Making each other feel special, loved, appreciated and desired is a necessity to maintain sizzle and passion. This is especially true for a woman and if you light your woman's fire she will light yours in return and vice versa. Men also need intimacy, but may not be as much aware of their need and it may not be as important to them personally in regard to sex. Women need to feel loved, valued, special, intimate and listened to with their partner for sex to be at its best. If she feels these things it will unleash her inhibitions, desires and passion. She will desire her lover more deeply and be more willing to pleasure her lover in the way he desires.
Sex without intimacy eventually becomes shallow and unfulfilling. You may get away with it for a while, but eventually the relationship will die, if intimacy is not nurtured. The deeper your intimacy is in your relationship the more explosive and satisfying the sex will be. When sex is explosive and mind blowing, it cements you to your lover in a very powerful way and thus opens the door for more intimacy. Therefore, intimacy and great sex feed each other in a reciprocal relationship.
Many people do not understand why their relationship falls apart or why sex is not very good anymore. A lot of times it is because they have fallen into a rut and begun to take each other for granted. They have stopped sharing with each other intellectually and emotionally so intimacy has been lost, thus the passion in their sex becomes lost as well.
A lot of people think that when this happens that it means they should leave the relationship and find someone new, but that is not the case. Sure, with someone new there will be excitement and passion because it is new, but it too will fade away once the novelty wears off, if they do not build and maintain intimacy. They don't realize that the same passion and excitement that they felt earlier in the relationship can be recaptured by building intimacy, through expressing affection and love and by rediscovering each other and their needs and desires more deeply, then meeting these needs.
In a long-term relationship it is easy to fall into a state of taking one another for granted. It is also deadly to the relationship. If intimacy, passion, excitement and adventure are not maintained then boredom will ensue. One of the main causes of unfaithfulness is sexual boredom. Another cause is not meeting each other's sexual or emotional needs. One or both partners may start to look to someone else to meet their needs and provide passion, not realizing that they could solve their problem if only they would turn back to their lover, deepen their intimacy, explore each other's desires and needs more deeply and engage in some spontaneous, adventurous sexual activities. Getting to know your lover more intimately both emotionally and sexually will enable you to know what their desires and needs are, and therefore meet them more effectively, increasing satisfaction in the relationship.
Cynthia Perkins, M.Ed. is a writer and sex educator/advisor specializing in sexual intimacy and erotic communication between couples to keep the fire and passion alive. She holds a Bachelors degree in Psychology and a Master's degree in Counseling. She is the author of Smoldering Embers: Hot Erotic Stories and Sex Tips to Light a Couple's Fire.
