Sex File: I find it difficult to focus on sex, how can I stay in the moment?

I'm finding it increasingly hard to focus once we get going, and often I'm too distracted to reach orgasm

My husband and I have been together for 20 years, and despite having two tweens and vast responsibilities, we still have an active sex life. However, I'm finding it increasingly hard to focus once we get going, and often I'm too distracted to reach orgasm. How do I stay in the moment?

There are 101 ways to relax, and while I'm not going to get through them all in this column, I promise that if you spend just 10-15 minutes a day consciously focusing on clearing your mind and calming your body, your sexual difficulties will begin to alleviate. To experience arousal and achieve orgasm, your brain needs to be able to stop thinking and start feeling, and that can't happen if you go to bed worrying about missing deadlines or lost PE kits. The deleterious impact of stress on sexual desire has evolutionary origins. Sex is not essential to your survival, so if your brain is distracted by something that feels more important than having an orgasm, it will prioritise that preoccupation.