*This is part two of a three-article series. You can read part one here. 

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How To Turn Lesbian Bed Death Into Lesbian Bed Life

In part one of this article, I described lying in bed with my spouse, despairing. Our sexual connection just didn’t work.

We sought help from a queer sex coach, who, after months, just told me I should find other lovers. I looked for a lesbian sex therapist, but by that time, it was too late. My partner told me she thought she was asexual and wasn’t sure she ever wanted to have sex again.

We held hands across the kitchen table and cried. She knew how important sex was to me. She’d known that since before we got married, and we both knew this would mean the end of our marriage.

What I Didn’t Know Then, That I Know Now

After my separation from my partner, a few big things changed.

Trying to understand what the hell had happened, I went through three years of Somatica training and became a certified Sex & Intimacy Coach myself. Through that training, and other trainings I took, I learned a whole new world of information about sex. I now realize that in today’s world, much of the effective sex help comes from lesbian sex coaches, rather than lesbian sex therapists—but it still takes finding the right one.

One of the big light bulb moments in my training came about through learning that just as people have different “love languages,” we also have different erotic love languages. (In addition to my Somatica training, I also took a powerful training called Erotic Blueprints, with a brilliant sexologist named Jaiya. Some of what I’m sharing here comes from her work, though I’ve put a more lesbian spin on it.)

Erotic Love Languages And How They Work

Most of us know that if your girlfriend craves a hug and you buy her flowers instead, it’s not going to help the two of you connect. Or if you crave quality time with her and she washes your car for you, it’s likely to be a fail.

There are five main love languages, and there are also five main erotic love languages. When my partner was touching me, those nights in bed when nothing was happening, she wasn’t speaking to me in a language I could “hear.”

This was because one of my primary erotic languages is Energetic. I needed to feel the energy of her desire! I am someone who feeds off of the sexual energy of my partners. When I’m with someone who is similar, they feed off my energy feeding off of theirs, and we’re in a great big ecstatic loop of sexual energy.

But my partner was speaking to me in the erotic love language of Sensuality. She was touching my body in pleasant ways. It just didn’t give me a doorway into arousal.

I now understand that my partner’s primary erotic love language was Kinky. She told me later—once we both had more ways to speak about things—that if I had just tied up her hands, anything else I did would have felt better. And if I had just told her exactly what to do to me, and been bossy about her doing it, she might have gotten into it more.

But my other erotic love language was Passion. I longed for a partner who would back me up against the wall and kiss me hard, who would rip my clothes off with her eyes, or maybe with my hands, because she wanted me so much.

No wonder we weren’t “hearing” each other! We weren’t speaking the same erotic love languages!

The right lesbian sex therapy or lesbian sex coaching could have helped us quickly identify this gap, understand each of our preferred “languages,” and most importantly, help us become more fluent in the languages each other’s bodies responded to. But, while erotic love languages are one important concept I share with my clients, it’s only the beginning.

What Else A Lesbian Sex Therapist Or Coach Can Help With

Through my training, I also discovered so much more about what separates people from each other sexually—even two people like us, who loved each other, had good communication, and had a spark.

Knowledge is power, and even though this particular power came too late to save my lesbian marriage from lesbian bed death, I’m passionate about getting this information into the hands of other lesbian couples and queer couples who need it.

Most people know so little about what really makes sex, well, sexy, for us. We imagine that it will just work well with the person we love, without our having to do much thinking, feeling, navigating, exploring, or risking.

But that wasn’t what happened with my spouse and me. And honestly, it’s not what happens for most of us, at least not after the first few magical months or years.

Each one of us has a unique erotic psyche—a set of psychological turn-ons, an experience we long to have. And for each person, those turn-ons are different. The right lesbian sex therapist or coach will create an atmosphere of curiosity, affirmation, and openness to discover your individual response patterns, not just physically, but emotionally, too.

Sex is a portal into our deep selves. It touches on our histories, our traumas, our fear of rejection, our longing to be received, and our phenomenal capacity for pleasure. This is why good sex is one of the most bonding experiences on the planet—while sex that feels mechanical is a huge disappointment, and can separate couples just as much as not having sex at all.

Most challenging of all, many people find that the dynamics that make us feel emotionally safe are different from those which turn us on most intensely. 

If that’s true for you, it doesn’t mean you’re broken. This is actually common. But if you’re trying to feel both emotionally safe and have hot sex in your relationship, it requires an open mind and heart, and some skillful navigation.

Erotic Psyches At Work

For instance, one of my clients longed to feel met by her partner. She didn’t want to be in charge, and she didn’t want her partner to take charge either. She described her favorite state as “feeling like a great river is carrying both of us.”

Her partner, on the other hand, loved to feel capable. She prided herself on being a good lover, and she was willing to experiment. She was giving and generous, but because my client longed for a feeling of union, her partner’s approach just wasn’t lighting her up.

My mentors, Celeste and Danielle, the founders of the Somatica Institute, taught that each of us carries around inside of us a “hottest sexual movie.” You may get clues about your inner “movie” by seeing what you respond to when you actually watch movie scenes on a screen…or when you read erotica… or when you fantasize…or when you remember your peak sexual experiences.

My client and her partner didn’t know how to have these conversations, or figure out how to “co-star in each other’s movies,” so they felt painfully stuck. Each of them was trying hard, yet they lacked the information that could help them—and each experience of sexual disappointment created more scar tissue that made exploration harder.

You can read part one of this series here: How Lesbian Sex Therapy could have saved my Relationship.

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