Qualities of a Great Lover

It's the kind of sex where you surprise yourself and your partner goes, huh, I hadn't seen that facet of you before that keeps you both coming back. That has you go, yeah, I could rally. That allows you to call up the energy at the end of the day when you're both tired to go, yeah, let's have a little adventure together. Because I never know what's going to happen and I like that. Hi, welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host, Michelle Lisenberry Christensen. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help powerful women and those who love them to create the intimacy and intensity they really want in bed and in life. Together, we navigate the tensions between our desire and our devotions, between our wildness and our security with our eyes wide open. This podcast is designed to help you create more closeness, ease pleasure and justice in your relationship. And we do it by blending wisdom from the fields of sexuality and spirituality, trauma and self regulation, and intersectional feminism. I'm so glad you're here. In today's episode, I want to initiate the conversation about what makes a great lover. Because there's so many misconceptions people hold about what they would have to become or attain to be a really epic lover inside their long term relationship. And I am here to dispel those myths once and for all. This episode is flanked by two gorgeous sibling episodes. Our last episode was about creating Turn on and our next episode is going to be about the four core obstacles to being fully present and available for the kind of erotic connection that you want, or maybe that you don't really know what they're talking about, but that your partner really wants and is asking for. Together, these three episodes can really help you in your intimate life. If you're going to take on what I'm sharing here and make it your own, these episodes will help you feel more pleasure and turn on more confidence, less performance anxiety and pressure, and more security that your connection can grow through the years instead of deteriorating as your lives and your bodies change over time. So let's dive into today's topic. These four qualities of a great lover. There's nothing in here like six pack abs or body measurements or the ability to tie a cherry stem into a knot with your tongue or squirt ping pong balls out of any of your orifices. Please. There's an old saying, it's not how long your pencil, but how large you sign your name that really pertains here. These have nothing to do with Your equipment, which is one of the big misconceptions. And although a degree of knowledge about sexual anatomy and about your own and your partner sexual response patterns is useful, I want to assure you those things are pretty simple to acquire once you've got the other pieces in place. What I'm going to show you is what it takes to feel comfortable initiating and talking about sex. What makes you irresistible to your partner and turns them on to high heaven. What makes you feel confident and playful and excited and relaxed in the moment during sexual encounters with your spouse. And what makes you resilient in the face of the kinds of goofy stuff that goes down for everybody in bed so that you can roll with it and keep having fun rather than getting stuck in your head or completely losing the flow. This is the approach that Kurt and I have used in our own relationship for more than 24 years. And it's helped us to heal a whole lot of painful and frustrating patterns. And this is the same approach that has helped hundreds and hundreds of long term couples to create more confidence, ease and passion in their sex lives. But the thing that breaks my heart is that so many couples who have been together for a while are living with this nagging sexual frustration or sometimes an excruciating amount of, of distance and pain around sexuality because they just don't understand what it takes to be a great lover and how very close they actually already are to being able to be their unique version of that. So they keep trying sex tricks from magazines, or they buy more lingerie or new sex toys, or they go away for the weekend or they read yet another book, or they kind of give up entirely and say, well, we have a good life in general, so. Or they tell themselves, you know what, maybe long term marriage just inevitably cools off to this kind of lukewarm love. But if you want to go from that kind of frustration and resignation and sexual boredom to having a truly nourishing body, mind, spirit, connection, and you want to have more fun and ease in bed and feel like a sexual rock star with your spouse, even though nobody else might know that on the street, then this is the episode for you. There are four qualities of a great lover. We're going to talk about each of those qualities in turn. The first is body fascination. The second is identity. The third is presence. And the fourth is energy. I'm going to walk you through all those in a little bit more detail. So body fascination. Everybody who's a truly great lover seems to share in common the trait that they adore their and Their partner's humanity. They embrace right where they are and right where their partner is, Their body shape and size, the way that it smells, the way that it tastes, the way that it feels. They enjoy the heck out of their own body, and they're just unapologetic about it. And everybody has differences in our ability, whether it's the flexibility of your hamstrings or how long it takes you to orgasm. Lots of people have judgments about, like, it takes me too long, I orgasm too fast. And, you know, we have these pathological terms for those things where we pass judgment sort of in an official, clinical way on those things. But truly great lovers refuse to do that. They just embrace how they are. And if something happens in an unexpected way in the bedroom, they roll with it and sort of say them's the breaks. Kind of like when you burn pancakes, you just go, okay, we're throwing out that batch, and I'm going to mix up some more batter and keep going. They know that they have neurological differences. They have physical conditions, whatever it is they're up against. I've had clients with a whole range of conditions brought on by age or that they've had all their lives. That from a textbook, this is what a great lover looks like, kind of standpoint, Knocks them out of the running, and yet they've learned to embrace the loss of a limb, diabetes, physical tremors in hands that make their touch a little different than you might expect. We can all learn to work with what we have. There may be things that prevent penile vaginal penetration in your partnership, and that's okay if you make it okay. And you can be both great lovers if you both embrace that. And then finally, they honor their partners and their own response. So they don't ever say, you're taking too long or you're too fast. This is wrong. Or that is wrong about how you respond to me. They get curious about the ways that their body works and the ways their partner's body works. And they love it. You know, they just have fun with it. Like anything else, they're exploring with deep curiosity. So that's body fascination, the first quality of a great lover. The second essential quality is identity is the short name. And this is that they see themselves as sexual beings. Great lovers create a story about who they are that makes lots of room for eroticism. They have a positive narrative about their gender identity and their sexual orientation and their gender expression. So a lot of my clients are cisgendered. So they have always identified as male or female, and that matches what they were born with. But there are lots of people on earth who are amazing lovers who are not cisgendered. And often they're. The work that they've done to really claim their identities gives them more of this than the average unexamined cisgendered person. So sometimes my straight cisgendered clients have to do this work in order to become great lovers in a way they never had to in order to be comfortable with their gender identity or their sexual orientation. You know, they sort of took for granted. Yeah, I'm a straight male, for instance. But straight males who've never had a lot of challenge to that may have absorbed from movies, from the news, from TV, and especially from parents and high school classmates a lot of messages that set them up to not be great lovers, to not be very happy inside a healthy long term sexual relationship. Because we're taught a lot of stories about what men have to be, what a good lover is, or how a man proves his manhood. So sexually, you know, even the word sexual performance, that phrase to me is something we have to divest ourselves of to become the best lovers we can be. Because sex isn't a performance, it's a collaboration. There is no audience. Most of the time I'm like, hmm, is there an audience? Usually there's not an audience. Our sexual connection is a special world that we're creating with our partner. And they're not just observing us, they're playing with us inside this game, inside this co creation so we don't have to perform for them. What we need to do is be present. So that's one of the aspects of this identity, is creating a positive narrative about yourself and your gender, about your partner's gender and them, and about sex itself and the role of sex inside a relationship for people your age and in your stage of life. So a lot of people's stories about sex and oh gosh, after your parents, you're not supposed to be sexual, that's not wholesome to be passionate and to have sex be important to you. Parents are supposed to be these neutered asexual beings. And where did we get that idea? Well, your parents may have hidden sexuality from you so thoroughly that you never had an image of parents as sexual beings. And how much has that cost you? So is that really what you want to give your kids? So this sense of ourselves as sexual beings and our rewriting of our narratives includes how we show up with people outside our couple as well. People who see themselves as sexual beings and are great Lovers as a consequence, free themselves of rigid roles or shoulds. We don't tell ourselves we're supposed to have sex this often, or we're supposed to last this long, or we're supposed to achieve orgasm in this period of time. We let go of the those kinds of rules and expectations. And great lovers know that consensual sexuality is normal and healthy. And I always feel like that should go without saying, but it doesn't, because that's one of the shadow beliefs that stops so many people who want to have more sex, better sex, more closeness inside their marriages. They kind of at some level are still caught by the thought that they shouldn't want that, that it's not really a good thing, that sex is kind of bad. And if you feel that way at some level, you probably also have some feelings that contradict that. So it's worth cleaning out those old stories, you know, And a lot of women in particular have done a lot of deconstruction about like old silly stories, like girls are dumb or you can't be assertive and nice, that sort of thing. So sex is bad or sex is dirty, or sex isn't wholesome. Those are stories just like those other misogynistic stories. Our culture is both over hyper sexed and puritanical and still carries a lot of sex negative stories that hamper us from being great lovers if we don't dismantle those and kick them out of our heads. And then finally, this identity of seeing yourself as a sexual being is kind of like seeing yourself as an artist. You know, a lot of people stop drawing or painting or dancing or singing somewhere in childhood and then they tell themselves, I'm not creative or I'm not artistic. Well, you get to be right about that if you tell yourself that. And the other thing that happens if you stop doing it is you wind up not being any more well informed or skillful than you were on the day you stopped. So my husband went to architecture school and got a lot more art training then. And one of the things they taught him, as they were teaching him to draw, is your drawing is at the age where you stopped. You know, so if you stopped in third grade, you're kind of a third grade artist in your drawing capacity. But we'll start there and build it up. And so there's a place where your wholesome sexuality education stopped. And that might be that it never got started. And so that's probably where your skill level is. Or maybe you got taught how to play with another body by someone who was 16, 17, 18, 22 years old and had the sexual responses of a person that age and the physiology of a person that age. And so that's the information you're working with. So if those are the case, then to be a great lover today, you know, my husband's 56 and I'm 48. For us to be great lovers for each other, he has to understand my 48 year old, maybe perimenopausal, we can't quite tell. Mother of two, been through three pregnancies. My body, you know, with everything that I hold today on the tail end of COVID and running my own business and all of these things, that's what he needs to be well informed about and skillful with. And he also needs to be skillful with his 56 year old male body and where he is right now, body, mind and spirit. And for me to be a great lover for him, I have to understand and endorse and know how to work with the body I've got today and the body he's got today and the mind and the spirit. So that's what well informed and skillful means. It doesn't mean you've learned the best. You know, in college my girlfriends and I traded tips on like the side suck method and all these little, you know, body little tools that we used with the boys we made out with in those days. And I'm sure that made us fun. But that's not really the kind of skill and information you need most. You need to understand physiological response. You need to understand how that changes through time so that you can have a good explanation for the ways in which your bodies might deviate from what you think of as normal, proper, healthy. But it's not really about tips and tricks. It's about really getting and endorsing each other. So that's identity. Let's move on to the third quality that I think is essential for being a great lover and that is presence. Great lovers stay present, they're right there in the moment. And this is really rooted in the capacity to self soothe. Great lovers are skillful at regulating their nervous system in the face of strong sensation or emotion. Because intimacy is both high sensation and high emotion. And if you can't regulate yourself when there's that much flowing through, it's kind of like if you can't swim in a fast flowing river, then you're going to get carried away by it and that's going to be upsetting and you're going to want to not go there again. So a lot of the sexual avoidance that I see is rooted in this, a limited capacity for self regulation. So that's one of the things that I work on with clients, is regulating themselves. So when we develop the ability to walk right up to that whitewater river and hold steady as we walk into it, then we can stay present and develop this quality. That kind of self regulation gives us the flexibility to respond dynamically, you know, to have more than one option in the face of something. So, you know, maybe during intercourse you slip out and jam something and there's discomfort or pain at some level. What do you do? If we don't have a lot of flexibility and we can't respond dynamically, that might be the end of it. It's like, oh, somebody got hurt and it's over. And we might roll away from each other and have, you know, what we both remember as like an unsuccessful sexual interaction. But maybe after something like that, there are other options. Maybe there's a different kind of touch, a different way of being together, a way that can actually draw you closer than you would have been had things kept going according to script. And then finally, this capacity to self regulate gives us the capacity to take risks and reveal ourselves. And that's really essential to being a great lover because from the initial kind of wink that says, I'd love to get closer to you at some point in the next 24 hours. To every move we make erotically, we're always revealing something about ourselves or declining to. We're always taking a risk or playing it safe. And playing it safe and declining to reveal ourselves is the perfect recipe for boring sex and for the kind of sex that both of you will over time tend to be like, eh, that's okay, we don't need to do that tonight. What do you want to watch on Netflix? But it's the kind of sex where you surprise yourself and your partner goes, huh, I hadn't seen that facet of you before that keeps you both coming back. That has. You go, yeah, I could rally. That allows you to call up the energy at the end of the day when you're both tired to go, yeah, let's have a little adventure together. Because I never know what's going to happen. And I like that. So being a great lover really in essence requires us to take those risks and reveal ourselves. But we can't do that unless we've got kind of the insurance of a capacity to self regulate. You know, it's too much exposure, it's too vulnerable. If we can't Self regulate. So that's why that skill at self regulating is the essence of this presence quality. Now let's look at the fourth essential quality of a great lover. And that is energy. Great lovers bring life force to their lovemaking and to the relationship. So you don't have to be young or thin or have the most energy on the planet to be a great lover, but you do have to be kind of awake and alive, bringing a degree of vitality and aliveness and spirit to your lovemaking. I've had the privilege of walking with people through intense illness and right up to the end of their lives, and supporting the lover in them through those processes has helped me see the way that even as the life force itself is waning, is busy battling cancer, is slipping away, we can direct our vitality toward our intimacy. And someone who does that is a great lover. Even if their hair is falling out, even if their energy is very low, that presence brings an intimacy that a lot of people with six pack abs and the ability to bench press their partner don't have. So I invite you to rethink what you think of as being a great lover in that context. Another aspect of energy is saving mental space for your erotic self and for the erotic adventure between you and your partner. So a lot of people don't think about sex a lot outside of sex, and they dedicate all of their energy to other things and then sort of slam into the bedroom like, okay, let's do this. And just as if, you know, if you were kind of hauling a frozen TV dinner out of the freezer and slamming it on the counter and going, dinner served still frozen, that's not very appetizing. Same with sexuality. Great lovers save the space. They make room. For instance, if you know that you two tend to find the energy on a Wednesday or Thursday night. Friday we're too tired, and Wednesday and Thursday we make some space to be together. Thinking about how I might like to show up by Monday or Sunday, you know, kind of pre paving the path to that erotic space is a great way to make sure you're a great lover. And then the attitude that you bring both to lovemaking and to other things. So great lovers and people whose partners really go, oh my gosh, yes, my partner, you have to peel me off the ceiling. I just love being with my partner in an erotic space. Very seldom does that person also describe their partner as, yeah, my partner's really negative and harsh with me and kind of pessimistic and bummed out on life and always sees the Glasses half empty. They just don't really coexist. Great lovers have a positive attitude toward life, toward lovemaking, for sure, toward their relationship. And they're pouring positive energy into the connection and into themselves so that they feel that vibrant aliveness. And then that shows up in how they dance with their partner. Inside the erotic space, there's a sense of play, fun and generosity. That is another facet of the energy that great lovers bring to sexuality. So, you know, sometimes people are eager to please, but in a kind of needy way. And that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the generosity that comes from, like, to go back to a culinary metaphor, you know, if you know you're good at cooking and you go, yeah, I can see that you've been a little down this week. I think my chicken soup is just what the doctor ordered for you. How's that sound? You know, there's a sense of masterful generosity, of like, I know how to show up and be of service to you in a way that's going to touch you deeply, and that's exactly what I want to do. And then enjoying that and getting off on giving and being playful and getting off on your own deal, you know, having fun, being you in your body and in bed, those are all great expressions of the kind of play, fun and generosity I'm talking about. And then finally there's a piece around partnership and adulting together that falls into this category of energy. So great lovers, and in particular here I'm talking about in a long term committed relationship. So somebody that you just met. You know, I've been monogamous long enough that I never took advantage of any of these apps for meeting somebody. But, you know, I know that it's possible now to meet a lover in a pretty quick way. And this one is not crucial to be a great lover in that kind of context. But if you share a life together, then having a partnership that is fair and where your communication and the way that you share labor works well for both of you is essential because the resentment and the feeling of disrespect and the stuck energy that come when you do share duties, but you don't share them in a way that's fair and sort of adult to adult, it's a turn off. It's going to come between you. And so what's cool about that is that it means that sex can be kind of the canary in the coal mine that can help you rewrite some of those things and create more intimacy, more efficiency and actually help you reach better goals in areas like your finances or your health because you're partnering better together. So I love the way that sex can be a catalyst that calls up an invitation for us to step forward and grow up a little bit and expand in some of these areas. So those are the four essential qualities of a great lover body, fascination, identity, presence, and energy. And that means that you have a choice to make. You now know what they are and you get to decide. Are you going to stick with the myth that there's some unattainable set of skills and physical attributes that you would need that are totally not you anyway in order to become an amazing lover who has a delicious sex life with your partner? Or are you ready to embrace the truth about what makes an amazing lover for a lifetime so that you can start feeling turned on, confident and adored right now and keep it growing for years and years and decades to come? If you want to claim your true birthright as an amazing lover for your partner, take just one of the ideas that you got from today's conversation and go implement it. Embody the lover who's right there inside the exact body that you have, with all its beauty and all its perceived flaws. Bring the goofball you are into the bedroom without apology. Enjoy your partner's body and your own and reveal your energy to them in a way that nobody else gets to see. I can't wait to hear about what happens. I'd love to hear what you're taking away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? My free Conscious Couples Circle is the place to continue our conversation. You can share your experiences, ask questions, and get more actionable ideas for creating the love and sex you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. It's all happening@society.lizenberry.com that link is in the show notes for you. You know, new listeners need to hear what you're taking away too. Podcast reviews are what really help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thank you in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app while you're thinking of it. Before you forget with just a few words about what this show gives you. And hey, have you subscribed to the podcast? You're going to want to so you never miss an episode. Please go to the app where you listen, hit that subscribe button, and then you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for listening I'm Michelle Izenberry Christensen, and this has been Sex Love Power. I will see you on the next episode. And until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.