Let's talk about sex, baby

Okay, say you're interested in kink, but you've been involved with your partner for a couple of years, and until now, you've had a totally vanilla sex life. Maybe you're just interested in some relatively tame stuff; light spanking and wrist restraints. How do you bring this up with your partner?

I think that communication in relationships is super important. Lots of people overestimate how well their partner can pick up on their non-verbal cues, and this can lead to frustration, misunderstanding and resentment. At the same time, people are embarrassed about telling their significant other what they're thinking and feeling.

It is scary to bare your soul to someone. I'm not going to lie, it's terrifying. You face possible rejection and ridicule, and it's hard to take that first step. But if you don't take any steps, know that you're settling for less than what you could potentially experience.

I can never understand couples who can't talk about money or sex. They're both hugely important and can be deal-breakers. Imagine marrying someone, and 3 years later, finding out that they owe huge amounts of money. Imagine finding out when they declare bankruptcy. Isn't money something you should talk about and be upfront about? There are some conversations that you should have early in a relationship; I'm not talking on the first date, but within that first year:

• what's your personal money situation? How much do you owe, are you managing payments and what's your credit rating like?
• do you want kids? Are you prepared to negotiate?
• do you see yourself wanting to leave the country in the next 10 years?
• if you won lotto, how would you spend the money?

Seriously, those are important questions. The sex one is a bit sticky, I'll admit. Your sexual preferences and likes and dislikes develop throughout your life; what you like today may not be the same things you'll like five years from now. With that in mind, I think sex should be something that you touch base with your partner about often.

In my first major relationship, within an hour of sex, we would rate how we found it out of 10, and give each other one thing we loved and one thing we would like to try next time. It often sparked further conversations, and lead to some pretty amazing things that we tried on a whim. It was nothing serious, more like a game that we did, but it made a huge difference to the openness of our sexlife and how we felt to talk about it.

In my second major relationship, we had a box in the bedroom. Every week, we would each put at least one thing we would like to do in the box. They could be something totally new, or something we did before. Whenever we were in a bit of a rut, we would take turns pulling things out of the box to try. We each got to veto 3 things, which went back into the box, then we would do the first thing we could either both agree on, or the 6th thing out of the box. That was a really awesome way of making sex fun and exciting, and also a great way of introducing new things without having to feel weird about it.

I think that openness about sex gets easier as you do it more. If you never ever talk about sex, of course it's going to feel weird at first. You will feel self-conscious; hell, sometimes I feel self-conscious talking about sex!

I think the best thing to do is jump in and talk about it. A simple conversation of 'you know, I had a dream last night of you doing *** to me' can open up a whole new world. If you don't want to talk face to face, text, email, write a letter if you have to. Remember, if you're feeling self-conscious, chances are, your partner is too. Make the conversations short at first; and don't pressure them. But whatever you do, for the sake of your sex life, don't ever give up.