hasn’t become the norm yet, I’d encourage you to step back, and look at the big picture. Often, problems in the bedroom originate elsewhere. Look for potential problems in yourself before looking to blame your spouse. Consider talking to your pastor or trusted friend about what is going on. Get help. Honestly, I have no words of advice for the happily polyamorous. I’ve engaged in unmarried sex before, and it was never as good as the real deal. A lot of folks just don’t know what they are missing.