Step 5: Make Sex a Priority
Dr. Berman even says it's a good idea to put sex on your to-do list! While this may seem unromantic at first, she says it's necessary precisely because there are so many other things in our lives that compete for our time.
"It feels unromantic at first [to schedule sex] because we have the misconception that sex is supposed to happen spontaneously, which it does in the beginning of the relationship when your dopamine centers of the brain are firing and everything's new and you can't get enough of each other," Dr. Berman says. "But that doesn't work in a long-term relationship. If you wait for it to happen spontaneously, you're going to be waiting forever."
After a while, Dr. Berman says, scheduling sex will stop feeling unromantic. "What you'll find is when you know on that night that you're going to have sex, or you know it's your night or your afternoon or your morning, whatever works, you may shave your legs, you may be extra nice to each other, you start to anticipate it as something to look forward to," she says. "And then you notice the next day how much closer you feel, how much nicer you are to each other. And it motivates you."
