My face squished up into an ugly cringe. My stomach tied itself into a knot.

“That is SO FREAKING CHEESY!”

I was reacting to a collection of sex tips I had been reading online. Ideas for how to “spice things up” in the bedroom.

Like so many of the sex articles you find on the internet, the vast majority of these tips were painfully cheesy.

The particular tip that had caught my attention was for a straight couple. The male partner was supposed to bring his female partner over to a mirror and have sex with her in front of it. In the heat of passion, he was instructed to pull out a necklace that he had previously bought for her, and drape that necklace around her throat.

Now bear with me for a minute if you think this sounds hot, but to me, it sounded hokey and cheesy. I imagined my husband deciding he was going to do this, searching for a necklace (and trying to find something I would actually like), hiding it somewhere near the bed, and trying to bust it out in a non-awkward way, and slip it over my head mid-thrust. It felt so contrived and over the top!

Because my reaction to this sex tip was so strong, I made myself slow down and try to get curious about my own feelings. I hadn’t just read the suggestion and thought, “nah, on to the next one.” I had stopped to laugh and make fun of the idea. I had rolled my eyes. I had actually yelled out loud that it was cheesy!

That very word – cheesy – is one that I hear a lot as a sex therapist. My clients always complain about sex tips being cheesy. Sometimes they’ll balk at one of my suggestions in a session. “I just can’t do it”, they’ll say, “it sounds too cheesy!”

So I started thinking to myself, “what does cheesy actually mean when it comes to sex?”

I asked my husband about it, and he said, “maybe something seems cheesy if it feels inauthentic. Like your partner can tell that that’s not something you would naturally do.”

At first I nodded in agreement. That’s why the idea of him giving me a necklace in the middle of sex seemed so cheesy to me – because I knew it’s not something he would naturally think to do. I felt embarrassed about the effort and planning involved in pulling off something like that.

But then it hit me… I was using words like “natural” and “effort”. Those were my clues that I needed to rethink my reactions.

We’ve all been socialized to believe that perfect sex should just happen, spontaneously, magically, without any effort or forethought whatsoever.

Even though my sex therapy training has helped me realize that those are unrealistic and toxic beliefs, I still fall for them sometimes. And this was an area where I was still falling for that same old BS. I was writing off this sex tip because I didn’t think it felt “natural”, and because I was embarrassed by the effort involved.

So I challenged myself to try to look at it through a different lens. What if I could see all of that effort as a sign of how much my husband cares about me, and how invested he is in keeping our sex life new, fun, and surprising?

Even if he fumbled with pulling the necklace out in the moment, even if I actually hated the necklace itself, could it still be a playful moment of connection for us? Could it wind up being a silly memory that we got to share for the rest of our lives?

All couples in long-term relationships complain about their sex lives getting boring. But at the same time, so many of us are unwilling to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones a bit, and make the effort to keep sex exciting.

If you only do the things that you feel totally and completely comfortable with in the bedroom, your sex life will get stale and predictable very quickly.

I’m telling you this story for a reason. This month’s topic is all about trying new things in the bedroom. It’s about making an active effort with our partners. It’s about pushing our comfort zones a little bit, and challenging ourselves to try things we might have previously written off as too cheesy.

It’s about taking these risks as an effort to create a sex life that’s exciting, playful, passionate, and surprising.

More to come next week, including another challenge!