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Topic guide
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Sex is a wonderful given in life that can fulfill many purposes. This guide follows what better sex means, the fourteen purposes of sex, foreplay and sensuality, what ordinary sex looks like, and what keeps closeness safe.
Read these first
- How to Have a Better Sex LifeBetter in every way: fourteen purposes and twelve intelligences.
- Relationship Sexually Stuck?The unwritten rules we follow about sex without having chosen them.
- Not-Talked-About Themes in Human SexualityWhat ordinary sex looks like, said plainly.
Questions this topic answers
01Better sex
Better sex is better in every way
A better sex life can mean sex that is more frequent, more pleasurable, more connected, more playful, and more freely chosen, and it means all of those at once. Sex fulfills many purposes that are not mutually exclusive. By broadening our definition of better, we broaden the potential for both people to get something meaningful out of the interaction. Both people do not need to be getting the same thing out of sex at the same time.
How to Have a Better Sex Life: The Way to Greater Sexual Satisfaction
Sexuality draws on every one of the twelve intelligences, and better sex is better in each. Part of having better sex is checking the constructs that give us a bias toward the topic in the first place.
The twelve
Integrative Psychotherapy: The Architecture of Human Systems and the Twelve Intelligences Behind Mental Health
Twelve intelligences every person is already running, and three registers each can fall into.
Mind, body, spirit
Love With the Mind, the Body, and the Spirit
We experience love with the mind, the body, and the spirit. To maximize the love in our relationship, we can focus on all three.
The self-reflection
The Twelve Intelligences and Sex: AHS Self-Reflection
One question for each of the twelve intelligences, applied to our own sexuality.
02Purposes
Fourteen purposes of sex
We tend to be well aware of the reasons not to have sex. We are less aware of the reasons to have it. Sex can be for pleasure and release, bonding, romance, passion, relaxation, play, repair, sensuality, and generosity. These purposes can overlap, and the people involved do not always need to be seeking the same experience. One person may want orgasm while the other enjoys being held and caressed.
Relationship Sexually Stuck? A Look at Our Unwritten Rules of Engagement
We usually get in our own way by unconsciously following rules concerning sex that we might not even agree with. A simple tweak to the unwritten rules surrounding physical intimacy can recharge the sex life in a relationship.
The worksheet
Fourteen Purposes of Sex Worksheet
Each purpose marked for how much we want it and how curious we are about it.
The rules
Mismatched Desire Worksheet: Unwritten Rules About Sex
The rules we critique are our own and not our partner’s.
Importance
What Makes Your Partner Feel Loved? The Pathways to Importance
People feel loved in very different ways.
03Foreplay
Foreplay and sensuality
The word foreplay means very different things to different people. For one person it is a soft caress hours earlier in the day. For another it is flowers, a long, lingering gaze, or a prolonged time of cuddling with a favorite show. Foreplay is about meeting the unique needs of the person in front of us. Doing all the dishes left in the sink and cleaning the counter is in many ways the most effective foreplay we can do for another person.
Human Sexuality and Stress Management
Sex has a positive impact on stress, and stress has a negative impact on sexual frequency and desire. Not feeling like having sex is common. With good communication about our foreplay needs, we can use foreplay to increase the desire for sex.
The worksheet
What Is Foreplay for Me? Worksheet
Which forms of foreplay help, which are a turn-off, and foreplay for the type of sex we are having.
Sensuality
Somatic intelligence: getting into the body
As close as we can get without touching, until it feels as though we are in contact.
Co-regulation
Regulate Before You Educate
Affirming the feeling first is what makes someone able to hear us.
04Ordinary sex
What ordinary sex looks like
Sex is great sometimes, okay sometimes, bad sometimes, and good most of the time. It is normal human behavior to tell stories that are abnormal. The sex stories we hear from friends, family, and the media are more often the awesomely good or the particularly bad ones. We don’t get to hear about everything in between, and our perspective on what sex is like most of the time gets distorted.
Not-Talked-About Themes in Human Sexuality: Normalizing
Orgasm does not always happen. There is no one-size-fits-all technique. Many people in relationships do not talk about sex specifically or openly with their partner, and no one ever taught us how.
Misinformation
Why Might We Be Misinformed About Human Sexuality?
Education is limited considering the frequency of the activity.
Expectations
The Good Enough Sex Model: A Review and Summary
The model helps people to lessen focus on performance while increasing awareness of pleasure, happiness, and emotional intimacy.
Performance
Kinetic intelligence: the dance
Performance can be interrupted by thinking about it. When overthinking is the problem, the thought to hold is release and not flex.
05Closeness
When closeness feels unsafe
We flinch from the very thing we long for. In moments where trust could deepen, or where emotional closeness is available, many of us experience contraction in place of comfort: panic, withdrawal, or a conflict that seems to arise out of nowhere. The posts above are written for relationships already functioning with a high level of emotional connection and safety. Where those are missing, codependence and power dynamics need to be addressed first.
When Intimacy Feels Unsafe: Understanding Fear Responses in Trusting Relationships
There is no shame in fearing closeness. We can’t erase old injuries, and we can stop reenacting them. Every time we name the pattern, stay present, and choose differently, we are rewiring our capacity to love and be loved.
Attachment
What Are the Four Attachment Styles? Secure, Anxious, Avoidant, and Disorganized
How available our nervous system is to the regulating comfort of another person, and what we have learned to expect when we need help.
Feeling
Why Feeling Questions? Emotional Expression Enhances Bonding
When we share our most intimate feelings with our partner, we increase the intimacy and relational strength of our union.
Which comes first
Emotional intelligence: what we want to feel
One partner needs physical closeness to open emotionally. The other needs emotional closeness to have sex.
06Questions
Questions to sit inside
These questions are for carrying a while, with no score at the end, and each one links to the post it came from.
I only have sex if…
What do I specifically like, and what does my partner specifically like?
Do I need physical closeness to open emotionally, or emotional closeness to have sex?
When I ask whether I want sex, what do I consider besides whether I am horny?
Which purposes of sex mean the most to me, and which mean the most to my partner?
What game can we play?
Sex is one of the wonderful things we get to experience within this incarnation, and coming at it from different angles increases our opportunity to feel meaning and fulfillment within it.
07Frameworks
The frameworks underneath
Most of what I write rests on a few structures of my own. None of them is a therapeutic modality or a diagnostic system. They are ways of seeing what is already organizing a life, how the parts lean on each other, and what happens when the interaction stops cohering. The fourteen purposes of sex and the twelve intelligences applied to sex sit inside them.
The Architecture of Human Systems
Twelve intelligences every person is already running, the three registers each can run in, and what happens when they cohere or collapse. The framework underneath this site.
The Fractal Field of Mental Health
Seven dimensions, individual to interconnectedness, each balanced, overexpressed, or deficient. Mental health as coherence across dimensions rather than a cluster of symptoms.
Dialectic and Deconstruction Solutions
Deconstruction traces a problem upstream to its most navigable point of entry. Dialectics names the legitimate values in conflict and refuses solutions that pretend nobody loses. The method AHS stands on.
The Three Ds
Differentiation, dialectics, deconstruction. Observing ourselves comes first and makes the other two possible.
The Fourteen Purposes of Sex
Sex can fulfill many purposes that are not mutually exclusive, from pleasure, bonding, and romance to play, repair, sensuality, and generosity. The purposes overlap, and the people involved do not always need to be seeking the same experience.
The Pathways to Importance
People feel secure when they consistently experience that they matter, and there are far more than five ways to experience it, each with its own loneliness when it goes missing. Loving a partner their way, not ours.
Free to use
Worksheets, maps, and images for this topic
Mismatched Desire WorksheetUnwritten Rules About Sex
The unwritten rules about sex we bring into a relationship, examined on our own side first.
Fourteen Purposes of Sex WorksheetWhat I Want and What I Am Curious About
Mark each of the fourteen purposes of sex twice, for how much we want it and how curious we are about it, then name a top three and one to explore.
What Is Foreplay for Me? Worksheet
Name a top three purposes for sex, mark which forms of foreplay help and which are a turn-off, and match foreplay to the type of sex.
The Twelve Intelligences and SexAHS Self-Reflection
One question for each of the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS), applied to our own sexuality, with a closing reflection to share with a partner.
The Good-Enough Sex Model
One-page map of the Good-Enough Sex model (Metz and McCarthy 2007): the four kinds of approach and the principles, as summarized in the review.
The Good-Enough Sex ModelTwelve Principles
One-page map of the Good-Enough Sex model (Metz and McCarthy 2007): the four kinds of approach and the twelve principles, as summarized in the review.
Unwritten Rules About Sex and 21 Reasons to Have Sex
One-page map of the unwritten rules we follow about sex, how to question them, and 21 reasons to have sex.
Better SexIdentity Intelligence
Micro map: identity intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better SexRelational Intelligence
Micro map: relational intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better SexSomatic Intelligence
Micro map: somatic intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better SexEmotional Intelligence
Micro map: emotional intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better SexCognitive Intelligence
Micro map: cognitive intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better SexKinetic Intelligence
Micro map: kinetic intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better SexVolitional Intelligence
Micro map: volitional intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better SexStrategic Intelligence
Micro map: strategic intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better SexEcological Intelligence
Micro map: ecological intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better SexExistential Intelligence
Micro map: existential intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better SexSpiritual Intelligence
Micro map: spiritual intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better SexCreative and Playful Intelligence
Micro map: creative and playful intelligence applied to sex, from the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS).
Better Sex Through the Twelve Intelligences
Meta map: what each of the twelve intelligences of The Architecture of Human Systems (AHS) contributes to a better sex life, on one page.
Fourteen Purposes of Sex
Map: the fourteen purposes of sex, each with a one-line description, and the note that the purposes overlap and partners do not need to be seeking the same one.
What Is Foreplay?
Map: what foreplay is, six of its many forms, how foreplay matches the type of sex, and the dishes as strategy.
Sex and StressHow Each Affects the Other
One-page map of how sex and stress affect each other: the positive feedback loop, two suggestions, and four practical ways to reduce stress and make room for sex.
Love With the Mind, the Body, and the Spirit
One-page map of what the body, the mind, and the spirit each need to feel loved.
Not-Talked-About Themes in Human Sexuality
One-page map of fifteen not-talked-about themes in human sexuality: orgasm and stimulation, erections, expectations and bodies, and sex across a life and a relationship.
Why Feeling Questions? Telling About an Emotion or Feeling It
One-page map of why feeling questions matter: telling about an emotion or feeling it, why we restrain emotions, and supporting a partner's emotion without carrying it.
Why We Are Misinformed About SexNine Reasons
One-page map of nine reasons we are misinformed about sex, from the abnormal stories we tell to the nature or nurture question.
Work with William
In couples therapy or individual work we look at the rules, expectations, and conditions organizing a sexual relationship, and practice asking for and receiving what each of us wants.