Curiosity Is an Essential Tool in Your Relationship Toolbox

I recently spent a week where the jungle meets the ocean in Costa Rica facilitating sex and intimacy workshops at the Shameless Sex Retreat. I came back with one key lesson… curiosity is a tool every couple needs in their relationship toolbox. 

You often see communication and active listening promoted as the best way to improve your relationship. A quick google search serves up dozens of articles about finding your love language, how to get the spark back in the bedroom, or aligning your attachment style with your partner’s.  I am not refuting the value of these tools for creating more intimacy in your relationship.  I am suggesting, based on my observations of couples who transformed their relationship mindset in 5 days, that curiosity is a very important piece of the relationship puzzle.  

Without curiosity, relationships can get dull. The novelty and freshness that we experience early in a relationship is invigorating, intoxicating, and grounded in curiosity. When a relationship is new, you are discovering your partner’s interests, their body, their desires, their quirks and it can feel like your thirst for knowledge about this new person is unquenchable.  In short, you are in a state of alertness.  In this state, arousal, laughter, and connection come with ease.  Over time, your partner becomes more “fixed” in your mind.  As you know your partner more deeply, you can anticipate their behavior and responses.  If you allow yourself to reach an end point in the discovery process, staleness can creep in.  

Bringing curiosity to each stage of your relationship and remaining curious about your partner can help to keep your connection potent, nurture intimacy, and ignite erotic exploration.  As Esther Perel, the acclaimed author and sex therapist, puts it, “Surprise helps counteract the routine and repetition that can sometimes lead to a decline in desire over time.  Novelty sparks your curiosity, encourages exploration, and shows that even this person who is so known to you is still somewhat unknown, with untold dreams, longings, silliness, and surprises.”

The couples I spent a week with in Costa Rica had the great privilege of traveling across the continent, reconnecting with each other amid the aliveness of the jungle, and partaking in novel experiences facilitated by a small faculty of sex and relationship experts.  I highly recommend doing something similar if you can!  Let me also say it is not the only path to sharing novel experiences that enhance your relationship. There are many meaningful ways to nurture curiosity in your own relationship.

What are tangible ways you can nurture the stimulating contradiction of deeply knowing your partner while also getting curious about the new depths your partner has to share with you?

Ask Questions

You have probably seen your partner through many ups and downs.  The more you go through together, the easier it is to draw connections between past experiences and current ones or to make assumptions about how your partner experiences the world. A simple way to break out of this and to “see” your partner fresh is to ask questions like “What that was like for you?” “Can you tell me more about that?” “Is there something I can do to support you?” It can be easy to think that you have the answers for someone that you know so well.  Questions are a tool for staying open to your partner’s changing needs and experiences.  Questions are a way to stay curious about your partner.

Travel

Travel is an incredible way to get into a curious mindset.  Travel could include taking part in an international intimacy retreat, buuuuut it doesn’t have to.  You could “travel” with your partner across town to explore a new kind of cuisine. During the meal share about the different flavors, how they hit your palette and what you enjoy most about the meal.  Travel can be exploring a little town nearby, strolling through the shops and cafes, and making a day of it. 

Visiting nature is a wonderful way to connect to your partner (and the beautiful world you are journeying through together).  Nature vibrates at a high frequency, which is why so many people express feelings of calm and contentment when surrounded by the natural world.  The vibration of nature can support discovery and open-hearted expansion, which is an amazing energy to tap into with a partner.  Find a little slice of nature near you that and get curious, together. 

Try Something New

Taking up a class or a new activity together is a wonderful opportunity to create newness in your relationship.  Sign up for a local pottery class and recreating that legendary scene from Ghost. Volunteer at your animal shelter. Find a sex-positive shop to take a sex education class. These experiences allow you to learn something new together, break up your routines and rediscover each other in a new context and setting.  

Trying something new in the bedroom is also and exciting way to get curious together. A great place to start is a Yes/No/Maybe list, which is a menu of sex acts for you and your partner to check off individually. Look for your shared yes’s and try them out.

Pleasure Map

The embodied exploration of pleasure mapping is a playful (and orgasmic) way to change things up and get curious about your partner’s pleasure.  When you and your partner experience pleasure together, especially when you uncover new pleasures, there is a halo effect. It can positively translate to everything you do together.

Pleasure mapping is about discovering new sensations and types of touch to incorporate in your play. You start at your partner’s feet and work your way up to their head with touch. Leave no area of the body untouched and try different types of stimuli - caress, tickle, squeeze, spank, vibrate, scratch your way over your partner’s entire body. Take your time. Agree on a word or physical cue your partner can give you to communicate if a sensation is unpleasurable so you can explore a different kind of touch or area of the body. When you’re done, debrief. Have your partner share with you the most pleasurable and surprising sensations. Take notes and integrate these new forms of touch into the bedroom.

When you approach your partner with loving curiosity, the familiar and the potential for newness comingle. This element of curiosity adds depth to your communication, intensifies your erotic connection and nurtures passion.  Cultivating curiosity in your relationship adds a dash of novelty into the secure, steady and perhaps somewhat predictable container that comes with many committed relationships. Commitment and curiosity harmonize to support lasting connection.