Nadia Bokody: Boring gym habit guaranteed to boost your sex life

Those in long-term relationships often complain of dwindling love lives, but there’s an easy, albeit dull, trick to increasing your time in the sack.

Up until a year ago, I wasn’t the type of person who got up early to hit the gym before work.

I’ve always been a runner and someone who dabbles in spin classes, but my previous efforts to maintain any sort of consistent routine beyond that inevitably fizzled.

I’ve never been interested in achieving a body ideal (mainly because the goalposts are perpetually moving for women, and men will always find new reasons to attack your appearance if you’re a woman with opinions on the internet anyway), so this held precisely no appeal to me as a workout incentive.

Even knowing how great I always feel getting my sweat on isn’t impetus enough for getting out of bed on a cold morning when the alarm goes off.

So, last year, I did something a little different in an effort to break my love affair with the snooze button. It wasn’t vaguely revolutionary, and it certainly didn’t involve discovering untapped motivation.

I started scheduling exercise.

Sex writer Nadia Bokody says applying a trick commonly used at the gym to your love life will increase your sexual pleasure. Picture: Instagram

It sounds painfully simplistic (mainly because it is), but as soon as I’d carved out a dedicated timeslot in my diary, going to the gym became a habit.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t still days I want to stay in bed (and look, sometimes I do), but I’ve learned that, even when I really, really don’t feel like going, I never regret a workout once it’s done.

Perhaps you’re wondering what this all has to do with sex.

Well, a lot, actually.

Most of us approach sex in a not dissimilar fashion to the way I treated exercise most of my life: we do it when we feel like it. Sex is something that should happen organically, we’re told – desire is spontaneous, don’t force it.

But while physical intimacy usually comes freely and without a lot of thought in early relationships and dating, this is rarely the case in long-term relationships.

Life, stress, and overfamiliarity often put the brakes on our sex lives, and, if left unchecked, these things can open the door to sexlessness.

And we know this is a real issue, because a 2018 study found as much as a quarter of us are currently in sexless relationships (defined as a relationship in which a couple has sex 10 times or less a year).

The “wait till you feel like it” principle also overlooks the mechanics of female arousal. While desire typically happens reactively for men (in other words, the visual stimuli of an attractive person undressing is usually effective at triggering arousal), this is rarely the case for women.

In her groundbreaking book Come As You Are, sex educator and researcher Emily Nagoski uses the metaphor of a car to explain the contextual nature of the arousal process for women, clarifying why life stressors – which Nagoski calls “brakes” – so often get in the way of desire (the car’s “accelerator”).

“The problem isn’t the desire itself, it’s the context. You need more sexually relevant stimuli activating the accelerator and fewer things hitting the brake,” Nagoski writes.

Waiting until ‘you feel like it’ overlooks the mechanics of female arousal. Picture: Unsplash/Artem Labunsky

And with so many factors influencing the metaphorical brakes in long-term relationships (think: kids, division of domestic labour and work/life balance – to name but a few), it’s little wonder 59 per cent of women say they aren’t having as much sex as they’d like to be in their current relationship (according to a 2017 survey of over 2300 people by Voucher Codes Pro).

Unfortunately, because we cling obsessively to the idea sex needs to be entirely spontaneous – and female arousal rarely happens in this way – we ultimately sign off on our own sexless fates.

Though the concept of scheduling sex sounds positively unsexy to those of us who’ve been conditioned to believe we need to instinctively feel an insatiable urge to tear a partner’s clothes off (and that, in turn, the absence of this desire surely must signal the end of the relationship), it’s actually smart sexual practice.

“If you’re in a long-term relationship, stop expecting desire to just happen. You have to put in intentional work to cultivate desire. Desire is created,” argues New York based sex therapist, Todd Baratz, in one of the many popular counselling-based anecdotes he shares with followers on TikTok.

And the plus side of putting in the work and scheduling intimacy isn’t just more frequent sex, it’s better sex, too.

Research overwhelmingly shows the very act of planning something ahead of time can trigger excitement, and a study published in the Journal of Sex Research actually went further to suggest couples who are conscientious about creating opportunities for sex have a more satisfying time between the sheets.

It should of course go without saying that ongoing, enthusiastic consent needs to be the foundation from which you approach intimacy, and a sex schedule should be mutually agreed upon and free from pressure or coercion.

Nadia believes scheduling sex is a great way to ensure your needs are being met. Picture: Instagram

And obviously, maintaining a healthy sex life isn’t the same thing as keeping up a gym routine. You should never push through and do it anyway if you’re uncomfortable.

That said, if your discomfort is with the act of scheduling physical intimacy, rather than the sex itself, it’s worth unpacking whether you’re playing by the script that says desire should just happen effortlessly, particularly if you’re not making time to reconnect with your partner.

Something as simple as putting a regular date night in the diary, or even pencilling in time for a couch cuddle sesh can be a powerful aphrodisiac. Even if sex doesn’t always transpire, you’ll never regret making a habit out of reigniting the spark.

Also, unlike committing to an exercise routine, you won’t be required to set the alarm for 6am to do it (unless you’re into that).

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