Use Scent to Enhance Your Sex Life

How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume more than any spice! Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruits, with henna and nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree, with myrrh and aloes and all the finest spices. Song of Songs 4:10, 13-14

As a child, I liked to wander around my grandfather’s farm to explore, daydream, and feed grass to the cattle. My favorite place to go was the corn crib. Something about the scent, the lighting, and the quietness made it into a cathedral for me. I also would spend time on the second branch up on the right of the big tree to the side of the farmhouse, or on the old wagon left to the side of one of the fields. I would lie down with a long piece of grass in my mouth and watch the clouds while I breathed in the peace, the freedom, the connection to both family and land, and contentment.

I went for a short walk this afternoon. Just two blocks from my house is a cornfield that hasn’t been harvested yet. As I approached the field, I breathed in the smell of ripe corn, a touch of cow manure, the opened earth from the nearby fields now emptied of corn, just a hint of hay, and the autumn leaves that were scattered around me.

Just for a moment, I felt like I was on Grandpa’s farm again.

Transported

The scents of farming this afternoon filled me with memories, and they also evoked the feelings I’d had all those years ago. Here I was, standing two tenths of a mile away from where I live but transported 45 years into the past.

In that moment, I felt all the things I used to feel on the farm: peace, freedom, connection, contentment.

Other scents carry me back to feelings from my past as well. The smell of potatoes and onions cooking against a backdrop of coffee reminds me of my Grandma’s kitchen and the excitement of having a big breakfast with my cousins. The baby supply aisle at Walmart still releases a scent of something that reminds me of when my now-grown children were babies; I tear up in the store as I think about holding those little ones from so long ago.

Every time I smell one of these scents, I re-experience the feelings associated with those memories.

The scents related to positive memories act instantaneously to fill me with emotion that uplifts me.

Research backs this up: Scents that evoke positive memories can increase positive emotions and decrease negative ones.*

Enhance Your Sex Life

So why not use the power of aroma to boost your sex life a bit?

If scents can carry us back to positive memories and feelings from our childhood, they can also evoke positive sexual memories and emotions. We can use scent to help us boost our sexual interest and maybe even bypass some of the mental gymnastics we sometimes have to do to help us focus on sex.

Look for ways to intentionally use scent in your bedroom and during sexual encounters with your husband to help you tap into those same feelings of sexuality and desire later on.

Here are some ideas for you to consider:

• Put on a perfume that you will use only when you’re feeling romantic or sexy.
• Have your husband wear a cologne when you go out on a romantic date.
• Use a scented body lotion that you reserve for sexy time.
• Mist the room with a fragrant room spray that you use only in your bedroom.
• If you and your husband enjoy lingerie or special sheets, use a different laundry detergent or fabric softener when you are washing them.
• Place some potpourri around your room that you use nowhere else in the house.
• Make a special blend of essential oils.
• When you take a pre-sex bath, use a bubble bath formula or a body wash that you use only before sex or that coordinates with your body lotion or perfume.
• If food or drink is part of your lovemaking, try to include something with a distinctive scent on the menu.
• Use unrefined coconut oil as a lubricant (unless you are using condoms for contraceptive purposes).
• Fill a vase with flowers with a strong and distinctive scent.

A Tip About Some Scents

Just as scent can bring back positive memories and emotions, it can bring back negative ones as well. If your bedroom has been the source of a great deal of tension in your marriage, try to create a new signature scent for your bedroom. Sprays and potpourri can shift the scent in your room and purge away any scents associated with negative feelings.

Also, be sure to avoid scents associated with memories you don’t want connected to your sex life. My late mother-in-law used to wear Chanel No. 5. I once got one of those knock-off body sprays that smelled just a little like that perfume. My husband took one whiff of it and said, “Yeah, that reminds me of my mom. Could you go take a shower and never wear it again?”

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What are some other ways you can use scent to enhance your sex life?

*Herz, Rachel S. “The Role of Odor-Evoked Memory in Psychological and Physiological Health.” Brain Science 6, no. 3 (September 2016): 22.

Image credit | Mareefe at pixabay.com

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