Sexual Healing - Ready to reignite your pleasure zone?

First published in the New Zealand Women's Day Magazine, 27th October 2025 (edited version)

As relationships move from the honeymoon phase, where you can’t keep your hands off each other, and evolve into something long lasting, it’s common - but often unexpected - for women to experience a drop in sexual desire and pleasure.

As women, we often find ourselves juggling a career, managing a household, looking after kids, and putting everyone else’s needs ahead of our own. It’s understandable that when we are stressed and time poor, we might not feel like making time for sexual intimacy - particularly if the sex that we do make space for is feeling boring, unsatisfying, or stale (very common complaints from women).

While it’s not necessarily the be all and end all, sexual satisfaction is known to be an important element to overall relationship satisfaction. But that aside, there are so many health benefits that come from regular sexual intimacy and orgasm, that it’s well worth our while to try to find a way (back) to enjoying more pleasurable intimacy.

So how do we reclaim that passion from years gone by, and dial up the pleasure? As a sex coach and educator, let me give you a few hot and spicy tips:

1.      It takes time

It sounds simple – but taking control of our own pleasure starts with time.

If you are trying to squeeze in time for sexual intimacy between cooking dinner and doing the washing, inevitably it will end up being rushed and unenjoyable. Women take time to get into a state of relaxation and pleasure, and when we have a million things on our mind - release will be hard to come by.

So - schedule time. Plan an evening (or at least an hour) where there are no distractions, no looming chores, and no kids to attend to. Spend quality time with your partner, enjoying each other’s presence and re-kindling that feeling of closeness.

As you start to relax and enjoy that closeness, rather than falling into the standard course of action, take it slow, and mix things up. Spend time kissing and touching each other, without racing toward “traditional” intercourse. Instead, focus on being present and enjoying the moment. Foreplay doesn’t need to be the entrée – this is your time to experiment with it as the main course.

2.      Say it louder

An unfortunate fact is that women don’t come with an instruction book of what turns us on, or what will lead us to climax. We’re all different, with our own bodies, and our own preferences. And men are coming in blind most of the time – so tell your partner what you like! It’s completely normal for speaking your wants and desires out loud to feel embarrassing, or difficult, but it’s important that we take responsibility for our own pleasure.

So let’s put on our big girl panties, and start telling our partners what’s doing it for us, and what’s not. If it does feel difficult - start with small steps. Things like  – “Your touch feels nice”, or, “I like it when you kiss my neck like that” - are great ways to get the conversation (and your pleasure) flowing.

As you do this more and more, you’ll find both your confidence in having these kinds of conversations, and the trust between you and your partner, will grow. Once you’ve got that base level of strong communication and trust, it’s much easier to then move forwards with things that will add even more spice.

3.      Treat yourself

We can’t expect men to improve their skills in the bedroom if we are giving them mixed signals by faking enjoyment when it’s not actually doing it for us – and the research shows that the majority of women admit to faking orgasms. Let’s make a promise to each other now, for the good of womenkind – stop faking orgasms!

Men often haven’t been given education on just how important clitoral stimulation is (or where the clitoris actually is!), but the reality is - only a third of women can orgasm from traditional penis in vagina intercourse. Most of us do need additional clitoral stimulation to get to where we want to go. An easy tip for dialling up the pleasure – with your partner or without - is to purchase a clitoral vibrator. Research shows that women who have vibrators have more orgasms. So go on, treat yourself!

If your partner feels intimidated, remind him that toys can be seen as an enhancement to sexual intimacy with your partner, rather than a replacement.