Fantasy: The Key To Your Perfect Romance

I’m always so shocked by the fact that in my seminars, speaking engagements, and courses I give all over the world, people seem to treat sex as some kind of afterthought in their relationship.

Whether it’s prudishness, shyness, or unfamiliarity with talking about it, so few people seem to grasp how very important a healthy sex life is not only for a loving relationship but for your own personal health and well-being, too. Indeed, if you want to have a happy relationship and life, then there is no better way than sex to help make that happen.

Why Is Sex So Powerful?

On a biological level, sex changes your brain chemistry and acts as a powerful antidepressant thanks to the rush of dopamine and oxytocin that orgasm brings. In addition, studies have shown that enjoyable, regular sex is known to build Natural Killer cells that fight cancer. Even when we’re way past the age where we want to have children, sex also offers an anti-aging effect. Our reptilian brains believe that if we’re still having sex, there might be a chance of a baby—so it keeps us young to look after it!

Orgasms improve circulation, provide lymphatic drainage, help your body to detoxify, improve digestion, improve mood, prevent disease, help to repair tissues, improve brain function, keep skin healthy, release endorphins into the body that flush out cortisol (the hormone that helps your body respond to stress or danger), boosts infection-fighting cells by up to 20 percent, and elevate pain thresholds (getting your body ready for childbirth) so things such as migraines decrease in intensity.

So you see, orgasms make you younger and healthier.

With all those wonderful health benefits—which are totally natural and free—you’d think happy couples would be having sex all the time, wouldn’t you? But anyone who has been in a long-term relationship knows that sustaining a robust sex life can be vexingly difficult. However, too many people accept that to be the case and simply give up on sex in exchange for a long-term partnership. And along with it, they give up all those wonderful health benefits I mentioned above.

Love Vs. Great Sex

What love needs to thrive is intimacy, absolute trust, safety, and certainty. This is what makes going through life with a supportive, long-term partner so great—you know they will be there for you.

However, great sex needs mystery, drama, thrill, surprise, suspense, the unknown, and even some risk. In fact, our bodies are known to become even more aroused—and our reproductive systems more fertile—when we have sex with someone new and unknown to us.

So the two seemingly cancel each other out, don’t they? If intimacy is the enemy of eroticism how are we supposed to sustain long-term relationships with good sex? The answer is simple: fantasy.

Fantasy: The Key To Your Perfect Romance?

People often blush when I say this, but I’ve seen so many couples reinvigorate their sex lives—and thus their entire relationships—by integrating fantasy in some way.

Indeed, even if you haven’t engaged in explicit fantasy, most couples admit that they often have better sex when they are in a hotel room or on holiday because the newness and novelty of the occasion makes them feel sexier. They have no chores, no kids, no place to be—and all of a sudden they feel like they want to have sex. Fantasy works in the same way, but you don’t have to spend money on going on holidays just to have sex!

Another reason people are sometimes resistant to fantasy is that they see it as akin to cheating—as though admitting that they may want to have sex with a fireman or a librarian is admitting that they want to have sex with someone who is not their partner. But it doesn’t have to be seen that way!

Fantasy is inherently exciting, and if you give each other permission to use your imagination and admit you have extramarital desires (everyone does), it can be a great way to sustain your sex life, together.

The fact of the matter is that people don’t often cheat because they are looking for a brand new person and life: men leaving their wives for a mistress is the exception, not the rule. They cheat because they are looking for a new experience. You can put that new experience into your relationship. If your partner’s fantasy is different than yours, you can make a pact to indulge each other’s desires and come from a place of respect, curiosity, acceptance, and exploration.

This is not about having a perfect body or looking amazing. In fact, the sexiest organ you have is your brain, and thankfully your brain cannot tell the difference between real and fantasy. If you can combine sexual novelty with your longtime partner, your relationship is much, much more likely to go the distance.

And once you love yourself unconditionally, and you love your partner, and you have a healthy and exciting sex life—then you will have achieved what so few people are able to. Your life will be all the richer for it.

Authored by Marisa Peer, the UK’s Number 1 Therapist, founder of Rapid Transformational Therapy, and author of the bestselling book, I Am Enough.