ESSENCE Intimacy Intervention columnist Abiola Abrams knows all things sex, romance and self-love, so who better to help you spice up your 2016 than her? We checked in with the love guru to snag her very best tips for a more passionate and romantically promising New Year. Ladies, you’re going to want to take notes for this one.
Be Open To Love
“If I could think of one thing that will make your 2016 amazing in the area of love and romance, it is for us as Black women to be open to love,” says Abrams, author of The Sacred Bombshell Handbook of Self-Love. “So often so many of us say that we want romance, that we want the perfect guy or girl and that we want to be happy in the area of relationships. Then we wonder aloud, ‘Why do I keep running into unavailable men?’ After speaking to women across the country and having so many incredible women write into my column, I realize that many of us are truly the unavailable ones.” If that’s you, Abrams insists that you must stop it, right now. “Get your heart in the game,” she adds. “Get your brain out of the way and allow yourself to be loved in the way that you deserve.” Cosign!
Be Open To Everything
Being open to love extends well past being open to meeting someone new—it applies to women in current relationships too. And, it requires some compromise and vulnerability with the one you love. “Be more open to having sex when your partner wants to and you don’,” says Abrams. “Be more open to making time for those things, or for romance, and a healthy sex life. As women, we plan everything else but we don’t plan for sex and romance. Just be open altogether—open to the possibilities of intimacy; open to, spontaneity, open to pleasure, open to things that maybe you didn’t know that you were into.”
Explore Your World
Abrams wholeheartedly believes that for each woman, there is a world she just doesn’t know exists but she must explore. “You don’t know what you don’t know,” says Abrams. “Be open to the possibilities of pleasure coming to you in different ways that you may have never expected.”
Reset Your Pleasure Button
“Be open to the idea that your sexuality can be spiritual as well when you have a loving partner that you’re with,” says Abrams. “You may want to try chanting to open your heart chakra, which is all about love, and your sacral chakra, which is all about pleasure.”
Totally inspired? Find more great advice from Abiola here and check out her line of self-love products/books here.