29 Ways to Love Your Lover

We're closing out our 31 Days to a New OOH! campaign on Instagram, which got great responses and hopefully helped you build some excellent new sexy self-care habits. For February, we decided to keep the trend going with a brand new IG campaign, 29 Ways to Love Your Lover. Our goal this month is to offer up simple daily ideas for enjoying and appreciating your lover-- whether that lover is yourself, one partner, or many partners.

The importance of making space for making love

Life is overwhelming for everyone these days. Often, it seems like it's all we can do just to make it through the day, fulfill the loudest demands on our time, and make it to bed at a decent hour. But when that's all there is, our relationships get thirsty-- and so do we. None of us want to burden our partners or ourselves by being one more thing to deal with, so it gets easier and easier to let the good stuff go. It feels like dessert that we never get to eat because we're always choking down those Brussels sprouts.

Here's the thing: part of being an adult means that you can decide to have dessert (or at least a bite of it) before you even start on dinner. For breakfast, even! WHAT. This February, we'd love for you to make space for your relationship-- space in your schedule, space in your mental to-do list, physical space for intimacy and joy. There's never going to be a perfect time in your life when there aren't countless other demands on your time and energy, and saving romance and sexytimes for vacations or holidays puts a lot of pressure on your relationships. You'll be much happier and healthier if you take a stand and decide that all these sweet and steamy moments are as much a priority as those damn TPS reports.

Don't make it a chore

The danger with any kind of relationship-boosting effort is that it's too easy to turn it into just one more task to accomplish for the sake of crossing it off your checklist-- or to decide that you're only going to make Big Sweeping Gestures. We talked last month about the challenges of change, and how the reality is that lots of small manageable steps are more successful than one huge effort. That applies here too-- being mindful of your relationships, and savoring what they bring to your life, is something best done with a little bit here and a little bit there. Grand gestures are wonderful, but by their nature they're going to be rare.

Instead of thinking of this as something you have to do (you don't-- or you can come back to it later), think of it as something you get to do. Treat yourself to a break from the grind by taking just a minute or two a day to be present with your lover. Bask in the way they look at you. Laugh at the silly things they do to entertain you. Get a quick hit of brain chemicals from a long hug or a stolen smooch. Let this be joy, not work.

It counts even if your partner is yourself

In fact, it might count more. So many of us put ourselves dead last, even behind other partners if we have them, and behind everything else if we don't. We're always our own first and best lovers, so nurturing that relationship is important, too. Admire yourself. Touch yourself. Buy yourself a toy. Take yourself on a date. Just about anything you'd do for another partner, you can do for yourself. It's so vital for us to spend time treasuring ourselves and treating ourselves gently and with love.

A word about Valentine's Day

No, it's no accident that this campaign falls in the month of February! But it's not because we're hyping a month-long hearts-and-flowers fantasy for you. Rather, it's for two reasons. One is that because it is such a stressful, high-pressure holiday for so many, one that's supposed to be unrealistically "perfect", it felt to us like a great time to encourage everyone to love themselves and their partners simply and sincerely every day instead of piling expectations onto one emotionally-fraught day. And two is that, if you love the idea of Valentine's Day (some of us admit to being this flavor of swoony romantic!), making intimacy and romance and sex part of everyday life means that V-day can just be a delightful day when no one will blink if you spend the day with big heart-eyes being sappy and sentimental. It puts the fun back in the day if you want to celebrate it. And if not? Ignore it! Love is too big to be contained in a single day, and too unpredictable to pin down to one date.

This month, let's celebrate the existence of love in a demanding and stressful world-- love in all its forms and faces, its delights and comforts and ebbs and flows, for one's self or for a bouquet of lovers or for family or friends or wonderful strangers, for the joy it brings us or the joy it brings people we've never met. Love is what makes life sweet.

Have an idea for another way to love your lover this month? Drop it in the comments! And don't forget to follow us on Instagram so you don't miss any of our sex educator tips.