You mastered the Game and got the girl. You went out, had a good time, maybe you spent the night. Fast forward a year or two into a long-term relationship. How do you keep the spark alive? How do you keep the sex hot?

It’s a different game and we’ll help you to master it as well.

Many guys settle into a funk of neglect and blind time wasting. What I mean is this: a guy stops putting forth effort, he lets her make every single decision, or he goes through the motions, concentrating his effort on work or sports or hobbies, leaving his relationship an afterthought. If he does anything at all, it’s to waste money in clichéd and trite ways such as buying flowers only after his partner is pissed.

If you want to keep the spark alive, you actively maintain your relationship. Which means you challenge yourself and your partner. You create and use strategies to keep things fresh and exciting. You continue to improve yourself and engage your partner. You balance work and hobby efforts with the time you spend on your relationship. You use resources wisely and efficiently in novel and unusual ways to get the best return.

While the game for a single guy trying to meet women is different than the game for a committed guy in a relationship, some rules are very similliar. Stylelife is the first to teach you those rules in easy-to-understand, easy-to-implement steps.

Let’s get started.

For many long-term couples who have moved together, their sexual relationship changes. And if you add the arrival of children into the mix, it can be even more challenging for the relationship. You might have experienced this yourself. You and your wife are sleep-deprived, privacy is at a premium, and there’s not a spare ounce of extra energy.

Here are some concrete, easy-to-implement tips for keeping your sex life burning in a long-term relationship, even when little ones are running around the house.

Make a Realistic Assessment

You have to be honest. Sometimes, life is just simply going to get in the way of making love. And at times, the last thing you need is more pressure. So it’s okay to give yourselves permission to put it on the backburner from time to time. Be realistic with your assessment of your love life.

Know when to schedule sex and when to give yourself an off day. The main point is to simply make the effort. It won’t happen without work, but also know yourselves well enough to know when to take some time off.

Reconnect Through Dirty Talk

It’s easy to find yourself in a situation where you only see your partner as the grumpy person who shares the mortgage payment. Somewhere behind the mussed hair, sweat pants and food stains is the person you fell in love with—and once had hot sex with. In the intervening years, you may have found that many of your conversations with your partner focused on kids and kid things.

If your dirty talk has been replaced by dirty diapers and you can’t remember the last time you had a chat about you the couple rather than you the family, it’s probably long past due.

The script of your sexy conversation will depend on the nature of your relationship and your respective personalities. For some couples, “You look hot” might be sexy as hell. For other couples, even the most graphic depictions will be tame. So you have to tailor this to your particular situation. But here are some starters:

“You look great today, I just want to —–,” and insert whatever you’d like to do. For more tame people, you could just say, “… I just want to kiss your neck.” For more explicit folks, you could say, “… I just want to throw you down and…”

“It’s been a while, I just can’t stop thinking about that thing you do with your hands,” or you could substitute her tongue, her legs, her hair, whatever. Just tell her about that little thing she does that drives you wild.

And while you have to be very, very careful with electronic communications, some couples really enjoy sexting. So sending a flirtatious or erotic text message might work great for you, as long as you know it’s safe and private.

The key with sexy talk is to be spontaneous and to also pay attention to her responses. Surprise her with a comment and then see how she reacts. If it’s a bad time, don’t keep cooing her in ear. Just leave it alone and come back to it later.

Expand Your Definition of Sex

With messy diapers and dirty dishes, it can be tough to allow time for sex. So it can be very helpful to expand what you define as “sex.”

“Make sex mean slow kisses in the morning,” says noted psychotherapist and author Carleton Kendrick, Ed.M., LCSW. “For husbands, this might be a few minutes of stroking your wife’s hair. You start reconnecting in this new way, and then the other ways aren’t such a leap,” he says.

The important point here is to recognize that “sex” doesn’t have to mean actual sexual intercourse to climax. Don’t minimize the positive impact a simple brush of her hair in the kitchen can have. Don’t overlook what holding hands can do.

The bottom line is that times might be tough for marathon sex sessions in the sack, but that doesn’t mean you should abandon all physical touching.

Be Spontaneous
Remember when you were in high school? You didn’t have a lot of privacy with your girlfriends and so any spare moment, you had your hands all over each other. As we mature and settle into our own homes and apartments, we get a little bit more lackadaisical about only having sex in the comfort of our beds.

So be on the look out for any opportunity and location to get in a quickie with your wife or long-term girlfriend. Here are some times and locations to keep in mind:

• During nap time with the kids, take your wife downstairs into the basement, on the back porch, or anywhere in your house that is as far away from the nursery as possible.
• As soon as the kids go to bed, grab your wife and lead her to the bedroom before either of you has a chance to get caught up in different activities.
• While the kids are playing in the backyard, stand at the kitchen sink, behind your partner and make love standing up. You can both keep an eye on the children, and they can’t see what you’re doing. But you can still have some quick fun.
• Before the sitter goes home, pull the car into the garage and make out like you’re in high school. Just turn off the ignition so you don’t run into carbon monoxide poisoning!

As with everything in life, balance is the key. While above we state that you should look for spontaneous sexual moments that aren’t on the calendar, that doesn’t mean that a schedule can’t be your friend.

Sit down with your wife and your day planners. Look for opportunities when you can pencil in sex.

Now, if you have a mindset of drudgery and bureaucracy, then this session is going to be boring and dull. You’re not making an appointment to get a root canal or to endure an IRS audit. Instead, if you make it fun, tell some jokes to your partner, and share some fantasies, then the very act of scheduling can be a blast.

Here’s what not to say: “Okay, shit, when are you free? I’m hammered this week. I don’t know how to fit anything else in!”

Here’s what to say: “Okay, great, let’s try to find two sessions! This’ll be a blast. It looks like you’re free after soccer practice on Thursday night, what if we mess around under the table during dinner and then finish up after the kids go to bed? Now, how about you suggesting a second session?”