In my experience as a sex coach, the majority of women I see are lying – to themselves and to their partner – that they’re happy with their sex life.
These clients, who are aged between 40 and 60, will often start sessions by saying ‘yes, everything’s great’ in that department.
However, when we delve into a deeper conversation it becomes apparent what they feel is grateful that they’re having any sex at all, rather than focusing on the quality of it. They’ve wrongly convinced themselves that this is as good as it gets.
It’s my job to shift that attitude, to help women to prioritise their own pleasure and identify what is sabotaging it so they no longer have to settle for bad sex that deep-down they are not enjoying.
I’ve been a sex coach for 13 years and these are the top five problems that I see again and again in my practice.
From the one that’s spiking among midlife women to the hardest one to fix and the one you must never leave unresolved, follow my tips and tricks and you will set your sex life soaring again.
Unresolved trauma
This can be anything from an injury, redundancy, a personal comment made about your body or a bereavement to a sexual trauma from a previous relationship, which is what I see a lot of.
You need to feel safe in your body to feel pleasure, so any trauma needs to be resolved. It can really distort how women feel about themselves and knock their confidence so they find it hard to trust a partner.
Many women feel shame, which springs from not speaking up about what they want in the bedroom for fear of being judged
They may be attracted to dangerous partners, repeatedly choosing toxic relationships, or unable to move beyond an unkind comment a previous partner has made in bed. We hold on to those remarks for a long time because they’re invasive and we convert them into facts.
How to help fix it: If the trauma is fresh, then I refer clients to a trauma therapist for specialist help. If they’ve done talking therapy but still feel disconnected from their body, that is when I can help. This is the hardest one to fix.
We’d start by looking at mindset and unhelpful self-talk, such as ‘I’m ugly’, ‘I’m fat’, ‘I deserved to be left’ – and work to realise that these comments belong to other people and not to you. It all needs to be reframed as someone else’s opinion and not fact.
Then I focus on what makes your body feel good, what lights you up and boosts your confidence.
We’d talk in detail about what are your ‘yes’s’ and what are your non-negotiables so that you are able to put healthy boundaries in place.
It’s about rewiring yourself; to focus on what you’re comfortable with sexually and getting curious about that. There is way more pleasure to be had than many women think possible.
For instance, there are five different types of female orgasm, and some can go on for hours, but most women are familiar only with one. It takes time. but it is possible for every woman to experience each.
The clitoral orgasm, the one people are most familiar with, is achieved from stimulating the clitoris. Then there’s the G-spot orgasm, an internal orgasm that is less of a ‘quick peak’.
The blended orgasm is a mixture of the two, while the cervical orgasm is the most elusive, often described as ‘otherworldly’ and can go on for hours if you’re lucky.
Then there’s the full body energy orgasm. If you’re sensitive it can be achieved from gentle caressing of the body and subtle massage. It feels like shivers and goosebumps that occur in waves.
You’re stressed
Stress is the ultimate passion-killer. When cortisol levels increase, it reduces the pleasure hormone oxytocin – resulting in a lower libido, diminished arousal and makes it harder to find the desire for sex in the first place.
When you have chronic stress, your body will take whatever energy you have left and use it to simply get you through the day. There’s nothing left over. You want to get into bed and sleep – and he wants sex. When it isn’t forthcoming, resentment can quickly build.
I have seen the greatest rise in women coming to me when stress is the cause of a poor sex life and it’s only been made worse by the cost-of-living crisis. Going for a spa break now feels like a ridiculous luxury.
Women are cutting back on holidays and pilates classes – all the things that bring them pleasure – which just leaves the grind of getting through the day plus the fear of losing their job. The focus switches to everything you don’t have.
How to help fix it: Try to catch it as early as you can. Pleasure is the most incredible antidote to stress. Get out into nature. Take a walk in the woods. Sit under a tree. It sounds simplistic but it works.
The aim is to increase your feelings of joy and resilience. You need to seek pleasure in daily life without the need to book a week away.
I have seen the greatest rise in women coming to me when stress is the cause of a poor sex life and it’s only been made worse by the cost-of-living crisis, says Mangala Holland
Try not to take sex too seriously, she advises. There is always room for laughter and humour in the bedroom. Keep a lightness to it and take the pressure off
Try breath-work practices, dance, swimming, baking a cake, gardening – tasks that allow you to switch off but also feel a sense of achievement. Build a pocket of this into every day but do it in a more mindful way, not attached to your phone or running through your to-do list.
Connect with your senses, notice how the air feels on your skin and the changing of the seasons – then your ability to find and enjoy pleasure will more easily move into the bedroom too.
You’re overthinking
This is about finding it difficult to relax and let go in the bedroom. You can’t switch off the rational, sensible side of your brain. You’re thinking about the school pick-up or visualising all those unanswered work emails – all the stuff that is very unsexy.
Women put out the domestic and work fires every day; they manage the to-do list and make sure the wheels keep turning. It’s a whole way of being, often resulting in an imbalanced nervous system that can affect the whole body.
Often a woman will start getting intimate with her husband, but then ten minutes in she mentally drops out and it’s impossible to get back into a pleasurable state.
For some, the internal dialogue is: ‘I should be keeping him happy, and I just have to grin and bear it.’ But that only pushes the problem deeper and makes it worse.
Sex coach Mangala Holland says the majority of women she sees are lying that they’re happy with their sex life
How to help fix it: Try not to take sex too seriously. There is always room for laughter and humour in the bedroom. Yes, it can be awkward and clumsy and doesn’t always go as planned, but keep a lightness to it and take the pressure off.
Try a simple movement practice every day for five minutes – it could be as simple as dancing to a song. If you do this regularly, you start to be able to train your mind to park all the other stuff and focus more on how you feel in the moment. You switch off the part of your brain that’s constantly in manager mode. This is one saboteur that you really need to tackle. You need to slow down and take away the pressure to get sex over with quickly.
Most women simply can’t jump from one mental state into another. One client I work with leaves her husband to tidy the kitchen after dinner while she has a shower and starts to relax. By the time he joins her, they’re on more of an even footing. Men and women are wired differently for arousal, and you must recognise that. Men are like fire, they ignite very quickly – they also go out quickly – while women are more like water and take longer to heat up. But once we do, we can stay simmering much longer than men.
Fear he’ll leave you for another
With fat jabs seemingly taking over the world, and many millions successfully losing their midlife muffin tops ‘on the pen’, skinny is back in vogue, and from what I’ve seen in my practice, it’s having a big impact on our enjoyment of sex.
We’re so worried about how our bodies look and the race to thinness that it’s hard to tune out from this noise.
Thanks to weight-loss injections, the expectation now is that you should be doing something about your less-than-perfect body. This can lead to women performing in bed in a way that they aren’t comfortable with to compensate for what they believe they are lacking in order to keep their man.
I’m hearing this fear more and more from women. Historically, they’ve feared being left for a younger woman, but now it’s more specifically how slim she is.
What they often forget is that losing weight does not magically make you more sexually confident. Body insecurities do not go away with weight loss.
I have clients who always have sex with the lights off because they have shame about their ageing body. But somehow men’s beer bellies and balding heads escape the same scrutiny.
How to help fix it: The focus must shift from how your body looks to how it feels. When you do this, you relax more and are happy to get into positions where it doesn’t matter if your belly is wobbling and you don’t feel you have to suck it in. Only then can pleasure flow more easily and you’re far more likely to experience orgasm.
You need to stop the negative self-talk. When you think, ‘I shouldn’t be eating this, I should be doing more to look good’, ask, ‘Says who?’
Where is that voice coming from? Is it your mother’s? Something you heard when you were younger?
Negatively comparing yourself to other women is one of the core issues my clients have to deal with. A much healthier thing is to compare yourself to where you were emotionally, not physically, a year ago, to try and highlight the progress you have made.
Feeling shame
Sexual shame often comes from not speaking up about what you want in the bedroom, through fear of being judged.
It can work either way: you’re ashamed that you’re not adventurous enough in bed, or that you’re too much and your partner will be scared if you say the things you want to explore.
The balance has definitely shifted to the latter with my clients. They’re braver, they want to explore other things rather than having the same old sex, if they have it at all. Neither do they want to watch TV every night.
They know there should be something more to their relationship but don’t know how to get it.
How to help fix it: Approach this conversation in a way that doesn’t make a man feel like he’s been getting it all wrong in the bedroom, or that he’s being blamed and shamed. He’ll shut down and no one will thrive in that scenario.
Do it in a neutral space and never during sex. Try raising it when you’re out on a walk and phrase it something like: ‘I really want to try and feel closer to you. Are you open to exploring ways in which we can do this together?’
It should feel like an invitation, not a criticism. Any man worth his salt will want you to feel as much pleasure as possible because that’s what’s going to turn him on. It’s what he wants more than anything.
Mangala’s three and five-month group programmes start at £1,500; her six-month one-to-one packages are about £8,000 (mangalaholland.com).
As told to Jade Beer
