March 18, 2019

T is for Transition: Four Transitions of Intimacy for Optimal Desire

March 18, 2019/ Dr. Chelsea Page

As a woman you need to be intentional about your desire because it isn’t something that you can sit back and wait for things to happen. Autopilot just doesn’t work in intimacy. That would be the equivalent to sitting in the passenger side of a car and expecting the car to go on its own while at the same time being frustrated nothing is happening. Sure there are Teslas now but that’s more of like how most men experience desire. They can sit back and their hormones can drive without much other influence. As a woman, your sexuality and desire require you to get into the driver seat and know how to drive your desire and that includes paying attention to the transitions of intimacy.

Transitions are important to your intimate life because how you move from one thing to another determines how open or closed off your desire will be. In a past post I talked about how responsive desire is the dominant type of desire for many women and because of this, it’s important that you take an active approach to your sexuality. The four checkpoints for the transitions of intimacy you need to pay attention to are the transition from day to day, the transition into the bedroom, the transition in the bedroom, and the transition out of the bedroom. This may seem like a lot of transitions happening in your sexual life but the more you pay attention to these points in your day, the more you will know what helps and hinders your desire so that you are more empowered around your sexual self.

Transition from Day-to-Day

Your sexual desire is like a nice, fine multi-course meal that takes time and intention to create and enjoy. You are more valuable and important than a fast-food approach to sex: no plan, no time, last minute and not really all that satisfying if we’re being honest. Being the fine-dining type of gal you are, I want this to empower you to start honoring your sexual self with the time and focus it deserves. This starts with taking the time and attention to cultivating day-to-day energy within yourself that is calm, relaxed, open and happy. As a friend of mine once so simply yet accurately said, ‘It’s hard to feel sexy when you aren’t happy’. This is totally on point. You need to find the things that bring you joy, like dancing, or calm and relaxation, like reading or exercising.

Being aware of your energy will allow you to transition from day-to-day with more intention and will create a good foundation for boosting your desire instead of squashing it. Because your responsive desire is a like a wood fire that takes time to get the flames going, you want to keep the embers going on a daily basis so that when you want to fan the flame there is actually a flame there to fan. It’s a lot harder to start a fire from scratch. And the not-so-good things in life such as a lot of stress or not eating healthy is an immediate water-bucket to your flame and makes it super hard to get the fire started. Setting time aside to practice noticing your flame and fanning it and what helps will also increase your capacity for spontaneous intimacy. So when you focus on creating space for the good things in your life you are creating an easier potential for your sexual self to transition from the norms of life into the bedroom.

Transition Into the Bedroom

As you focus on transitions from one day to the next and filling your moments with more good, your sexual self now has an easier time moving into more intimate connections with your partner. It helps you so you are less likely starting in the negative when you are wanting to transition into the bedroom. When it does come to the day where you have set aside Intentional Intimacy time, you will want to focus not only on the day of but also the hour before.

On the day-of your Intentional Intimacy time, you will want to focus extra on adding in as many feel goodies that day as you can to help your brain feel super good. You also want to plan ahead so you can remove as many negative things as possible, like filling your day with a ton of stressful meetings. Then, when it comes to a couple of hours before your intimacy time, it’s good to check in with yourself on where you are at in the way of openness to be close with your partner.

A good way to gauge this is to consider a scale from -10 to 10. For example, despite your best efforts of adding in the good you had a crazy hectic day at work, your boss was being a you know what, and that cold you can’t seem to kick is now causing your nose to be super goobery. Your level will likely be at not so open to intimacy and be more toward a -10. On the flip side, if you had a super relaxing day, and felt productive and had some yummy healthy food, your openness to intimacy will be closer to neutral or maybe even in the positive. Keep in mind since you don’t have a lot of testosterone you will less often be at a 10 when you enter the bedroom.

Once you check in with yourself a couple of hours before your Intentional Intimacy time you will want to respond accordingly. If you are lower on the scale, ask yourself what you need to do to help give yourself a boost. Perhaps it’s reading some erotica, taking a bath with a nice glass of wine, or thinking about that sexy time you and your partner had in Mexico that one year. These will allow your openness to increase more and move up the positive side of the scale. Remember, you don’t need to be at a 10 to say yes to intimacy. It’s totally OK to be at a 0, which is the neutral territory. We just don’t want it to be in the negative. If after you’ve done everything that day and right before intimacy to get your brain into neutral or positive territory and it just isn’t happening, you have full permission to raincheck to a different day or negotiate a different activity. You are by no means obligated to be intimate.

Exercise: Take a few moments to write down three things that help you feel good throughout the day and 3 things you could do immediately before intimacy time to give yourself an extra boost.

Transition In the Bedroom

Even though your mind might be more open and relaxed due to the day-to-day changes you are making and the extra boost the day-of and hours before, your efforts can’t stop there. Once you are in the bedroom you now need to look at how you transition through your intimate connection with your partner. One of the most important things is to not just dive into the deep end of the pool right away. Meaning, don’t just kiss your partner, take off your clothes and 2 minutes later dive into including the genitals, penetration, and orgasm. First, including penetration and orgasm is not the goal of sex. It’s too much pressure and will move the needle of desire in the opposite direction to the negative side. Secondly, diving into things doesn’t allow your body and mind enough time to move up the continuum of pleasure.

The time of transition in the bedroom is important because it gives a women’s mind even more time to build the desire. This is because with women having a more dominant type of desire being responsive, the body often needs stimulation first before the mind fully gets on board. The mind may be at neutral when entering the bedroom so we need to give more time for desire to move up the scale. The key to this is two part: the right touch and for the right amount of time. The right touch means you are getting the soft, sensual touch you need, or perhaps the rougher and friskier type of touch on your body. This can change from one intimate playtime to another so it is important to communicate your need to your partner. It also means that these touches are happening in the right places. For many women, going straight for the genitals are often not what kickstarts the arousal and desire building. For men, a nice touch of the genitals can quickly build their arousal but for women, that’s too much too soon.

The second part is taking time. Many women get hung up the idea that they are taking too long. You not only deserve the time but also your mind and body need the time. Non-genital touch is necessary for at least 15 minutes, with genital stimulation happening for at least another 15 or more before any type of penetration is even considered. To consider the scale of -10 to 10, you want to feel your arousal and desire at about a 7 before penetration happens. This emphasizes even more why focusing on the pre-bedroom transitions are so important because it helps you start in the bedroom already higher up the scale.

Transition Out of the Bedroom

The last transition that needs to be considered, and is often neglected, is the transitioning from the end of intimacy to what’s next. What’s next may be sleep if you are playing at night. Or perhaps what is next is work or taking the kids to school if your Intentional Intimacy time is in the morning. I know it’s easy to just snooze off to sleep or jump out of bed to tackle the day, but it is important to close out the loop of intimacy. What I mean is a good ol’ cuddle. This doesn’t have to be a 10-minute cuddle, although by all means go for it. But at least one minute to be in each other's arms. The importance of this is on a hormonal level. When you both cuddle into each other your body releases the hormone Oxytocin, which is the bonding hormone. A good dose of this hormone when you are done being intimate with each other will allow the connection to linger even longer than the physical connection has. Feeling connected longer is going to then feed into a positive feedback loop of feeling close to our partner, which will help for the openness for the next time you're intimate.

The last piece of transitioning out of the bedroom is less immediately after and more between one intimate time together and the next. In this time, in conjunction with your day-to-day feel good focus mentioned at the beginning of this article, you will want to talk with your partner about your last experience. This is the information gathering time where you both can share what went well and didn’t go well so that you can use that to help the next time be even better. How is your partner going to know that you like your neck kissed unless you tell him? This also helps with the positive feedback loop because the more information you have you are helping your intimate life improve continuously from one intimate playtime to the next. I know these conversations can be vulnerable and a bit scary, which is something that I will talk about in a few posts from now. But with practice, and never aiming for perfection, conversations with your partner is an empowering thing that is essential to co-creating a wonderful intimate life in your relationship.

Things to Remember:

Transition awareness is an active not autopilot approach to intimacy
The day-to-day transitions are key for a feelgood baseline
The day of Intimacy and right before you want to add extra doses of goodies
Allowing time for your body to transition in the bedroom and arousal to build is essential for women
Cuddles and chats create a positive feedback loop

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