As someone who has done extensive work on myself, both individually and within multiple relationships, I am all too familiar with the illusion of a “honeymoon” period or the change in mentality that the day of love, Valentine’s Day, brings to relationships. What I have learnt is that for a period of time, or a single night, we tend to remember how valuable someone is and how in love we are, reconnecting to the 3 keys of passion. Then, when it's all said and done, it's back to take-out and Netflix instead of passionate intimacy, the latter of which should be something that occurs every day of the week. But have no fear, I have just the keys to help transform your relationship and reignite the passion! 

And no, I am not just going to tell you to ‘work on your relationship’. What I am going to do is encourage you to change your mindset and make your love life a hobby. Think for a moment. What is a hobby? A hobby is something that you WANT to do, you ENJOY doing it, you PRIORITISE it and you COMMIT to it. For example, working out, art classes, dance classes, reading a new cook book, all things you strive to be better at. Why would or should it be any different with your love life? What if we applied the same philosophies? After all, the only thing separating your love life and all your other relationships is the ability to be sensual. Why not take a chance and shift your thinking and focus? I want you to look at your lover and give them the gift that keeps giving. Forget the chocolates and flowers and prioritise passion. Commit to making your love life your newest and most important hobby. You’ll thank me in the end!

HERE ARE 3 KEYS TO MORE PASSION IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP:

1. EXPLORE SENSUALITY to its fullest!

If you are to master sensuality in your relationship, you need to be able to activate the kind of imagination you had at eighteen. When it didn’t matter where you both were, what mattered was that you were with each other. When you couldn’t wait to hold each other, to kiss each for hours - that’s the kind of sensuality you need to activate. Too many couples these days have lost the imagination within love making. You need to wake up all five senses, which will leave you both feeling alive! You may have reduced your sex life to the familiar and habitual, forgetting that there are two bodies, two imaginations and two hearts here that can almost do anything! It’s like playing golf 3 or 4 times every week and only playing the first hole at the same course every single time when there are eighteen other holes and millions of other courses waiting for you to discover. It’s absolutely ludicrous! So, my challenge for you is; every time you make love, do at least one to two small things differently. Novelty creates thrill, the unexpected, the exciting and the pleasurable!

2. Stop saying “I’m not in the mood”

What you may have decided is that you have issues within your relationship if you are not having sex as much as you once did. In actual fact, welcome to the club. According to Rosemary Basson, the most obvious reason people have sex is to feel emotional intimacy, physical attraction and to express love. However, long-term couples may begin to have sex from a place of sexual neutrality. What does this mean? It means that they begin to make love when neither of them are turned on. 

Let’s define a couple of things first: What does the term “turned on” mean? There are 2 keys, in my opinion, to our erotic engines, 1. The key of desire and 2. The key of arousal. 

Desire is the mental interest in making love, and arousal is the physical part. But sex drive in long-term couples is even more complex than that. There are two types of mental desire: Spontaneous desire, which is that feeling when you can’t keep your hands off your partner, and responsive desire, which arises in response to other triggers.

If you rarely feel spontaneous desire anymore, you are normal. Instead, you need to cultivate responsive desire. Instead of waiting around for spontaneous desire, a couple may choose to make love for all sorts of other reasons. Perhaps you want to feel emotionally close, or you know you’ll be relaxed and sleep more deeply afterward, or you realise it’s been a long time and you believe sex is important to your relationship. So, you choose to begin to connect sexually. Then, as you slow down, let the day fade away, and touch each other – physical arousal arises.

But when your beloved approaches and gives you that look as you as you are frying eggs and thinking about your taxes, you probably say “I’m not in the mood.” Of course you are not in the mood. The good news? If you choose to make passion a priority and say “not right now, babe, but ask me later,” you can get into the mood by choice. If you want to get your erotic engine going, you first need to decide you want to take yourself for a spin. Take out the mental desire key and turn it, which is the first step to getting turned on.

3. Two Words: SCHEDULE SEX 

I once read this piece by Dr Cheryl, about the importance of scheduling sex.

"I was standing in line for a raw juice at Tony WHO’s event, Date with Destiny, last December when two charming men and their lovely wives bounded up and said “Hey! Dr. Cheryl! We loved your teaching at the Platinum Relationship event in Maui. Can you guess the most important thing you taught us?” With a smile I replied, “schedule sex?” “YES!” they exclaimed with high fives and hugs all around. Apparently, they’d done their homework since the event, and they’d been having sex regularly. They were all very happy about it – heck, they even paid for my juice!"

Remember tip number two, if you wait around to spontaneously feel like making love – you probably won’t. So make sex a hobby and schedule a weekly date. It doesn’t matter if you are not turned on when you get to the bedroom – just connect, kiss, and begin to create the passion you desire. No cupid required.