New Year, New Sex Life: How to Set Sexy Intentions for the New Year
By Grace Crawford-Smith
A new year can be a great time to take stock of different parts of your life, but do we take time to think about how we would like to have sex in a new year?
Sex, just like any other domain, can be an important area to get intentional about as you set your intentions for the year ahead. If you’ve never spent time or energy on getting clear on how you want your sex life to look going forward, perhaps adding sex and pleasure to your list of things you’d like to focus on this year could be a game changer!
It is important however, to remember that sometimes when it comes to sex and pleasure, inflicting strong goals on ourselves can add a lot of unnecessary pressure and stress where we’re literally trying to remove the pressure and stress. Let’s spend a moment differentiating between goals and intentions.
Goals vs Intentions
To figure out how to improve your sex life in the new year, it is first important to distinguish between goals and intentions.
SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) goals might be recommended in many areas of life, such as work, fitness, or finance. However, when it comes to sex, specific and measurable outcome-oriented goals can really get in the way of pleasure, presence, connection, play and a sense of erotic aliveness.
We might have desires and an idea of how we want things to look, but clinging to a certain outcome as a measure of success when it comes to sex can lead to even more difficulty in our relationships to our bodies and pleasure.
So how then can we create improvements in our sex life without feeling like we’re in a performance review with our manager?
The answer may lie in setting intentions.
An intention, compared to a goal, is more of a guiding direction. An intention may be a value or focus we would like to draw our attention to in an experience, without the added pressure of a specific outcome that hijacks our experience of the present.
An intention is quite broad, with space for multiple experiences to arise in the moment. An intention is not a pass/fail test, but rather, an intention provides us with a purpose, without narrowing our experience.
I have noticed that many clients struggle with goals getting in the way of enjoyable sex because the possibility of failure is inherently on the table when a goal is in mind. Instead, I encourage these clients to create intentions. An intention is about the journey, not the destination.
For example, many of my clients who have challenges with erections describe a sense of self determination and capability in all other areas of their life. These clients are the type to set a goal and make sure they achieve it. But with sex, this doesn’t work!
In fact, these qualities seem to create problems in their erotic lives. The focus on a goal or outcome can increase anxiety, reduce pleasure and sensation, and obstruct connection. A goal may even lead to someone avoiding sex, as they are worried they won’t be able to achieve it, or they simply might not have the energy to try.
Eroticism inherently involves surrender, curiosity, exploration, newness, surprises, aliveness, and openness, so you can see how this clashes with a more narrow, specific, goal-oriented mindset.
If we return to the erection example, a helpful intention may be to down-regulate the nervous system (bring about a sense of relaxation in the body) before and during sex. Another helpful intention might be to focus on pleasure and connection, regardless of what is happening to the penis in different moments.
How to Use Goals Effectively
With all of this in mind, it is still totally okay to create goals that may be measurable and outcome-oriented, the key here is to release the timing.
For example, you may be a vulva-owner who would love to experience squirting. This is a great goal that can be celebrated! There are steps you can take and information you can absorb to help you move towards this goal.
However, if you’re really trying to squirt on a certain day, during a certain play session (solo or partnered), this may get in the way of your ability to be present, feel pleasure, and connect to others, and likely won’t lead to squirting.
So, absolutely set goals if it feels good, but hold them lightly and release any attachment to timing if you want them to work for you. In the moment, focus on intentions, and return to your intention if you notice you are getting distracted.
Helpful questions to discover intentions:
What emotions would I like to feel?
What am I curious about exploring?
Where would I like to focus my awareness?
What sense (sound, touch, smell, sight, taste) would I like to feel into?
Cheat Sheet - Goals vs Intentions
Goals that commonly backfire:
I want to orgasm
I want to stay hard
I want to make my partner orgasm
I want to of squirt
I want to last a certain amount of time
I want to endure certain positions, even if they become uncomfortable
I want us to have sex together twice a week
Examples of how to turn these goals into intentions:
My intention is to feel more pleasure
My intention is to calm my nervous system to relax into sexual play
My intention is to connect with my partner
My intention is to give my body time and space to build arousal
My intention is to communicate my desires and boundaries
My intention is to listen to my body’s signals
My intention is to communicate openly about our desire levels