Keeping It Hott

[Mike_d]

Hey folks, I am glad to see this area and decided to post a question just for us long-term folks....

So, how do you keep the heat going in YOUR relationship? It's common that many people begin to slide down on the freqency and intimacy of love making over time, so if you have decided to break the cycle, how have you done it and did was it hard to get your SO to pick it up or were they more than willing to put your love life back on high heat?

[Mikayla1]

This is a GREAT new section of the forum!

Well, honestly in my marriage, our sex life has maintained a pretty good consistency and HOT level from my side. My hubby went through a state about 2 years back where he was in a new job and was so stressed that sex just fell to the back burner for him. I was confused and a bit scared, but I wasn't about to give up sex. So, I just took some advice from a wise friend of mine and started to keep sex on HIS mind. I would take showers with him in the morning and give him a nice blowjob, I would massage him at home after work while letting him relax. I would surprise him by standing naked in the doorway of our house if our son was out with friends or family. Basically, I took sex off the backburner and put it on the powerburner!

For me, and for us, keeping sex hot is about creativity and about dedication to your marriage or relationship. I love my hubby, and we do have moments of lapses - but I strive to not let them go too long. I love to spice things up with a new outfit, role playing or attacking him in the parking lot somewhere...I just keep me and sex in his mind always and our sex stays HOT!

Mikayla

[clewing]

Well, for a while the military kept our sex life hot--when you are separated for a time, whether it is a few weeks TDY or a year for deployment, that sex when you get back together is better than newlywed sex (because you have learned more about each other)! But for 31 years my husband and I have never stopped experimenting with new ideas (recently bring toys into the mix) and new ways to excite each other. And, we hug, kiss, caress each other a lot through out the day. We don't wait until we decide to have sex to be passionate with each other.

[bkanasky]

Communication is the key to keeping things hot, both inside and outside of the bed room. My wife and I talk about sex a lot, but not in the bedroom. We discuss what we like, what we don't like, what each of us can do better...etc. We also try new things here and there, which is always fun.

[cberkau]

Dear Folks,

I'm new to tootimid, and this is my first post. First, I thank everyone for your sharing and caring attitudes, pointers, advice and information all over these forums. Wonderful!

I try lots of different things. It may not sound like much, but lately my favorite is every week or two I get a thick, soft down comforter and pillow, clean off the bar, and help my wife aboard and lay her back. With the bar lights on very bright, I carefully groom and shave her. She loves to watch how careful and intent I am! Once done, I gently wash, rinse and dry her off.

My rewards are manyfold: I absolutely love doing it; a thorough job enabling her to only lightly trim until next time. I am amazed how beautiful and sexy my wife is. I turn the lights down a little lower, and spend 1/2 to 1 hour bringing her to ecstasy orally - my absolute favorite and I feel so fulfilled and gratified! Lastly, I end up absolutely dripping with precum, ten times what I normally produce with any other foreplay, which my wife says is very sweet for some reason. It must be, because she always eagerly wants to reciprocate when I lift her down once her strength finally returns.

It also encourages great communication, so important as billy said. This is one of the hottest things we've done lately.

[Valntyn]

It's lots of little things here that add up... We flirt and play all day long, both physically and over the phone. He calls me several times a day; he has an hour drive each way to/from work and he calls before he leaves work or to tell me he got there safe. He also calls during lunch and oftentimes I get surprise "Hello, I love you" calls. I get up early with him in the mornings to spend that few minutes with him before he heads off to work and pack his lunch for him; sometimes slipping in a note for him to find later in the day. He never leaves the house for work without kisses and hugs (and laughter when I keep pulling him back for more or when I flash him through the window) and he gets greeted every night, no matter how late, with kisses and hugs (and laughter when I keep pulling him back for more or strip him of his work clothes, hehe). I love to grab his tush and he gets the biggest kick out of it when I do it in public. We always reach for each other's hand to hold when we're walking.

We talk about everything and anything. I'm always telling him how proud of him I am and we both often tell each other how lucky we are to have the other's love. And when I started coming here to TooTimid, we found even more to talk about! We now talk about sex more than we ever did -- we even (after 13 years of being together) had a conversation the other day after a shared shower about how to improve my hold during handjobs! *chuckle* I said, "Teach me?" and he did!

Our sex life started out red hot, but fizzled for a few years due to issues with me. It's gotten back up there, and every little thing we do to tell the other we love each other only improves it. We shower together -- sometimes having sex, sometimes just massaging and relaxing with each other. We thank each other the next day for the delicious sex we had the night before. We teasingly remind each other of something funny that might have happened (either during sex or no) long, long ago. We try new things and new places. And we just have fun. Being close, open and having fun with each other are our keys.

Might not sound like a lot to some, but when my legs are numb and don't work and my throat is raw from yelling during multiple orgasms, I'd say it works for us.

[Valntyn]

Thanks for the nice words, Howard.

Unfortunately, I probably can’t pinpoint the exact reason for the “fizzle.” If I’m going to be honest with myself, I think I probably went through a bout of depression. For what reason, I’m not sure; I just know I wasn’t happy with much and because I wasn’t happy, I was finding MANY things about my husband that I wasn’t happy with - probably because he was the main/major person I saw day-to-day, there wasn't actually anything wrong with him. This was really odd to me, because he and I are best friends and had been close friends since we met in high school in 1989-90!

Anyway... we’d go six months or more without sex. I just didn’t want it. It caused a riff -- what husband wants to hear, “No,” over and over and over because his wife doesn’t want him touching her, especially when before, we'd been having sex multiple times a day? We got in some fights, talked once or twice about giving up... but neither one of us really wanted to lose the other.

One day it finally clicks. “Girl, you better turn your ass around or you’re going to lose the best thing you’ve ever had happen in your life.” It was a struggle -- literally a struggle -- but I worked “one day at a time” (to borrow a popular phrase) to dig myself out of the pit and like my husband again. Sounds horrible, doesn’t it? I KNEW I liked him, even though I didn’t feel like I did. And I KNEW I loved him, even though I didn’t feel like I did. And I KNEW I was going to lose him if I didn’t work at fixing things.

So I did. I worked hard to thank him for taking out the trash instead of berating him for forgetting to empty the little trash can in the bathroom. I worked hard to rekindle the physical relationship (and hey, what do you know, it felt GOOD when I let him touch me! *chuckle*). And I worked hard at sitting still and talking to him about things instead of going into another room to do something else.

Eventually it wasn’t work. Eventually we made love more often. Eventually we laughed a lot together. Eventually we talked and held hands and enjoyed being in each others company like we had before. Eventually we fell in love again.

When I first came to TooTimid, I found it odd that so many people wrote that sometimes you have to WORK at LOVE. Love is love, you shouldn’t have to WORK to find it. ... But yah, sometimes you do. I get that now. And it’s so worth it. And once you realize that, it isn’t WORK anymore. It’s total pleasure.

I think this is the first time I’ve actually written all this out. I don’t think I ever even wrote about this in my journal back then. And now I’m actually crying. *chuckle* I’m very thankful for the second chance I got with my husband. I think I’ll go surprise-call him at work just to tell him so.

Sorry I rambled. *laugh* I hope I gave what you were looking for, though.

(EDIT: Right as I was about to post this and call my husband, he walked through the door -- home from work more than four hours early and with flowers for me!! TELL me I'm not a lucky girl. )

[clewing]

Valntyn, thank you so much for sharing your story. It shows marriage can work, but it is not always easy.

As much as I talk wonderful about my husband, we've been through a three rough spells.

Most recently it was job related stress, especially the last year I worked (I've been a full time student for the past 14 months). He stuck it out with me, though--the moodiness, the anger (take it out on him, he's there, and I can't take it out on people at work), the lack of sexual desire (that changed within two weeks of losing my job).

Another time was when I was really sick with hypoactive thyroid and was a total bitch. The problem kept getting worse for eight years, while the military doctors told me there was nothing wrong with me. When finally diagnosed my doctor went back in my medical records eight years prior and found blood work showing underactive thyroid, yet it had gone unnoticed all that time, even with me having the problem in my family (three generations) and begging the doctors to check. The ironic thing was through my last two pregancies, my thyroid leveled off properly whiile pregnant, so it wan't caught during those blood tests. He would stay gone at work until he knew I'd be in bed. The next morning (being military) he'd be off and gone about the time I was getting up with the children. But he stuck with me. The only thing I was mad about was after the fact and I realized how close I had come to abusing our children. I never spanked them or hit them, because I felt that if I started I wouldn't be able to stop, so I screamed all the time; they are adults now and still don't remember this, and I've told them if they ever do, please know it wasn't my fault! Anyway, once on medication and sane again, I was mad at him for leaving the kids alone with me so much, knowing I was teetering on the brink of something bad. I also had a hard time staying awake unless I was standing up. Towards the end I even fell asleep sitting on the toliet. I slept almost every minute I didn't have to be awake to watch over the children, then I just constantly had to stand, literally, to stay awake. I was only this bad about six-eight months, it wasn't the entire eight years. And he didn't know what to do when the only access to medical care we had was telling me I wasn't eating right or exercising enough, that was my only problem. I was gaining weight to the tune of 40 pounds the last year, eating 1200 calories or less a day (I kept a journal to confornt a doctor with, when it finally got diagnosed). Over 100 pounds in all.

Here's to the significant others who are worth fighting for! Let us never forget to tell them how much we love them! And special cudos to the ones who have loved us through our problems, too.

[clewing]

Thyroid problems run a myriad of symptoms, including low libido, which I suffered from, too. My hair was brittle, skin so dry I could barely stand to touch it, fingernails brittle, monthly cycle off, I literally hoped to die. I also developed a growth on my thyroid (not a goiter and not malignant, thank God) that still bothers me, but not enough for surgery. I just have to eat smaller bites and chew more, which is better for me anyway.

The anger I felt was just an inability to control my emotions. Plus imagine the stress of forcing yourself to stay awake, forcing yourself to eat, and wondering if it wasn't thyroid just what the heck was it? After starting on medication I never felt that uncontrolable rage any more, and rarely raised my voice at my children again. It was amazing what one little pill can do. My husband was so thrilled just a week or so into my being medicated he stopped by the clinic to thank the doctor for giving him his wife back! And he started staying home a lot more!

But yes, second opinions are invaluable. If I had known then what I know now, I would have done something in order to get a second opinion.

[whittibo]

I too have under active thyroid and finally found a Dr. (my OBGYN in fact) that would treat me for Wilson's thyroid disorder and it worked wonders. Oddly enough, this past week when I was most emotional and sobbing daily, I recalled I hadn't been taking my nightly dose of cytomel! Once I started I felt much better. I know that different times of the month I need more, and usually just dose higher when I see the symptoms, but with everything else going on, I didn't see the symptoms till too late.

Anyway, my story is much like everyone else's. Sex was boring and plain vanilla for too long that it was easier to just go without it rather then do all the work for very little return. Plus with small children hanging on you all day long and even suckling you, the last thing you want is to go to bed and have someone else sucking on you and hanging on you. So that's what started it for me, sex wasn't good enough to make it a priority in my life.

Hubby and I have been together for nearly 21 years and I read some posts on my forum about finding your inner sex goddess and it hit me like a ton of bricks that I used to BE a sex goddess (in my own mind that is) I loved sex, loved being loved and held, and wanted that back. I also was at the point that every little thing my husband would do, right down to his breathing, would about send me over the edge. I used to roll my eyes a lot at things he would do, or wouldn't do.

Anyway, he is worth fighting for. He's an amazing man, and loves me more then I think I will ever know. Sometimes he doesn't know how to show it, but he still has been a wonderful husband and father and he deserves an amazing sex life, and so do I. Why live in a loveless marriage, and divorce was never an option. So it was either fix what was broken, or live like strangers together.

So, because the passion is new to us, how I PLAN on keeping it alive is to always cuddle, always kiss, always go to bed nekid, hold hands, welcome him home, rub his back and feet daily, just spend time with him. Now I find myself tingling when he touches me, it's an amazing feeling and hope it never goes away and only gets better as we both work through our inhibitions. I also think I will try to find new ways to add more erotic passion in our sex life. If it's buying a new toy or new clothes or creams or something, I will always be on the look out for fun things we can try together.

Our kids are almost 14, almost 12 and just turned 8, so in 10-15 years from now, I want to have a relationship with my beloved, one that will keep us both longing for each other when there isn't any "reason" to still be married per se.

[clewing]

It's always good to know you are not alone in different things--whether it is medical problems, or wanting to rekindle passion. It sounds like the two of you are on your way back to where you should be. Congratulations! And hurrah for us for not giving up!