Buddha Heat

My husband and I are lucky -- like that couple in their 70s you wrote about -- to have a satisfying sex life after 23 years together. Still, to be honest, there are times when we're just going through the motions. I guess it's natural that it isn't as exciting as it was that first year or so. Maybe we just have to accept it. Or...is there anything we can do? (We do have date nights and try to experiment with new things.)

--Ho-Humming Somewhat

It's like buying your dream house -- and then living in it for 12 years. You still love it -- but you don't jump up and down and yell "Woo-hoo! We live here!" the 10,044th time you walk through your door. The good news is, there's a way to perk up the sexual excitement level in a long-term relationship, and it doesn't involve attending parties where they have a bowl of keys at the door. You just need to get back to really being there while you're having sex. This means truly feeling -- that is, really being present for -- the moment-by-moment sensations, like you did the very first time you got together. You know...back before you started (let's be honest) sexual multitasking -- running through your to-do list while getting it on -- and your sex face started to become a yawn. Your husband looks up from, um, down there: "Oh, sorry -- was I boring you?" Clinical psychologist Lori Brotto, who researches female sexual desire and arousal issues, finds that a practice called "mindfulness" -- with Eastern spiritual origins -- seems to be "an effective way of re-routing one's focus ... onto the sensations that are unfolding in the moment." Mindfulness, which is also a form of meditation, involves bringing your attention to the immediate moment. This isn't to say you have to meditate to have better sex. However, one of the mindfulness meditation techniques involves scanning your body with your mind, focusing your attention on individual parts, and observing the sensations in them in that moment. That's key. So, for example, point your attention at your breathing, at the points of skin-to-skin contact between you and your husband. Notice the temperature of your skin. Hot? Cool? Do you feel tiny beads of sweat? Brotto writes in "Better Sex Through Mindfulness" that in her research, "when the women learn to be right where they are when with a partner, rather than in the myriad other places that their mind escapes to during sex, they start to experience sexual contact with their partner in a way that perhaps they had not experienced for months, years, or decades." In other words, yes, there's still hope to hear animalistic screaming in your bedroom again -- and not just when your husband pulls on the oven mitts and holds the cat down so you can clip her toenails without losing an eye.