I Tried 11 Sex Apps to Spice Up My Marriage

STOCKSY

I’ve been with my husband for almost five years, and while I still get butterflies when I see his name pop up on my phone, let’s be really honest: Long-term sex doesn’t elicit that same instantaneous, gotta-have-'em-right-now excitement that sex with a new partner does. It's comfortable, fun—it can even be adventurous—but in long-term relationships, consistently great sex takes work.

And since I have an app on my phone for everything from cooking (Yummly) to doing laundry (Cleanly) I figured there had to be something in the App Store (Screwly?!) that would revolutionize my sex life. Rather than a car service app, it'd be a, how shall I put it, personal service app. That's a thing, right?

Of course it is! There are, in fact, a lot of sex apps: Apps to find sex, apps to watch people having sex, apps to let people watch you have sex. To determine which ones are worth the space on your phone, I downloaded every sex app I could find (or, at least the ones that didn't seem creepy), told my husband we were in for a busy week, and embarked on my quest: Could a sex app could do for my relationship what Uber did for my commute?

Out of everything we tried (in total we gave 11 a go—some of which really don’t deserve their spot in the App store!), these are the five apps that had the most impressive effect on our sex life.

iPassion

The iPassion app is beautifully designed and user-friendly, with a premise like The Newlywed Game, but for your deepest and sexiest secrets. You answer questions about your sexual preferences, your partner does the same, and then you try to answer questions about each other.

It’s competitive, which is always fun, and you learn about your person's innermost desires with questions like, "Do you prefer your partner clean-shaven, or with stubble?" and "Which look is hottest: School Girl, Business Woman, Teacher, or Biker Chick?”

After half-a-decade of romantic bliss, I thought I was done with surprises about my husband. I was wrong. Turns out, he’s more interested in me wearing pigtails than I realized, and he didn’t know how much I love his second-day stubble. For anyone who feels a little shy about admitting what they want in the bedroom (which is perfectly normal), doing so from behind a screen can be easier than saying it out loud.

The only issue: I morphed into Monica from Friends, gunning to finish the game so that I could win, rather than get it on….

Sex Stories

Watching porn together can be really sexy, but it can also be kind of intense. A lot of mainstream porn is graphic, and unless you pay for porn from a reputable site, like XConfessions (from feminist pornographer Erika Lust), it’s hard to know whether or not the people in it were exploited.

For me, reading erotica is the perfect compromise. The Sex Stories app gives you access to all sorts of exciting, sexually-charged tales from writers around the world. The flavor varies from characters who have sweet, vanilla sex, to more hardcore subject matter, like BDSM.

Hubby and I found that reading stories privately, then sending each other links to the ones that turned us on was seriously hot. And more than that, it gave us a whole new way to communicate our desires. I’ve always had fantasies about being with another woman, but I was worried sharing them with my husband might make him feel insecure. After he read a story about a couple having a threesome, he told me how much he would love to watch me get it on with another lady.

While I don’t know if we’ll ever make that a reality, being able to share the fantasy led to bed-breakingly great sex and left me way more open to discussing my desires.

Dirty Couple Game

Awkward name syntax aside, this is a perfect early-relationship game—like an icebreaker for new couples. It's set up in the classic truth-or dare-format: Enter your own name and the name of your partner (you can include more than two players, which is very forward-thinking of the developers) and get the option of a task to perform or a secret to divulge.

I consider myself pretty adventurous, but even the most Charlotte-y among us might find the questions here pretty tame. The app asked us questions like, "Have you ever been to sex shops?" and, "Have you ever masturbated?" (Is there a sizable part of the population that could actually say no to that one?) Still, if you’ve only been on a few dates, are super shy, or are struggling to get to know a new partner, Dirty Couple Game could be a jumping-off point.

The dares, unfortunately, aren’t much wilder, with suggestions like "give a compliment" or "kiss your partner’s hips." If you pay $8.99 for a full upgrade you can graduate to more "extreme" suggestions, like describing sexual fantasies or creating your own dares. Reviews in the App Store complain that it’s pretty focused on male pleasure, and I found myself agreeing. My husband, surprisingly enough, didn’t seem to mind.

YONO

Okay, so this is a little bit of a cheat because YONO isn’t technically a sex app: It’s a menstrual tracker. But I’ve learned that understanding your menstrual cycle is the most active step you can take towards improving your sex life.

While planning sex might not sound that exciting, a woman looks most attractive (from an objective, evolutionary perspective) and feels horniest around the time that she ovulates (regardless of whether or not you want kids, nature is pulling for you to have them). Using a fertility tracker allows you to not only be extra careful with your contraception, but also plan trips and date nights around the times you’ll be most turned on. Why hello, hot vacation sex.

I tracked my period for a few months (the app requires a few cycles' worth of data to get super accurate), then planned a romantic weekend away with my husband—something we try to do a couple of times a year—for when I was ovulating.

In the past on vacation I've put pressure on myself to want sex all the time—something to do with paying for the hotel room, I think. But this trip, because I was ovulating, there was no stress, just a whole lot of "let’s skip the breakfast we already paid for and stay in bed" sex. We usually have sex three or four times a week, but on this trip we were doing it at least four times a day.

69 Positions

Here’s the thing about trying a new position: It doesn't have that much to do with the actual position. Instead, it's about doing something new and getting to experience each other’s bodies in a different way. Even just the act of trying to get into a pretzel formation can bring you and your partner closer.

When you’ve been together awhile, it’s tempting to go for the "routine:" the little sexual sequence you develop that doesn’t take too long, gives you both an orgasm, and means you’re asleep by 11 on a weeknight. (Like, say, five minutes of foreplay, missionary sex, and then finishing with girl on top.) Nice to have, but not always exciting.

That's where 69 Positions comes in (no pun intended). It's straightforward: It's an app that demonstrates how to try different sex moves. The illustrations are clear and easy to follow and they’re all things that you could achieve without having a background in Bikram. Plus, if you've exhausted all the built-in options, you can use in-app purchasing to unlock more complicated and exotic positions—$1.99 for the whole menu.

Apart from one slightly-strained thigh muscle thanks to our attempt at The Acrobat, this app lead to a fun evening together. Will we be trying The Wheelbarrow every night? Probably not. But it's nice to change things up, and this app certainly did that.

14 Films Where the Sex Was So Intense, It Earned a NC-17 Rating

EVERETT/SUNDANCE/FOX SEARCHLIGHT

Sex. People have it! It feels good and is totally natural! Yet, for some reason, Hollywood still has a "protect our innocent eyeballs" attitude when it comes to graphic intimacy in film—hence this list of NC-17 movies.

Most of the time, on-screen sex is deemed acceptable. Hell, it even shows up in the occasional PG-13 film. But when the sex is way too hot to handle? That's when not even an R rating will suffice.

Here are some notable movies in which the sex was so mind-boggling, the entire film was slapped with a NC-17 rating.

'Bad Lieutenant'

This 1992 crime drama literally stars Harvey Keitel as—you guessed it—a bad lieutenant. Keitel spends his time having sex, doing drugs, masturbating, and being pretty awful. The movie obviously has quite a few provocative scenes (including a threesome), which—along with drug use and violence—earned it an NC-17 rating.

Fun fact: Bad Lieutenant was re-cut to earn an R rating just so Blockbuster could offer it up for rent.

'The Canterbury Tales'

1972's The Canterbury Tales is pretty much iconic, thanks to its slapstick humor and plentiful sex scenes. And that's without mentioning all the nudity.

Interestingly, the movie was originally rated X for its extreme sex. Who knew Chaucer could be so controversial?

'The Canterbury Tales'

1972's The Canterbury Tales is pretty much iconic, thanks to its slapstick humor and plentiful sex scenes. And that's without mentioning all the nudity.

Interestingly, the movie was originally rated X for its extreme sex. Who knew Chaucer could be so controversial?

'The Dreamers'

Remember when The Dreamers came out and skulking off to see it in theaters with your friends was the thing to do? The 2003 romantic drama put Eva Green on the map, and featured lots of sex—some of it sexy sex, and some of it downright weird, considering the film is about a brother and sister's intimate relationship with their mutual friend. Either way, sex earned it an NC-17 rating, which is normally considered a death sentence at the office, but made this particular film all the more tempting.

'Eyes Wide Shut'

This movie ended up being released with an R rating, but only after being edited down. Meaning that, yes, it was originally slapped with NC-17 thanks to plentiful and graphic sex. (FYI, the Blu-ray release of the film features the unedited original version, if you want to check it out.)

'Blue Valentine'

Like Eyes Wide Shut, Blue Valentine was originally rated NC-17, but it appealed and got its rating down to an R. The scene in question involves Ryan Gosling's character giving Michelle Williams' character oral sex.

Gosling was less than thrilled about the NC-17 rating: "There's plenty of oral sex scenes in a lot of movies, where it's a man receiving it from a woman—and they're R-rated. Ours is reversed and somehow it's perceived as pornographic," he said in an interview. "Black Swan has an oral scene between two women and that's an R rating, but ours is between a husband and his wife and that's NC-17?"

'Showgirls'

If you've lived this long without seeing the infamous pool sex scene in Showgirls, you should probably stop everything and catch up on this monumentally iconic pop cultural moment. That particular scene is just one of the many reasons Showgirlswas given an NC-17 rating, and it's...a lot. Let's just say you'll never look at Jessie Spano in Saved by the Bell the same way.

'Lust, Caution'

Ang Lee's erotic thriller is one of the top-grossing NC-17 movies ever, and features explicit sex that Lee was hell-bent on keeping in the film. "[In] America I think they are too loose on violence. I think that, culturally, they make an NC-17 rating equivalent to a porno movie and bad taste. I think that needs to be worked on," Lee explained.

'Henry & June'

Henry & June tells the famous story of Anaïs Nin's relationship with Henry Miller and his wife June—both of whom Nin explored sexual and romantic relationships with. To quote the film's LOL-worthy and very '90s trailer: "They lived an adventure more erotic than any fantasy."

Interestingly, the movie was almost slapped with a X rating, but was deemed NC-17 to subvert the association with pornography that X-rated films typically have.

'Shame'

The reasoning behind Shame's NC-17 rating should be pretty obvious: It's about a man (played by Michael Fassbender) who has a sex/masturbation addiction. As you might expect, the movie features explicit scenes of intimacy, as well as Fassbender completely naked. (Yay for male full frontal nudity in film—the playing field most certainly needs to be evened.)

'In the Realm of the Senses'

In the Realm of the Senses tells the story of Japanese geisha Sada Abe. She's said to have killed her lover and cut off his penis and testicles...and carried them around with her in her kimono. The film features unsimulated sex

 (meaning, the actors actually did it), and was initially banned in the United States.

'Blue Is the Warmest Color'

This coming-of-age story chronicles a lesbian relationship, and features graphic sex scenes that earned it an NC-17 rating—despite the fact that the actresses used molds of genitalia instead of the real thing. "We had fake pussies on," actress Léa Seydoux said of filming the scenes. "You have something to protect and tape it under. I don't make love on screen. We can fake these things, you can't fake feelings, but you can fake body language."

'Y Tu Mamá También'

Y Tu Mamá También helped make Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal Hollywood celebrities. It's best known for its extremely steamy love scenes, including a threesome with Luna, Bernal, and the woman they're traveling with. The movie was originally rated NC-17, but was released...without a rating at all.

'Crash'

Not to be confused with the 2004 Oscar-winner of the same name, David Cronenberg's Crash follows a couple who engage in an extramarital affair with each other after surviving a car crash and go on to fetishize car crashes and sleep together only in cars. The graphic nature of the film, including its depictions of sex, earned it an NC-17 rating.

'Marriage 2.0'

This adult romance film follows a young married couple who venture into the waters of a non-monogamous relationship. It's basically full-on porn (it had to be edited down to get an NC-17 rating from the MPAA).

The Real Reason Some Women Are Just Not That Into Sex With You

G Studio

Last week, I talked about how it seems that many women lose interest in sex when they're in long-term relationships.

What I didn't get around to saying is that I have a hypothesis about why:

Because men either aren't attuned enough to women's sexual pleasure, or else they get lazy about making sure it will happen — and it's a lot easier to be interested in sex when you're getting off 100 percent of the time that you have it.

It's much less easy when you're getting off only a fraction of that time.

Dudes of America, if I may ask for your attention, please realize that while it may be nearly automatic for you to enjoy the act of man-on-woman sexual intercourse — for you to enjoy jabbing your phallus into the most sensitive female body part, again and again and again, often disrupting one's stomach, full of one's evening meal (not to mention a few other vital organs involved in digestion) — it's not always so straight-forward for women. Think about it, hombres: We allow you to poke that tuberous body part of yours repeatedly into a place where it barely fits, while you crush us from the waist-down with your greater body weight, and often tear at our hair — or simply pin it down under your forearms so that we can't move our heads without disrupting the whole firecracker that we are praying will explode now in the hopes we can get to sleep that much sooner! — and you are often biting us in the process. Plus, you guys pretty much always experience the bliss of orgasm, whereas we have no guarantee that we'll enjoy such nirvana.

So is it really that surprising we don't always love it?

I mean, many of you hetero guys define sex as: "Any act which results in the getting off of the male." I personally, as a woman, would prefer it if your definition was more like: ""An interaction which results in the getting off of the male — and the female."

Of course, the female orgasm is a relatively complicated matter, compared to male ejaculation. Often, both partners needs to put in some time, and to have patience and dexterity if a lady is to achieve climax. I do think an adult woman should knowhow to orgasm, on her own, and if she's never had the experience, she shouldn't put the pressure on you, the man, to provide it. She should get herself a vibratorand figure it out. But once she's done that bit of homework, it's up to both of you to make sure she enjoys orgasmic pleasure on a regular basis —if you want to keep her around, and keep her interested in the shagging.

So, maybe, guys, just maybe, if you feel your sex life is flagging, you should put a little more effort into pleasing your lady! Just saying.

(Mens and womens: Do you think I'm onto something here?)

And I know, I know: You males are gonna say we females should tell you what we want — otherwise, how are you to know? And fair enough. It's just that it can be kind of annoying to feel you have to ask every time, or remind a person, or have a discussion about it. So can you meet us halfway, please?