Dr. Ruth: Great sex is like fine wine

In “Dr. Ruth's Top 10 Secrets for Great Sex,” the guru provides tips for how to take your bedroom action from boring to mind-blowing. In this excerpt, she writes about improving intimacy, a key ingredient for satisfaction.

Intimacy is the key
Two strangers can’t really be intimate, no matter what they do together sexually, because while their bodies may be joined, they’re emotionally and mentally disconnected. Intimacy comes from sharing yourself completely, and especially sharing your love for each other. Sex with someone you barely know is more like masturbation than intimate sex. Sex without intimacy can be pleasurable, I’m not denying that, but it’s not complete. However, if two people feel as if they’re one, then each experiences not only his or her own pleasure but that of the partner. Together they amplify the sensations that each experiences.

So establishing intimacy is a key to ensuring that other changes in your sex life have the most effect. Obviously, having sex in one position rather than another really doesn’t add to your intimacy. But slowing down the action, so that you’re not both rushing toward an orgasm, and are trying to feel every possible sensation that making love produces, is very intimate.

An intimate act
One aspect of sex that arouses some people is derived from the concept that sexual acts are somehow forbidden or “dirty.” That is an immature way of enjoying sex and is incredibly limiting. The more intimate a couple is, the less guilt and shame they experience and what they are doing becomes less forbidden or “dirty.”

Let me give you an illustration from another arena altogether to help me explain this point: drinking alcohol. Anyone can drink enough wine to get tipsy. You can drink the cheapest, most awful tasting wine and still get quite drunk. But when you drink the cheap stuff, maybe holding your nose so that you don’t taste it as much, you certainly don’t appreciate all the other qualities that wine has to offer. However, if you drink a fine wine, after having learned to appreciate its subtleties, while you may wind up feeling the effects of the alcohol, you’ll also enjoy the taste, aroma, and the overall sensory experience that drinking fine wine entails. So the wine connoisseur enjoys his wine fully, even intimately. And he, or she, doesn’t just gulp down the wine but, instead, swirls it in a glass to release its aroma, smells it, sips rather than gulps the wine in order to savor the many flavors before swallowing, and usually makes sure that any food that accompanies the wine complements it.

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Having intimate sex is like drinking fine wine. You may have orgasms with or without intimacy, but you’ll get a lot more out of a sexual liaison if intimacy is part of the experience. I can’t say that immature sex is one-dimensional, but you’ll experience many added dimensions when you have sex as an intimate couple. So that’s why I want you to slow down sex so that you can appreciate all it has to offer and thus make it so much more intimate an experience.

The sounds of sex
How else can you achieve intimacy besides slowing down the experience? One way is a willingness to share your feelings. Clearly, you can pass on those feelings to a partner by allowing yourself to make noise when having sex. I say “allowing yourself” because some people have difficulty when it comes to making noise. In cases where someone can’t focus enough to have an orgasm if they are verbalizing their emotions in any way, this is perfectly understandable. But most people who don’t make any noise don’t keep quiet because they’re concentrating. Instead, they hold in these sounds because they’re somehow ashamed of demonstrating how much they’re enjoying themselves. So allowing yourself to express your pleasure out loud is an intimate act. And if you’re truly making love and not just having sex, one way to make sure your partner understands how you’re feeling inside is to say how much you love her or him.

Giving verbal cues
In addition to giving voice to your emotions, I’d recommend that you also use your power of speech to give verbal cues. Obvious ones include such instructions as faster, slower, harder, or more gently. In other words, don’t be afraid to tell your partner your needs to make a sexual experience the best possible. If using actual words is embarrassing, or spoils your concentration, then give physical signals. Both lovers have to be attuned to their partner, recognizing that he or she is sending a signal that should be respected. And such moments are not the time to start an argument. If your partner is asking for a particular stroke, just do it. Later on you can ask why.

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