Madison blogs - Stimulus sex life plan

Libido in recession? fear not, says Dan Rookwood who has a stimulating little plan up his sleeve to boost your sex life

When was the last time you did anything new or different while having sex?

The first four months of a sexual relationship are the best. Tiring, but great. You go at it like Duracell Bunnies on amphetamines at every chance you get. You’re a bit unsure of what buttons to press, so you try them all.

You explore, do things you’ve never done before, but once the novelty and the chafing wears off, you settle into a pattern. You now know exactly how to turn each other on and it works just fine.

After a year, the pattern gets a little threadbare through repetition. After two, you’re stuck in a rut, and far from turning each other on, you’ve all but switched off.

According to a study by sexpert Dr Pam Spurr, “Ninety per cent [of couples] won’t have tried anything new sexually – not even the tiniest little thing – since about their first anniversary. Plus, once they are past the two-year mark, they are unlikely to ever try anything new.”

Oh. Thanks Pam.

Why? Because through over-familiarity, you’ve begun to take each other for granted, and sex, when it happens, is predictable and formulaic. It’s more so-so than big O. You’re joylessly going through the motions in an unspoken routine of set positions – like synchronised parachutists.

Apparently, the problem is often exacerbated once you get married – which isn’t exactly what I’ve signed up for. According to a book called The Sex-Starved Marriage by relationship guru Michele Weiner-Davis, 20 per cent of married couples in the US have sex fewer than 10 times a year.

At the considerable risk of TMI (too much information), I’ve often wondered if my sex drive is unusually, unhealthily high. If it were solely up to me, I’d probably have sex every day. Twice on Sundays.

That’s not to try and make myself out to be some kind of stud – I wish I could calm down, to be honest. I sometimes feel like a deviant, priapic Benny Hill character, lasciviously chasing Sam around the house on fast-forward to a “Yakety Sax” soundtrack.

Sam’s libido is more normal: once or twice a week will suffice. She also prefers evenings whereas, like many blokes, I tend to have the dawn horn.

“It is estimated that one in three married couples struggles with problems associated with mismatched sexual desire,” says Weiner-Davis. A real barrel of laughs this Weiner-Davis woman, isn’t she?

Sam and I have been going to some marriage preparation – weducation – classes recently in order to steel us for the years ahead. After the class about sex (oh, there’s 90 minutes of my life I never want back), the relationship expert leant us a copy of The Sex-Starved Marriage. I gave her my best just-what-the-fuck-are-you-trying-to-say look, but she assured us it’s standard course reading.

Although it’s not a book you’d want to read on the bus or casually leave lying about the house when you’ve got guests, I have to admit that, alarmist statistics aside, the author has some good self-help advice for keeping one’s sex life new and interesting. (No, not that kind of self-help.)

None of the tips are especially revelatory – they include putting in an effort to look after your personal appearance, making time to talk to each other away from the distractions of work/phone/TV/kids, having a threesome with Miranda Kerr (okay, that last one was mine) – but it’s all too easy to overlook common sense and just buy a vibrator instead in the hope that it will generate the sexual buzz you’re lacking.

To save you the embarrassment of buying the book yourself, the key lesson is that it’s vitally important to avoid slipping into rooting routines. Routine gets boring in any sphere of life – work, gym, diet, horizontal jogging.

Stave off the dangers of a same-same sex relationship by doing something new and different the next time you get down to business. Now, has anyone got Miranda’s number?