If you’re like most people, you tend to default to having sex at night. Studies have found that about 60% of all sexual encounters take place after the sun has gone down.
Unfortunately, night time is not always the most conducive to sex. We’re usually drained from the chaos of the day, and scrambling to clean up, cook dinner, put the kids to bed, finish up work, or exercise. There isn’t usually much energy left for intimacy!
While you may default to nighttime sex, your body might not necessarily agree with you. Your arousal levels fluctuate throughout the day, and most people tend to have a certain block of time where they feel more sexual desire than usual.
For example, some people are most amorous right when they wake up in the morning. To others, the thought of sex before their morning coffee might sound horrible! Other people get a bump in desire later in the afternoon. And others do genuinely feel most horny in the evening.
It’s a good idea to pay attention your own desire levels throughout the day so you can get a sense of when you tend to feel the most interested in sex. You may be surprised to discover that you’re aroused during an unusual time of the day.
Noting your desire levels may also help you recognize that your sex drive is higher than you originally thought. I work with a lot of women who complain about low sexual desire. While sex drives are complex and multifaceted, many of my clients have realized that their sex drives felt “low” because they were only having sex during times of the day that didn’t really work for them. Once they started prioritizing having sex at more optimal times, they realized they were more interested in sex overall!
Your Sexperiment is to track your level of desire and arousal throughout the day. You’re going to do this for the entire week, so “The Weekend Sexperiment” is a bit of a misnomer this time around!
Print out seven copies of the attached worksheet. Keep a new worksheet with you every day, and find a safe place to stash it. Set an alarm on your phone to go off every hour. Take a moment to check in with yourself and see how much desire you feel. Rate it from a scale of one to ten. You can ask yourself “how high is my arousal” or “how open would I feel to sex right now?”
After the weekend ends, take some time to review your results and see if you notice any patterns in your level of arousal. When does it tend to be the lowest? When does it tend to be the highest?
If you’re in a relationship, see how your results compare with your partners’. You and your partner can try to make adjustments to your schedules to make yourselves more available to each other during the times that you’re most interested in sex.
Happy Sexperimenting!