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In this week’s quickie episode, Jess describes how understanding your “Core Erotic Feeling” can improve your sex life. Whether you’re turned on by love, tenderness, humiliation or compliments, training your partner to evoke your core erotic feeling is key to a fulfilling sex life!
If you’re short on time, check out the video below to watch Dr. Jess’ segment on the BT show by Tracy Moore.
TL;DR The Core Erotic Feeling
- Your Core Erotic Feeling (CEF) is the feeling you need to feel in order to get in the mood for sex.
- It’s not about what you do in bed, but how you want to feel – desired, relaxed, powerful, adored, or even humiliated.
- Your CEF helps you understand your unique erotic script and communicate your needs more clearly.
- You’re responsible for creating your own CEF. Your partner supports you, but you lead.
- Your Elevated Erotic Feeling (EEF) are the next-level feelings that keeps sex exciting. They are often rooted in risk, surprise, or taboo.
- Understanding your CEF and EEF helps you build a sustainable, evolving sex life, not just for Valentine’s Day, but for the other 364 days too.
Valentine’s Day or Any Day: Why We Pressure Ourselves to Have “Great Sex”
Grand gestures are lovely, but what matters more is what you do on all the other days of the year. As I shared in a recent TV interview and on the SexWithDrJess podcast, the key to lasting erotic connection isn’t about roses, red lace, or pressure-filled date nights.
It’s about understanding your erotic blueprint, and that starts with identifying your Core Erotic Feeling (CEF).
What Is a Core Erotic Feeling?
Your core erotic feeling is the feeling you need to experience in order to get in the mood for sex. Not a behaviour. Not a fantasy. Not a sex act. A feeling.
We often focus on what we want to do or what we want a partner to do, but how do you want to feel?
You might need to feel:
- Desired
- Adored
- Safe
- Confident
- Powerful
- Humiliated
- Challenged
- In control
- Totally out of control
There’s no right or wrong answer. And your CEF doesn’t have to fit into neat categories like love languages. It’s your erotic fingerprint.
How to Discover Your CEF
To uncover your core erotic feeling, ask yourself:
- How do I need to feel before, during, and after sex to enjoy it?
- When I fantasize or self-pleasure, what’s the emotional theme?
- When I see something erotic on screen, what emotional dynamic catches my attention?
Examples:
- If your hottest fantasies involve being watched or adored, your CEF might be “feeling desired.”
- If you crave escape from stress and reality, your CEF could be “relaxed” or “free.”
- If you fantasize about being more bold or confident than you feel in real life, maybe your CEF is “empowered.”
Want a deeper dive into fantasy and emotional arousal? Revisit Seduction Starts With You or Understanding Your Sexual Values.
So You’ve Identified Your CEF… Now What?
The next step? Evoke it.
And yes, you can ask your partner to help, but remember the 80/20 rule: 80% of this is on you.
If you need to feel sexy and desired, how are you cultivating that yourself? Are you dressing for your pleasure? Complimenting your own body in the mirror? Prioritizing the self-talk that supports your sexuality?
Don’t wait for someone else to make you feel confident, relaxed, or worshipped.
Try this:
We-Vibe Chorus – For couples who want to co-create arousal and pleasure, synced with your unique erotic rhythms.
Womanizer Duo 2 – For those whose CEF is all about control, precision, and indulgence. Use discount code DRJESSVIP to save.
You’re Not Alone, But You Are Unique
You and your partner may share the same CEF and still need different paths to get there.
Let’s say you both crave feeling desired. One of you might love being told, “You’re irresistible.” The other might want to be seduced through touch or slow, intentional eye contact. Don’t assume desire looks or feels the same for everyone, even your partner.
You need to train each other. Gently. Kindly. With curiosity.
Need help with erotic communication? Check out this post on dirty talk for scripts and tips.
Podcast Transcript:
It’s not a trick at all. It’s a straightforward exercise you can do on your own and with your partner (if you have one) that really will revolutionize your sex life.
It involves learning to understand your core erotic feeling (CEF).
Your core erotic feeling is the feeling that you most strongly associated with sexual desire, arousal, pleasure, and fulfillment.
To help identify your CEF, answer this simple question: how do you need to feel in order to enjoy sex?
Do you need to feel loved? Relaxed? Appreciated? De-stressed? Desired? Sexy? Challenged? Threatened? Jealous? Subjugated? Powerful? Surprised?
This list is obviously non-exhaustive.
Your core erotic feeling is so intrinsically tied to your erotic script that you may not be able to imagine that someone else feels differently. It’s much like a Love Language.
Some of you may feel as though you don’t need to feel any particular emotion in order to get in the mood for sex — you’re always in the mood. Well good for you!
But you still have a core erotic feeling — the feeling that most intensifies your sexual pleasure.
You may want to answer the question: When I think of my hottest, most intense sexual experience(s), how did I feel?
Once you’ve identified your CEF, you need to identify how to cultivate this feeling. What does it take help you to feel relaxed, for example?
And then you need to communicate both your CEF and how to make you experience it to your partner so that they can be a part of the cultivation process.
Your core erotic feeling may be the experience of feeling desired. But conveying your CEF to your partner requires a bit more specificity. You might say, “Honey, I’ve figured it out! I need you to make me feel desired in order to really want and enjoy sex.”
Your partner might believe they understand you, but their idea of helping you to feel desired might be different than your own.
You might want them to look you up and down. Admire your every curve. Tell you that you’re irresistible.
Whereas they might believe that making you feel desired involves grabbing your boobs like a couple of bags of sand.
I’m exaggerating, but you can easily see the disconnect.
So in addition to identifying your CEF, you also need to specifically outline to your partner how they can evoke this feeling.
But remember, it’s not your partner’s job alone to activate your CEF. You play an even bigger role. You have to make yourself feel this way too!
If you’re CEF involves feeling sexy and desired, but you spend all day complaining about your body, you can’t expect your partner to undo all that damage.
Your CEF can change over time, but it doesn’t tend to change from day-to-day.
I’ll share my partner’s story to illustrate how your CEF may change:
When I met my partner, I quickly learned that feeling relaxed was key to his sexual desire and enjoyment. He needed to wind down and destress before sex was a possibility. We fell into a groove in which he made lifestyle adjustments to promote his own relaxation and I did what I could to help him de-stress.
But five years into our (now 16-year) relationship, everything changed…
In 2006, we visited a nude couples resort for the fist time. It was a highly erotic environment and everyone was very friendly. And though only half of the guests were in consensually non-monogamous relationships, some were also respectfully flirtatious Brandon, who is terribly attractive, received A LOT of attention.
Despite being ridiculously good looking, he has never really received a ton of attention (straight men, unfortunately, don’t often get to indulge in the feeling of being desired, but that’s a whole other topic), so this was a new experience.
And he LOVED it.
And so…his CEF shifted — from relaxation to feeling desired.
And so I had to relearn his CEF. It was a process — a struggle.
In the end, it took our relationship in a whole new direction — a very good one.
***
A couple of reminders…
- You have to teach your partner how to make you feel that CEF; they won’t know.
- Having the same CEF as your partner can actually be more challenging.
- And even if you have the same CEF, the way you reach that feeling may be different, so you still need to train your lover.
There is also another level of CEF. 2.0.
This is the feeling that takes sex to the next level. The feeling that makes sex overpoweringly fulfilling. I call it your elevated erotic feeling – EEF.
So for example, maybe your basic CEF is feeling relaxed, but you find sex is even more exciting when you feel a sense of threat — now you have to find a way to balance your CEF with your EEF so that you’re relaxed enough to have sex, but you can play with the element of threat to make it more exciting. The two may seem at odds, but you can make them work. We’ll do another episode on this another time…
Your missing should you choose to accept it:
1. Identify your CEF. Share it with your partner. Train them to help you access it.
2. Look for ways YOU can evoke this emotion.
3. Learn your partner’s CEF and let them train you.
4. Discuss your EEF, which is often more complicated and nuanced.
As always, send me your questions and feedback! @SexWithDrJess
XOXO
