“How did we do this to ourselves again?” Xander asked, an embarrassed look on his face.

“I don’t know,” I responded. I hopped out of bed and started pulling on my clothes. “We have to learn our lesson!” 

Xander and I had just tried to have sex, and failed miserably. 

And we both knew exactly why.

We had set ourselves up for failure.

We were meeting some friends for dinner, and had to leave in about 15 minutes. We were both feeling frisky, and it had seemed like a fun idea to try to have a quickie before dashing out the door. 

But what actually happened was that I started getting stressed about being late, because I hate being late. Xander was stressed about seeing me stressed, and he couldn’t rise to the occasion. We both got so focused on trying to just (insert Tim Gunn voice here) “make it work” that we completely disconnected from each other. After just a few minutes of trying, we gave up, both feeling defeated.

It was frustrating for both of us in the moment itself, but what was even more frustrating was that we should have known better. 

We’ve tried having sex in situations like this many times before, where there were just a few minutes to squeeze in a quickie. But it has never been sexy for us! We’re just not good under time pressure!

Xander and I know what we need to create the right environment for sex, but we both ignored that valuable information!

Today, I want to show you how you can avoid making the same unfortunate mistakes we kept making. (For the record, we’ve now promised each other to stop trying to have sex when we have somewhere to be soon after!)

So let’s talk about how you can create the right environment for sex. 

A huge part of your sexual self-discovery is understanding what you need to set yourself up for sexual success. 

(As a funny side note, Xander’s best man gave a toast at our wedding where he wished us a successful marriage, but he stumbled over his words and accidentally said sex-cess-full! Now that I think of it, sex-cess could be a funny podcast name!)

Anyway, today I want to talk about discovering whicht contexts make sex feel good for you.

What do you need to have in place in order to feel excited about and enjoy sex?

For Xander and I, a major one is knowing that we have plenty of time. 

Everyone is different, but here are some ideas to get you started.

As you read over that list, try to pick about 3-5 dynamics. You may also have some ideas of your own that I haven’t already listed.

If you’re in a relationship, you can show this to your partner and ask them to come up with their list. Then, you can share your answers with each other and talk how you can each support each other in what you need to have more sex-cess ;)