The 5 Questions I Ask Every Couple Who Wants to Fix Their Sex Life
The 5 Questions I Ask Every Couple Who Wants to Fix Their Sex Life
Imagine you were sitting down for a cup of coffee with me and saying, “Sofia, we’re here for it. Fix our sex life.” You might expect me to start by asking how often you’re having sex, who initiates, or what exactly is happening in your bedroom. And while those are things I want to know, I actually don’t start there.
I start with the bigger picture, because sex doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens in your body, in your house, in your week, in your life, and it happens inside of your relationship. So here are the five questions I would ask you. Take a minute to answer them, get a little honest with yourself, and see what kind of next step comes up for you.
1. What is happening with everyone’s body?
What’s happening with stress levels, medication, hormones and sleep? A body that’s exhausted, stressed out, and running on four hours of broken sleep is not a body that’s going to feel turned on very easily. That isn’t failing. It doesn’t mean your body is broken. It’s information about our starting point.
And while hormone replacement therapy can be really supportive, I am tired of hearing about you all “waiting” for HRT. There are plenty of things you can do in the meantime, starting with looking at your actual life. Are there macro changes, like a job, an extracurricular schedule, or where you live, that are limiting your capacity to fully be yourself or fully participate in your partnership? And what micro changes, the small day-to-day choices, could make the life you have more manageable?
2. What is happening with the mental load?
If one person is solo carrying the list, the lunches, the appointments and the birthday presents, unappreciated and without much time to themselves, we might be looking at a dynamic that is absolutely not helping your sex life.
But what I often see is not so much that the mental load is unbalanced. It’s that it’s unnegotiated. You might have two people working really hard to support each other and both feeling unappreciated because it has never been discussed. Sometimes we need to go really deep here, and sometimes a few small tweaks make a really big difference to the time, energy and desire you can have for each other.
3. What is your relationship to pleasure outside of the bedroom?
Are you a master relaxer, or do you never give yourself five minutes to sit down? How you relate to pleasure in the rest of your life will show me how you relate to it in the bedroom. If you can’t enjoy a coffee or a bath without feeling like you have to earn it, then letting yourself enjoy sex is going to feel very uncomfortable.
Joy can feel vulnerable and even scary, and as a society we demonize pleasure and rest. We make it indulgent and unnecessary, instead of remembering that pleasure is the foundation of what our nervous system needs to be regulated, happy and well.
4. On a scale of one to ten, how well can you talk about sex?
In general, as well as during and after? Most of us were never taught how to talk about sex, so the conversation either doesn’t happen or turns into a high stakes argument. Out of all the places I see couples get stuck, this is probably the biggest one. And we cannot change what we cannot talk about.
So many of you are looking for a deeper sense of closeness with your partner, and yet you put up walls to your internal landscape. The level of closeness you want comes with the level of vulnerability you’re willing to have, and sex is vulnerable stuff. A lot of us are afraid of what we’re going to find in the sex box. But that fear is what’s holding you back from the connection you’re craving.
5. What are your beliefs and expectations about sex?
I call this your great sexpectations. Think about almost every movie sex scene you’ve ever seen: two people spontaneously aroused at the same time, ripping each other’s clothes off, and having an amazing time within minutes. There is so much myth packed into that one scene, and it’s not necessarily true to a deeper, wiser version of your sex life after 20 years together and three kids.
So many couples feel stuck between “if I’m not raging hot and horny, then it must be a no.” We lose sight of what I call the rainbow of maybe. Some of the most amazing sex I’ve ever had started tentatively, even awkwardly, and got there because I started from “yeah, I think I could, and how could I support myself to get there?”
Notice what isn’t on the list
I didn’t ask whether your libido was broken, or how often both of you want it. Those things are not as relevant to me as understanding the architecture of your life and the beliefs about sexuality that live inside you, which are often what’s holding you back from creating your own unique version of a sex life that serves you both.
This is where one-on-one coaching starts
We start with these five questions, find the highest leverage places, and plan our route forward. Then we pair that with small, practical experiments that fit your real life as parents. I know you don’t have time for a three-hour tantra session on Saturday, but you do have time for a five-minute daily experiment or a 15-minute weekly check-in.
I’m not running a fall cohort of the Naked Fun Comeback this year, but I am doing one-on-one coaching. If you are tired of having the same conversation over and over and getting nowhere, book yourself a free Spark Session. There’s no obligation to work together. In 30 minutes, I’ll give you a roadmap for what to do next, and you’ll leave with at least one practical thing you can do this week to start getting on the road back to sex that feels easy, fun and light.
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