Three Steps to Satisfaction

Do your bit to make her fly

1. Play it safe
A woman is more likely to be orgasmic if she feels safe with herself and with you. So build emotional trust. Don’t bully her into doing things she’s not comfortable with, and use condoms and/or birth control if pregnancy or sexual health is a concern.

2. Try this trick
Use the following tantric ritual from Jonti Searll to create a space of intimacy and safety. Start by lighting candles, putting on soft music and sitting opposite each other. Look into one another’s eyes – it’s very important to maintain eye contact – and put your hands up, palms against palms, fingers touching. Softly, slowly, start to move your hands, as if they’re dancing. Touch your palms, fingers, knuckles, the back of your hands, the space between your fingers. Take your time. After about five minutes, let your partner lie down with her head in your lap. Gently stroke her face for five or 10 minutes. Then let her do the same for you. The point is to create a different space for a different experience. No pressure, no rush, no goal.

3. Enlist an expert
If there are deep psychological issues at play, like a history of sexual or emotional abuse, or perhaps poor body image, you could be out of your depth. Encourage your partner to work through it with a professional. Go with her if she wants you to, but let her take the lead. Don’t push, just be supportive.

Decode her digs

Investigate her home to decide if she's right for you.

1. Musical Instruments signal an intellectual, worldly and cultured woman.

2. Candles are more likely to appear in the homes of adventurous people.

3. Varying fabrics in pillows, couches and blankets reveal an affectionate and sensual woman.

4. Fast clocks can mean she's efficient or just highly strung. More than 10 minutes fast? Trouble.

5. International and celestial maps are more likely to hang in the homes of imaginative people.

1. IS SHE GOING TO BE CLINGY?

LOOK FOR PAIRS OF ANYTHING
Two nightstands, a bedside lamp on each side of the bed, pairs of candles... "If you see pairs - and lots of them - run for the door if you don't want a relationship," says sexologist and author Yvonne Fulbright. "Consciously or not, she's displaying the belief that creating balance in the bedroom invites love into your life." Look to escape.

2. WILL SHE BE HIGH MAINTENANCE?

LOOK AT HER PHOTOS
Check out her party snaps. If she's always front and centre, you've got a high-maintenance attention-seeker. "But if you see lots of photos of animals, she's channelling a maternal instinct," says New York psychologist Dr Gary Aumiller. Great if you have an Oedipal complex.

3. WILL SHE BE EASY TO TALK TO?

LOOK AT HER FURNITURE
A cluttered room suggests an open book, she'll spill her guts to you. "But a more private person will have backs of chairs facing doors, and confined traffic patterns," says design psychologist Dr Constance Forrest. Otherwise, use wine to get her to talk.

4. IS SHE GOING TO BE CONTROLLING?

LOOK AT HER BOOKSHELF
Are her books alphabetised by subject? By author? "A personalised Dewey Decimal system can mean neuroticism," says Aumiller. "But general orderliness indicates someone who's responsible." Cluttered shelves are a sign she's a free thinker. Or her cleaner's away.

Sexual training

Do some horizontal jogging this year, and you will be the happiest health addict around. Learn these five sexual exercises

1. Muscle up (and in)

Give your arm muscles a workout while giving her a workout with your love muscle. “Use your thighs to support the back of her legs and place a pillow under her hips. Place the back of her knees in the crook of your elbow, as if you were lifting barbells,” suggests psychologist and sex writer Dr Pam Spurr. By doing “curls” with your entire arm, not only will you see the results of all your hard work, but she’ll also feel internal G-spot stimulation. Besides the concentration of work on your arms, an added bonus will be that your thrusting will cause her breasts to move in wondrous ways. You can’t get that from a personal trainer called Steve.

2. Scrub-a dub-dub

Sensually scrubbing each other in the shower is a great way to boost circulation. This boosts your immune system, helping to ward off illness.

3. Sweeten the deal

Smother your woman in honey and combine the benefits of some sweet loving with the bone-boosting properties in the sticky stuff. Honey helps calcium stick to the bones. When Purdue University researchers in the US fed rats 800mg of honey a day, their calcium-absorption rates rose by 34 percent, so it could slow the bone erosion that comes with ageing.

4. Try, try, try again

You might think that getting action five nights a week would increase your risk of a stroke, but University of Bristol researchers have proven that the opposite is true. Not only are men who have sex at least twice a week less likely to have a stroke, but all that steamy exercise may also reduce your heart disease risk by up to a third.

5. All tied up

Add some kink factor to your bedroom skills. Tie your lady to the bed with silk scarves and watch the weight fall off. “If you’re doing twice the work, you’ll burn twice the kilojoules,” says Spurr. You and your partner burn 146kJ in 20 minutes while getting down and dirty. “But if she is a little tied up,” adds Spurr, “you’ll be exerting yourself twice as much.” It certainly beats doing press-ups in a gym.

Be her do-right man

A guide to common bedroom mistakes made by men. With, of course, gentle corrections.

You know how public pools post lists of unacceptable behaviour? Don’t run, don’t dive, don’t vomit a fillet steak and a bottle of Cabernet Franc into our brand-new filtration system. Be assured that this is the last time I will ever liken my vagina to a public pool, but I’ve always thought how great it would be to post something similar in my own bedroom. Look, we love that you love having sex with us, and we love having sex with you, too. But sometimes you do things that we don’t like. Weird things. Things that you think are going to make us groan with gratitude and pleasure but really make us want to roll over and turn on the TV. Luckily, these mistakes generally result not from lack of skill but from wrong information. You can easily unlearn them. Remember: I probably know what I like better than you do. And if I had a bedroom sign, this is how it might read.

DO NOT ASK, "WHAT DO YOU LIKE?"
the first time we have sex. It's our third date. Okay, so maybe it's only the second, or maybe we just met in an elevator. At any rate, we're making out. Pants are coming off, eyes are smouldering. You ask this question and, bam... the magic is gone. First, I am embarrassed.

I may have been ready to have sex, but not so up for talking about it! Second, I feel pressured to provide a provocative answer, something involving toys or systematic humiliation, but the only thing I can think of to say is, "Well, Steve, I suppose I like manual and oral stimulation followed by intercourse resulting in my eventual orgasm." Finally, I am annoyed. Are you trying to sound sexy, wild, open to anything? Because if you are, won't I eventually discover that?

DO...
ask questions later. Questions help an ongoing sexual relationship move forward. They slow a new one down.

DO NOT STICK YOUR TONGUE IN MY EAR
The innocent, unfortunate ear (a) is a semi-discreet spot, (b) is a hole and (c) has folds. For these reasons, it has been ill-defined as a major erogenous zone. This is one of the great misperceptions in the history of Western civilisation.

DO...
tread lightly. I'm not saying never go for the ear. Just not every time. When you do, the ear is to be kissed gently, maybe licked on the edges, or nibbled with restraint. Then you can leave it alone. It's an ear.

DO NOT TRY TO STUFF YOUR SEMI-HARD PENIS INSIDE MY VAGINA
I understand: you're hoping it will get harder once it's in. Or you're thinking that if you act like everything's fine, then everything will be fine. Or maybe you're treating your penis like a stubborn teenager - you're going to show him who's boss and send him to his room. The only thing more humiliating than stuffing a flaccid penis inside someone is being stuffed by a flaccid penis. In this one wretched act, we can feel all of your fear, desperation and insecurity, concentrated in the precise place where you want us to feel something else.

DO...
anything but this. Kiss. Watch The OC. Order a pizza. Unless it's a recurring problem requiring medical or psychiatric attention, it's not a big deal. Really.

DO NOT REACH FOR MY CLITORIS
if you are in a position that is unsuitable for such a connection. Like when I'm clearly enjoying whatever we're doing. Or, say, if you're in the lounge watching TV and I'm in the kitchen making brisket. Such persistence is not admirable; it's annoying. It's good that you know clitoral stimulation is important. Now you need to know that if it's not done right - the right angle and pressure, the right motion - then it doesn't feel good, and it may even hurt.

DO...
ask. It might help to take her hand and say, "Show me what you like here". Then you can follow the motion of her hand, or she can guide yours until you've fi gured it out. In certain positions, a woman just doesn't want stimulation there, or prefers to do it herself.

DO NOT SHAVE YOUR BALLS
Having sex with a guy who shaves his balls is like riding a horse with a saddle made of broken glass. If you are going to shave, you're going to have to do it regularly. Say, every half hour.

DO...
embrace your hairiness. Unless you come up with a dignified solution - and they are expensive - try to accept your body hair. You're a guy. Your great great- grandfather was a gorilla.

DO NOT HAVE A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
about ejaculating too fast, losing your erection or not being able to get one. An occasionally temperamental penis is no cause for alarm - but a guy who freaks out about it is. (If you make a big deal about it, we'll start to think maybe it really is a big deal.) Conversely, it's also not a good idea to act as if nothing happened, because, well, that is just bull, and that never fl ies.

DO...
acknowledge it, then laugh it off. The guy who says, "Wow, I usually only last for fi ve seconds, so that was a record" or "Gee, I guess those amazing anti-erection pills I got online are working" - that's the kind of guy who makes us want to try again. Later.

Read Her Signs

Learning to speak her language will strengthen your bond

My wife Kathy and I are very much alike, except for one thing: she loves to talk. Me, I have conversations in my head, and sometimes I think I’ve told her something when it never left my lips. That occasionally causes a rift between us.

Marriage counsellor Dr Gary Chapman says not only am I not talking, but when I do I’m probably not speaking Kathy’s “love language”. “Couples often speak different emotional love languages... As different as Chinese is from English,” says Chapman, “and no matter how hard you try to express love in English, if your spouse understands only Chinese, you will never understand how to love each other.” Chapman went through 12 years of notes from his counselling sessions and identified five types of emotional languages: quality time, words of affirmation, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. They formed the basis for his book The Five Love Languages, which has sold 3.4-million copies. If you can figure out what type of expression of love makes your partner feel most loved, says Chapman, you can dramatically improve your relationship.

“One reason couples argue so much is that they don’t feel loved,” he says, “and that makes their differences seem so much bigger.” After Kathy and I completed Chapman’s quiz (take it at bestlife.co.za/lovequiz), it was obvious that her love language was quality time: talking and togetherness. Chapman suggested three tips to help me learn to speak it:

1 I should set aside 10 minutes every night to give Kathy my full attention, to talk, listen or just be together.

2 When I talk to her by phone at work, I need to turn away from my email. “A lot of men pride themselves on multitasking,” he says. (Guilty as charged.) “But women see right through that. You’re not paying attention.”

3 In conversation, I should repeat back to her the points she’s making so that she can realise I’m listening and make sure I’m comprehending her.

The results, Chapman promises, will be dramatic. “I had a guy say to me, ‘My wife’s language is acts of service. If I had known that taking out the garbage before she asked me to was sexy to her, I’d have communicated that love to her long ago.’” And think of how much he might have saved on jewellery.