Is Scheduling Sex Actually Hot? Tips from a Sex Therapist (and Her Husband) 

Let’s face it: We don’t talk about sex enough. We say “communication is key,” but are we really practicing it?

Sex therapist Vanessa Marin and her “regular dude” husband Xander have devoted their lives to talking about intimacy and relationships. On Well with Arielle Lorre, they dismantled the biggest myths that keep couples from their hottest, happiest sex lives—and boy, are there a lot of them. Here, we’re breaking down the top five misconceptions.

MYTH #1: Relationships should be effortless.

Reality:

Vanessa points to a common myth; that genuine connection with the right person means love and sex flows naturally. “Think about every sex scene you’ve seen on TV and movies,” she explains. “It always looks so natural, so effortless. There’s never any communication. If the characters are talking, that means something is wrong or bad or they’re making some sort of bad joke about it. So, we don’t get any examples of couples actually talking to each other or actually putting an effort in.”

In reality, talking about your relationship, and especially your sex life, is the key to making it last. 

While they certainly had an “undeniable,” “electric” chemistry when they first met, Vanessa and Xander say their relationship now is “more connected” than ever before. 

“We went through other stuff, like orgasm challenges, performance issues, I struggled to initiate, I couldn’t ask for what I wanted in the bedroom,” Vanessa says. But by talking about what they liked and wanted, they created a new kind of passion that made their connection even better than those early days of falling in love.

“Neither of us are keeping any secrets from each other,” Xander says. “And it’s good to know, like, yeah, she knows everything about me. I know everything about her. I’m not holding anything back. And we love each other.”

Even the mechanics of sex itself aren’t totally instinctual. “So many of us feel like we’re just supposed to automatically be great in bed, but I love to say that sex is a skill,” Vanessa explains. “Like learning how to play the guitar, learning how to speak Spanish, it’s something that we have to learn.” That’s part of the reason that Vanessa and Xander began teaching online courses: “We need to take time to learn, but it’s so tricky. Because where do you learn how to give a great blowjob? Where do you learn how to get in and out of doggy style? So we love teaching those specific nuances and logistics.”

If the idea of a class on blowjobs makes you blush, maybe that’s a sign you need to work on your communication. Read on to learn how!

MYTH #2: Desire happens spontaneously.

Reality:

“We hear so many incorrect ideas about how desire should actually work,” Vanessa says. “ A lot of us just want that desire to happen spontaneously, to just kind of feel it out of nowhere. So, one great starting point that we always like to talk about is the two sex drive types.”

The Marins explain that some people experience spontaneous arousal—mental desire comes first, then physical arousal. “Anytime you see sex on TV and the movies, that’s always spontaneous desire. Somebody’s just going about their day, and ooh, the idea of sex sounds good, let me go find my partner. So that’s how most of us think it’s supposed to work,” Vanessa says. 

However, responsive desire—which experts say 80 percent of women experience—works differently.

“We have to feel arousal in our body first before the idea of sex sounds good. So if you’ve ever had the experience of being in the middle of sex or even at the end of sex and you catch yourself thinking, ‘This is really fun. Why do I never seem to want this?’ That is responsive desire.” Women often criticize themselves for not experiencing unprompted desire. “You’re not broken, there’s nothing wrong with you,” Vanessa assures us. “You just have a different desire type.”

MYTH #3: Sex should be spur-of-the-moment.

Reality:

For those with a responsive desire, sex that happens spontaneously and out of nowhere is often not a good fit. 

“If you go to somebody who has a responsive desire and you ask them, ‘Hey, do you want to have sex right now?’ 99 times out of 100, the answer is going to be no, because they haven’t had any physical stimulation yet.” 

If you have a partner with a responsive desire, don’t be offended if you try to initiate sex and they don’t go for it. Try making a plan beforehand.

“Most of us end up in relationships where the idea is, okay, we can’t talk about this, but the only time we can talk about it is that split second where one partner probably spontaneously thinks, ‘Oh, I want to have sex. I’m going to ask my partner.’” Xander adds. ”It’s like you are taking a class and there’s no exams. There’s only pop quizzes. Like all you’re doing are like surprise pop quizzes and like, no one’s going to want to take that class, right?”

“I’ve been playing around a lot lately with this idea that I actually don’t think we should initiate in the moment. I think we should create more space in between the initiation and the actual sex,” Vanessa says. “Think about when you go on vacation. It’s so much fun leading up to the vacation because you’re like picturing it in your head, like, ‘Oh, I’m leaving in three weeks now. Oh, that hotel, I’m so excited to go stay at. Oh, we have that dinner reservation. I can’t wait.’ You build up so much excitement leading into it.”

MYTH #4: If you tell your partner what you want, they’ll remember every time.

Reality:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the key to getting around this mental block is communication. “Try to think about one to three times that your partner initiated sex in the past that you really enjoyed,” Vanessa suggests. “Initiation is supposed to feel like an invitation, something we want to say yes to, and these styles can vary wildly.” 

Some respond to the “take care of me” approach to get in the mood. “You like when your partner does things for you,” Vanessa explains. Maybe they’ve cleaned the kitchen without needing to be asked, taken over the kids’ bedtime routine, or drawn you a bath. “That feeling of like, you’re taking care of me, you’re pampering me, it’s more about that like emotional connection.” 

Conversely, “Another person might like a much more physical initiation, like, ‘Just push me up against the wall and have your way with me,’” Vanessa says.

Instead of seeing it as awkward, use these conversations as an opportunity. “It feels fun for your partner, like, ‘Ooh, I’m getting the cheat code now,’” Vanessa jokes. 

But don’t expect one conversation to solve everything. “I think you just have to keep talking about it,” Xander says. “It’s not enough to just answer these questions once at the beginning of your relationship, because the reality is it’s so easy to forget things. We see the world through our eyes with our own biases and our own experience. It’s one thing to hear something from someone once. Most of us aren’t going to remember it perfectly. Maybe we do for a couple weeks or months, but then, you know, we start to go back to seeing things through our own filter.”

MYTH #5:  Women should orgasm from penetration alone.

Reality:

“The reality is that 85 to 90 percent of women can’t orgasm from penetration alone,” Vanessa says. “And that’s because when you’re having penetration, you’re getting stimulation of your vagina. Your vagina is just not wired to feel very much sensation,” she explains. And it’s a good thing, too! “Think about how painful people always talk about childbirth being. We don’t want that to be a super innervated area, it would be even more excruciating.”

If women enjoy sex more, they’ll desire it more. To ensure this, “We need to make sure that we are stimulating the part of their body that is hardwired to feel orgasm.” And that folks is the clitoris, which “sadly is not getting very much stimulation or attention during penetration.” Vanessa continues: “Intercoursee for a woman is like playing with a man’s balls. It might be fun, it might be kind of pleasurable, but it’s certainly not anywhere near the level of stimulation you need to reach orgasm.”

Xander adds the male perspective: “Especially amongst men, there’s this idea that being able to give her an orgasm with just your penis is like, the be-all end-all.” Porn and faked orgasms are to blame for this inconsistency, he says. “Unfortunately, so many men get this in their heads because they’ve had early sexual experiences with someone where that person hasn’t been entirely realistic with them about how pleasurable or not it really was.”

As for sourcing your sexual moves from porn, Vanessa says, “It’s just not realistic.” Porn is entertainment, not a how-to manual. “Trying to watch porn and learn how to have sex is like watching Fast and Furious and thinking that’s how you drive.”

So what’s next?

The truth is, we’ve all absorbed myths about sex and relationships. From porn to rom-coms, there’s a LOT to unlearn. But there’s no one-size-fits all answer for sexual compatibility, either. The only way to have really amazing sex with your partner is to talk about what works and what doesn’t. And if you can push past the awkwardness, the connection will be soooo worth it. 

For more sexual myth-busting and tips, check out The Ins and Outs with Ruby and Meghan and tune into the full episode with Vanessa and Xander on Well with Arielle Lorre.