“I want to try something new, but I don’t know how to ask my wife.”

“My wife and I have a good sex life, but there’s something that I’d like to try with her that we’ve never done. I don’t know how to introduce the idea to her. Help! What’s the right way to talk to her about it?”

I usually use the same technique to introduce any lover to some new idea, be it oral sex or being tied up and blindfolded or whatever it might be. I say “Hey, I really like the idea of ___. What do you think?”

I have consistently found that trying to search for just the “right” way to bring up sex and spending a lot of time being flustered and embarrassed about it generally doesn’t work very well. When you surround sex with walls of shame or fear and you don’t talk completely openly about what you want, you can end up creating a self-perpetuating cycle where it becomes difficult and awkward to talk about your sexual desires, and so you feel awkward about doing it and you don’t do it often, so it becomes more difficult and awkward to talk about, so you feel even more awkward about it, and pretty soon there’s something you really would like to explore that you just can’t bring yourself to mention.

I am a huge fan of talking openly and directly, without any beating around the bush or trying to drop hints…but also without a sense of expectation or entitlement. She might say “no.” If she does, that doesn’t have to be a big deal anyway; the human sexual experience is so vast that there’s always plenty more to explore. It’s also generally true that people change over time; “not now” does not necessarily mean “not ever.”

In fact, sometimes the “no” answers are the most valuable, because they can springboard into conversations about what your partner does and doesn’t like about sex, and what sorts of things don’t appeal to her about whatever you’re interested in. I don’t let “no” be the end of the conversation, but rather the beginning.

Again, though, it is very important not to have a sense of expectation or entitlement. If you do, then asking followup questions is likely to be seen as pressuring or badgering, whereas not attaching a sense of expectation to the conversation won’t, even if you use the same words. (People are surprisingly leaky; if you have a sense of expectation when you ask questions about sex, odds are pretty good your partner will feel it, if even subconsciously.)

So what I do is I go into any conversation about sex with honesty and transparency, directly, and from a position of abundance rather than starvation. There are so many fun, exciting, interesting, sexy things to explore in bed that you could never cover all of them even in ten lifetimes, so if your partner doesn’t want to explore one particular kind of activity, it’s really no big deal.

And, interestingly enough, I have also found that the more honest, open, and direct you are, the more likely the answer will be “yes,” even if what you want is something your partner finds intimidating or scary. The more direct and honest you are, the more transparent you are about what you want, the more easily you talk about sex, and the more you can hear a “no” answer without a sense of entitlement, the more you build trust in your relationship. The more trust your build, the easier it is to talk about sex, and the more your partner is likely to be willing to explore things with you even if they sound intimidating at first. Talking about sex, like not talking about sex, tends to become a self-perpetuating cycle.

If you aren’t accustomed to talking openly about sex, and you feel uncomfortable or nervous asking for what you want, be transparent about that too! “I’d like to build a fun, exciting sex life with you, and I’d like to explore new things in bed with you, but it’s hard for me to talk to you about because I feel nervous talking about the things I want in bed.” Honesty means complete honesty–including honesty about how you feel!

Make the conversation a two-way street, too. Ask questions. Find out what your partner wants to explore. Make it safe for your partner to open up; remember, the fact that someone wants to try something that sounds intimidating to you doesn’t mean you have to say yes, just like you wanting to try something doesn’t mean your partner has to say yes.