How to Make Love to Your Man Deeply and Build a Stronger Bond

There's a lot of ground to cover when we talk about sexuality, and one of the most fundamental topics is how we talk about sex itself. For many people, "having sex" implies something more physical, while "making love" carries a deeper emotional charge tied to actually being in love with your partner.

What Does Making Love Actually Mean?

Mastering foreplay, learning new positions, and mixing things up are all great for fun, satisfying sex — but sex and love making aren't the same thing. Sit with that for a second. Read it again if you need to: having sex is not the same as making love. Being a sexual powerhouse is fantastic for keeping your man satisfied. But that's a different thing entirely from making love to him.

When you make love to your husband, you're after something bigger than sex alone. You're bonding with him. You're showing him exactly how you feel. You're showing him that you love him — and hopefully he's showing you the same in return. So keep this in mind: it isn't just wild, animalistic sex. It's about forging a connection with him.

Making love matters because it reinforces how much value you and your partner hold for each other [1].

If you're a woman who craves that kind of connection through sex, you're far from alone. Popular culture likes to claim only women draw this distinction, but plenty of men also recognize — and want — the difference between having sex and making love. For many couples, reaching this level of connection is the real goal in the bedroom.

If that's what you're after, you'll first need to figure out what making love means to you personally. How do you tell the difference between having sex and making love? What's missing on the occasions when it feels like "just sex"?

Push past "I'll just know it when it happens." Picture the specific signs that tell you he's making love to you. What would you and your man be doing, saying, feeling, even thinking, in that moment? Then use the tips below in this love-making guide to bring more of that into your relationship whenever you want to make love with real passion.

Related: Remember that making love and having sex aren't the same thing. Take a look at these 17 signs that he is making love vs having sex.

Ways to Make Love

You don't need to apply every one of these love-making techniques every time, but deliberately focusing on them can lead to deep, passionate love making.

1. Set the Mood

Picture any classic love-making scene from a Hollywood film. Chances are the lighting is low, the door is locked, and something sensual — like the tracks in this list — is playing softly. Never mind that a lot of that atmosphere was added in editing after filming wrapped.

Make sure your space feels warm, tidy and welcoming. Swap in fresh sheets. Light a scented candle. Tidy up beforehand so the scene you're setting could belong in a movie.

That's easy enough if your bedroom is a peaceful retreat. It's trickier if you've got kids underfoot or roommates around. Think about booking a sitter, or even renting a hotel room for the night when you're planning to make love — many hotels even have romance packages built in.

If love making feels rare in your relationship, it might just be that the setting isn't right. Deliberately building a romantic atmosphere helps ensure you're not defaulting to a quickie or mechanical sex every time.

Come up with a signal between the two of you for when either of you would rather have romantic sex — even something as simple as asking to make love. From there, you can work together to build the intimate scene that sets the mood.

2. Voice Your Love

Sometimes love making isn't planned at all — it happens because your feelings simply overwhelm you. That can occur after a heartfelt conversation about how much you love each other, or after witnessing something emotional, like a wedding. Sometimes love just spills out in response to something thoughtful your man has done.

You can recreate that feeling by carving out time to show and tell him how much he means to you. Make sure you've got plenty of uninterrupted time. Plan a romantic dinner out, or have a meal waiting when he gets home from work. It's tough not to feel emotional after a date like that.

Don't stop expressing devotion once sex starts, either — tell him you love him in the moment. It intensifies everything. If you're early in the relationship, you might not be ready for those three words yet, but you can still let him know how much he matters to you.

As long as everything you do comes from a place of love, the specific techniques you use matter less.

3. Slow Down

Rushing is a recipe for disappointment when your goal is making love. Slowing down is essential — we mean that literally: take your time getting to the main event.

Setting aside real time for foreplay is one of the best ways to learn how to make love, and it also helps with orgasm, something many of our readers worry about. Give yourself as much time as you need. Run your fingers across every inch of his skin. Commit his smell, taste and feel to memory. Let your breathing slow down.

Get more ideas in our post about slow sex.

Love making isn't a race, and it isn't about the finish line — it's about the journey.

4. Stay Present

Many of us get pulled out of the moment by a busy, wandering mind, which works against you when you're trying to make love. A few practices can help you stay grounded, and they'll feel familiar if you've ever tried guided meditation or Tantric sex.

Whenever you catch your mind drifting, bring your attention back to the pleasure you're giving or receiving. Tune into how your head, arms, hands, legs, feet and core all feel.

Focus on your breath, and his. If it helps, try breathing together, or imagine drawing in his breath as he takes in yours — picture that breath as energy moving through your body to keep you grounded.

Some people find it useful to tune into each sense individually. Moaning, for instance, can keep your sense of hearing engaged. Or you might switch positions to snap your focus back. There's no one-size-fits-all trick here, because what works varies from woman to woman.

These techniques fall under the umbrella of mindfulness, which is known to help with anxiety and stress [2, 3] — and it turns out mindfulness has benefits in the bedroom, too. It can help women become more aroused physically [4 p 111], improve sexual function [5, 6], boost sexual satisfaction [7, 8, 9], and even help women dealing with sexual dysfunction recover their desire [10].

Sex researcher Lori Brotto actually wrote a full book on how mindfulness helps women have better sex — though men can benefit from it too.

Check out this podcast with our interview about mindfulness with Dr. Brotto.

5. Bring Your Whole Body Into It

Plenty of women know what it feels like to have sex with someone who treats them like nothing more than a warm body part. That's essentially the opposite of making love. So do the reverse — think past genitals entirely and involve your whole body, and his.

Give attention from his head down to his toes. Kiss him everywhere. Trail your hands across his chest, arms, back and legs. Aim to maximize the physical contact between your bodies.

6. Stay Connected

Part of what separates making love from just having sex is that connection stays intact between you and your partner. The same attentiveness you bring outside the bedroom can carry into it and elevate your love making.

Do this through eye contact, using each other's names, and prioritizing your partner's pleasure over just chasing your own. Making love is fundamentally about connecting with your partner as a specific individual — you're not learning to make love to a man in general, you're learning to make love to your man.

Because eye contact keeps you grounded and connected, you might gravitate toward positions like missionary or cowgirl, where making eye contact with your man comes naturally. Some couples feel doggy style or anal sex don't lend themselves to love making, but that's entirely a personal call.

If he holds direct eye contact with you, that's a strong sign he's making love to you.

You can also hold hands or wrap your arms around him in an embrace to stay physically connected while you make love. Bury your face in his neck and moan softly into his ear. Kissing marks a real difference between making love and having sex, too — some people reserve kissing entirely for those they love. Check out this advice to kiss passionately.

It's understandably tough, or even impossible, to feel like you're making love during a one-night stand. We're all for trying casual sex when it suits you, but that's not what this is about. You'll find it far easier to reach those loving feelings with someone you trust, both emotionally and physically.

7. Focus On the Journey, Not the Finish Line

In sex, orgasm often feels like the finish line — the goal. And that's fine if orgasm is what you're after. But fixating on that goal can mean losing sight of everything leading up to it, which runs counter to staying present.

It can also work against you by locking you into a routine instead of exploring. Making a deliberate effort to focus on the journey slows everything down, and that slowdown is exactly what separates love making from simply having sex. It also gives you more room to fully explore your own body and your partner's.

If you orgasm, great. If you don't, that's an opportunity to rethink what sex means to you — also great. And when your focus shifts to connection and pleasure, it lifts the pressure of chasing an orgasm, yours or his.

Our expectations around sex don't always serve us well, so it's okay to walk in expecting nothing in particular.

8. Explore Tantra

Some of the advice above edges into tantric sex, a philosophy rooted in ancient India. Tantric sex is, in a lot of ways, more intentional, which can help it feel more like making love than simply having sex. It's centered on exchanging energy with your partner — which sounds an awful lot like intimate love making.

Tantra places emphasis on things like synchronized breathing and eye contact, both of which you can practice together. You might also look into working with an experienced teacher to deepen your understanding of tantric sex.

Learn more about tantric sex.

9. Orgasm Together

It's not always easy, or even possible, to orgasm at the same time as your man, but pulling it off will absolutely deepen that sense of making love rather than just having sex. A few strategies can make it more achievable.

First, get to know your own timing and what you need to get there. If you typically take longer than your man does, starting with oral sex or manual stimulation might help level the playing field.

If you can put our advice on becoming multi-orgasmic into practice, you may gain more control over when you climax so you can time it with him. You could also try edging — bringing yourself right to the brink and backing off — to build toward a more powerful orgasm when the moment's right.

10. Cuddle Afterward

For a lot of people, what happens after sex matters just as much as what happens during it. If either of you rushes off right away, the whole experience loses its emotional weight. Orgasm also triggers a release of oxytocin [11], so this is the moment to soak it in. Oxytocin, as you might recall, is the so-called "cuddle hormone" that fuels bonding [12, 13].

Make time to touch and cuddle once sex is over. It smooths the transition back to everyday life. Maybe even nap together afterward and wake up feeling loved and satisfied.

Related: 19 Cuddling Positions For More Intimate Sleep, Foreplay & Sex

When Making Love Feels Out of Reach

Everything above can help you be more intentional about making love to your husband. But what happens when you've tried all these techniques and it still doesn't feel right? And what do you do if your man isn't responding the way you'd hoped?

Look at Your Relationship

If there's tension in your relationship outside the bedroom, it's going to bleed into what happens inside the bedroom too. You can't expect to make love to your man while you're mid-fight, harboring resentment, or otherwise emotionally checked out.

And if you're trying to feel an emotional bond with someone who isn't actually your romantic partner — a friend-with-benefits, say — genuine love making is going to be a stretch. That's a sign to reconsider what you actually want from the relationship, and to walk away if you can't get it.

It Might Not Be About You At All

If sex occasionally feels less intimate than you'd like, it could simply be that your partner isn't fully present. He might be stressed from work, worn out, or dealing with discomfort of some kind. In those moments he might be seeking sex as a way to unwind rather than as a way to connect with you — which isn't necessarily a problem if it's only occasional.

Some people genuinely see sex mainly as physical release and pleasure. That doesn't mean they don't love you; they may simply express love in ways that have nothing to do with sex. Making love might not even be on their radar unless a partner specifically asks for it. This can be tough to sit with if sex is your primary language of intimacy, but talking it through can help [14].

Both of these possibilities lead us to the next step.

Talk to Your Partner

The single most effective way to get what you want in bed — whether that's making love or being spanked — is direct communication with your partner. Talking about sex is never easy, which is exactly why we put together this guide to sexual communication.

When you bring up wanting to make love, emphasize that the sex itself is good — you'd just like to feel more connected. Be open about your feelings and what you want, and stay kind and willing to be a little vulnerable. Vulnerability, after all, is a key ingredient in making love.

This conversation is also a chance to learn what making love feels like from his side.

Use it to gently let him know if he seems distant or distracted during sex. Explain how that makes you feel, but keep your tone calm rather than accusatory — he may not even realize it's happening.

You shouldn't demand anything from your partner, but you can absolutely ask him to do things that help you feel more connected during sex. Being specific matters most if he's not naturally the type to express emotion through sex, or doesn't think of sex that way at all. Want him to slow down, kiss you more, or breathe in sync with you? Say so directly!

Together, you might land on a signal or phrase that flags when you want sex to lean more into intimacy and less into the purely physical. There's no shortage of slang for asking a partner to make love [15].

Also keep an eye out for signs he enjoys making love to you and consider ways to be more intimate.

Rethink What Making Love Means to You

Maybe the reason love making feels out of reach is that your definition of "having sex vs making love" is too narrow. Eye contact and gentle caresses can certainly bring those feelings — but they're far from the only route. When you're in love with someone, nearly any kind of sex with them can express that love, including rough sex (more about rough sex) or kinky sex. For some couples, BDSM feels especially loving, since the dominant is caring for and providing for their submissive, who in turn trusts and adores them.

Discover how to be submissive in bed.

Just as you can't judge how in love a couple is from the outside, you can't tell whether they feel like they're making love. Sure, movie love scenes look the part, but they're staged — it's all a matter of perspective.

Also keep in mind that you're not going to replicate the kind of polished, choreographed perfection you see on screen — and expecting that can breed disappointment and resentment. Real sex can be clumsy, funny, awkward, uncomfortable, and imperfect in a dozen ways. None of that has to take away from what you're sharing with someone you love.

And finally, remember you don't have to make love every single time. Sometimes it's perfectly fine to give in to lust and have passionate sex (get ideas here), or to squeeze in a quickie when time is short.

Related: Learn How to Have Amazing Sex in 15 Minutes or Less

As long as you're at least occasionally making passionate love and expressing that love outside the bedroom too, that's more than enough.

For many people, nothing connects them to their partner quite like making love. It's the deepest form of vulnerability, and there's nothing quite like showing love to someone you know loves you right back.

Resources

Better Sex Through Mindfulness, a book by Dr. Lori Brotto, explores the benefits of mindfulness. Staying present can deepen your connection to your partner, and this book explains how.

Men share what making love versus fucking means to them in this article on the Good Men Project.

Elliot D. Cohen digs into the philosophy behind making love on Psychology Today.

This article on the NY Post covers survey results about sex, including what sets making love apart.

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ #1 – Does sex need to be slow to count as making love?

Making love is really about how and what you feel, not the specific moves you make — there's no single correct formula. For some couples, rough sex delivers exactly the connection that defines making love. As long as what you're doing carries vulnerability and emotion, it counts as making love, even if it's rough or kinky.

FAQ #2 – Why doesn't sex with my partner feel like making love?

It's frustrating when you're hoping to make love to your man but it only feels like sex, particularly if you've experienced that deeper connection with someone before. There are several possible reasons: a partner fixated on the physical side of sex, treating orgasm rather than pleasure as the goal, unresolved tension in the relationship, chasing emotions that simply aren't there, or too much focus on genitals alone. Talking with your partner, and possibly reframing what making love means to you, can help.

February 3, 2020