What Makes a Great Lover? Research Shows It's These 8 Traits

If you're searching for how to be a better lover, chances are you're encountering a lot of opinions that aren't rooted in fact. Most of us absorbed a version of what makes a great lover without ever being taught it — from movies, porn, romance novels, and a culture that never corrects those images with reality. The result is a subconscious checklist that includes perfect technique, the right body, spontaneous chemistry, and orgasms that look like movie scenes. And most of us are quietly measuring ourselves and our partners against it.

Here's what the research actually says: none of that is what separates great lovers from everyone else.

Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz at the University of Ottawa spent years interviewing people having what she calls magnificent sex — the largest in-depth study of its kind — and what they described looks almost nothing like what we've been taught to aspire to. The traits that actually made the difference are learnable. And almost nobody is talking about them.

In this episode:

• The cultural myths most of us are still measuring ourselves against — and why they're not just unhelpful, they're actively in the way
• All eight traits Dr. Kleinplatz found in people having truly magnificent sex, and what each one actually means in practice
• Why the cure for low desire isn't more desire for the sex you're already having — it's more desirable sex

The book referenced in this episode is Magnificent Sex by Peggy Kleinplatz: https://www.routledge.com/Magnificent-Sex-Lessons-from-Extraordinary-Lovers/Kleinplatz-Menard/p/book/9780367181376

Topics: what makes a great lover, magnificent sex research, low desire, low libido, somatic sex coach, intimacy coach, feminist sex coach, embodiment, erotic intimacy, sexual communication, be a better lover

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Transcript

Welcome to Pleasure Uprising. I'm Dr. Laura Jurgens, intimacy coach, somatic practitioner, and your guide to getting out of your head and into your body, your desire and your real capacity for connection. This show is for people who are done performing and ready to actually feel it. Let's go.

Welcome to today's episode. So today we are going to talk about what makes a great lover, and specifically based on actual research, the eight traits that make a great lover.

We all absorbed a version of what makes a great lover in our subconscious without ever explicitly being taught it. We absorb a lot of cultural ideals from just existing, often as early as childhood, and the version that most of us have from living and swimming in the culture we swim in is that there is this sort of ideal who is spontaneous, confident, has perfect technique, has the quote unquote culturally perfect body and looks. They give their partner this mind-blowing orgasm every time that looks like screaming and shaking and crying. They inspire passion that looks fast and furious, like ripping clothes off like it does in the movies. And the reason it looks so much in our subconscious like it does in the movies is because that's a lot of where it comes from — media, film, romance novels, porn, and just this enormous cultural silence around sex that means it never gets corrected with reality.

It's not anybody's fault for having this sort of default superhero sexual master great lover in our heads — that is wrong. It's not our fault for having it wrong, but it is up to us to correct it, because a lot of times we are comparing ourselves or our lovers against a standard that is just not accurate, and when we do that, we really miss out on what really makes a good lover a great lover, and the fact that we can learn it, that we don't have to have really any of those traits.

So, Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz — she's a professor at the University of Ottawa, director of the Optimal Sexual Experiences research team — she spent years interviewing people having extraordinary sex and asking them what made the difference. Her study is the largest in-depth interview research ever conducted on people having what she calls magnificent sex. It's across ages, bodies, sexual orientations, relationship lengths, and cultures, and the participants were English-speaking. What they had in common looked almost nothing like the list that most of us have subconsciously absorbed. The things that we tend to assume matter most turned out to be minor components — not completely irrelevant in all cases, but not the engine. And the things that actually make someone a truly magnificent lover are learnable, and very few people are talking about them or teaching them.

I was so tickled and not surprised to find out that so much of this is exactly what I teach.

So here's what we're going to do today. We're going to talk about what the research actually found versus what we assume by default, we're going to talk about these eight qualities that Dr. Kleinplatz identified and what's really important to notice about this list, we're going to talk about why it matters for desire — including low desire — and I'll give you a little reflection exercise to close.

Let's dive into this.

What We Actually Assume By Default

The physical performance assumption — that there's technique and stamina and the quote unquote right moves — most of us have some version of this, though it might look different depending on how you were raised and what got into your subconscious about what the ideal lover looks like.

There's also this idea of spontaneous chemistry — that it should just happen, attraction and passion, and that it should be persistent in long-term relationships. This is that happily ever after thing, where they're super into each other and always that into each other and it always feels exactly the same. The other trope that's in our subconscious is that it's either there or it's not — like it's either attraction and passion, or it dies, and the sexual relationship will never have chemistry anymore. So it's just this idea that there's a magical force, and it doesn't require any work, and it doesn't require any communication, and it doesn't come and go, and it's not state-dependent on how that person feels that day. None of this is actually true. But this is the fantasy of a great lover — that they can inspire this spontaneous chemistry in us.

The third assumption is that there is this pleasure level that gets unlocked by the right lover — that they are the ones who can unlock this amazing orgasm that is longer and bigger and louder than anything we've ever discovered on our own or with someone else. This is often subconsciously something that people are hoping to validate in themselves, and it can put a lot of performance pressure on your partner if you're expecting them to show you that you are the ideal and perfect lover with some sort of extremely demonstrative orgasm.

Number four is this idea of looking perfect — having porn-style genitals, a movie star face, whatever the right body is. That one stands for itself. Most people are aware that we're carrying around this subconscious construct and comparing ourselves to it.

Another assumption we've absorbed is that bodice-ripping, fast, urgent, tearing-each-other's-clothes-off passion is how desire looks, and that real passion doesn't exist if you don't have that urgency. That is a very convenient thing to show as a filmmaker — it's obvious to people and doesn't take a lot of screen time. But it's actually not the most common type of passion, and it's not the way most people's bodies — and especially most women's bodies — actually respond. It can be a component of the drug state that is new relationship energy, but most people are not actually ripping each other's clothes off at any point in time, no matter how turned on they are. That is just a false narrative that many people are expecting or hoping for, because that's what their brain interprets as this is what turn-on looks like.

All of these things are minor components that can occur at times for some people, and can be nice or pleasant for some people, but they are not what separates great lovers from everyone else, according to this giant study.

The Eight Qualities of Truly Magnificent Lovers

Here they are. Buckle up.

Number one is being present and embodied — actually in their body, in the room, not mentally running through tomorrow's to-do list, not thinking about something that happened yesterday, but in the present moment with their partner, feeling their own sensations. Sex is one of the few forces that can pull some people who are not present at any other time in their life into the present moment. But this is also a quality you can cultivate outside of the bedroom, and it's completely learnable.

Number two: capable of deep connection. What really came out from her research was that people said the lovers who had this sense of alignment and merging with their partner were reported as great lovers. Partners were actually saying, I can feel our nervous systems meeting, I can feel our souls connecting, a sense of being something bigger than yourself, a sense of joining and connection. The capacity for deep connection — not fast connection, deep connection — is far more indicative of being a great lover than this spontaneous chemistry business. And remember, this can take time, and that's okay. Everybody has the capacity for deep connection, but some of us have had our attempts at connection shut down, and we've created some protective mechanisms around holding ourselves back, performing, not being really open to connection, or not feeling like we deserve it or that it's available to us. Healing that allows you to create this, which also, incidentally, feels great to you and your partner.

Number three: able to engage in erotic intimacy. This is the sense of feeling known in eroticism, where you're in this adult space where you get to touch parts of yourself you don't show the rest of the world, where you get to actually be your erotic self, and where you're able to engage with that with a partner. The way the survey respondents described it was feeling known in the bedroom in a way that you're not elsewhere. That's erotic intimacy — not smoke and mirrors, not going to the sex store and getting the stuff that makes it look like you're being erotic. This is actually being able to engage.

Number four: extraordinary communication. Able to do real feedback, able to receive it and give it — not defensive, no shutting down, open communication when somebody wants something different. Not protecting your partner from the truth that you need something different and then wondering why nothing changes. The people having the best sex in the world are the ones who are talking about it, asking about it, changing what's not working, learning from it, and doing better. It's not that they got it exactly right the first time — that wasn't even an expectation that came up in the survey. The great lovers were the ones who were open to feedback, who wanted it, who received it well, and who offered it clearly. Extraordinary communication is something you can learn.

Number five: authentic. Actually being themselves, not performing or managing an image. And interestingly, it seems really logical when you think about it — yes, we do want somebody who's actually being themselves. But then when we think about all this subconscious stuff we assume about the perfect lover, most of it is very performative. And in actuality, the people having amazing sex said it was the authenticity of their lover that was absolutely helping them get there.

Great lovers have the freedom to say, I don't know why I like this, but I do. This is my thing. And I think it's so important to sit with authenticity as a quality — not as something additional to perform. You cannot perform authenticity. You have to actually find it. What it means is allowing yourself to be yourself, and to do that you need to figure out who the fuck that is. Be open and curious with yourself, not judging yourself. Who am I? What do I like? What is unique to me? And not shaming it. A lot of it is unlearning — unlearning the shame, unlearning the stuff that's in our way, learning that we are enough exactly as we are. And when you learn that, you can be authentic. I think it's the foundation of so much else on this list. I don't think you can be present and embodied when you're performing. I don't think you can be open to feedback when you're not being authentic, because you're terrified of getting it wrong.

Number six: vulnerable and open to surrender. This means everyone — including men and people socialized as male. The willingness to let go of control, even briefly. When you are actually engaged in sex and you are being authentic and you are being present, it is a vulnerable space. And if we're being honest, which is part of all that, we have to admit that it is vulnerable, and that's okay — that's actually brave and strong and wonderful and beautiful. And it allows that real deep connection that's also on this list.

Number seven: curious, playful, and fun. Willingness to try new things, laugh when something goes wrong, not turn sex into a performance review. Let it be goofy, let it be awkward sometimes, and just play. Adult play. That can also be learned, and it's a lot easier to do when you do all these other things on this list. I know it sometimes sounds almost contradictory — could I be vulnerable and playful at the same time? But yes, you can, and that's the magic. That's the magic place when you can be yourself and vulnerable and playful, because your deep true self is probably both vulnerable and playful, like everybody else. We are animals at the end of the day, y'all.

Number eight: open to transcendence. This is a sense of touching something larger, having an open portal to things about yourself and your partner that you genuinely can't access anywhere else, a bit of a spiritual flavor to the sexuality, and having it be amazing and beautiful and kind of mind-blowing — and allowing that to be present in your sexuality, because you have all these other things, because you have been embodied and present and open to connection and joyful and playful. I think where open to transcendence comes from is from enabling all those other things. All of a sudden, we can reach this place that allows us to be really quite spiritual in our pleasure, and that's beautiful.

What to Notice About This List

Nothing on it requires a particular age, body type, looks, a specific technique, or moves. Everything on the list about how to be a great lover, according to the largest study done on this, is about how you show up as a person with yourself in a moment open to someone else. And all of it is learnable.

Dr. Kleinplatz also says something that I say to clients all the time, which is about low desire: the cure for low desire isn't just more desire for the sex you're already having. That is almost never the right approach, and that's what people are trying to do — trying to force themselves to have more desire for the sex they're already having. The cure is more desirable sex, which means all these eight things, not more performance. It means ramping up all of these eight things in your sex life with your partner, so that what you're having is something that you want — not trying to force yourself to want more of something that you don't want.

Most people who say they don't want sex are actually saying they don't want the sex that they're already having, typically because what's on offer isn't including most of what's on this list. And that's not their partner's fault or their fault — it's just how we're socialized around sex in our culture, which is very performative and very not in line with any of these qualities. So we have to unlearn that stuff and relearn how to connect with our true selves and each other, because we are taught to perform and not to be present. We often have this internal checklist rather than real embodiment, and we've gotten misinformation about sexuality the whole way from the time we came into this world — even just from an absence of talking about it, from it being something to be hidden or ashamed of. Nobody really teaches us how to be the kind of person who shows up to have great sex the way great lovers do.

That's actually why I have this job. And why I decided to do it — because I needed to learn it myself.

The good news is you can close that gap. All of these traits are learnable, and I think that is just wonderful news.

If you want to read more about this study and the people who were interviewed and their stories, everything we talked about today is in the book Magnificent Sex by Peggy Kleinplatz — why do I have such a hard time saying her name, there's an extra L I wasn't expecting! I do think that book is really helpful for seeing where you're heading. Like all books, it's not going to help you implement — it's going to help you know what you don't know or see where you want to go. When you're ready to implement, reach out to me or someone else you trust to help you get there, because chances are you're going to need some help to recognize what's in your way, and most of that stuff is not super conscious or easy to dismantle on your own. The link for the book is in the show notes.

Reflection Exercise

I want to just recap all eight qualities for you, and as I do, I'm going to invite you to do a little reflection with me. Listen to this list and pick the one quality that feels most out of reach in your sex life right now — the one that feels farthest from really feeling like you've got this. Not the one you wish you could perform better, but the one that genuinely feels unavailable or unfamiliar. And I'm going to invite you to ask yourself: what would need to shift for even a small amount of that quality to become possible for you? Not for your lover — this isn't about trying to change somebody else right now. And this is not an action item or a mission you have to accept. It's just something to notice.

Okay, here are the eight. Present and embodied. Capable of deep connection. Able to engage in erotic intimacy. Extraordinary communication. Authenticity. Vulnerability and surrender. Curious, playful, and fun. Open to transcendence.

Which of those feels like maybe this is the one that feels most unfamiliar to me, and I could actually take a look at that?

Okay, my dears, I'll see you here next week.

Hey, before you go, if you enjoyed the show, I want to invite you to check out one of my favorite things I've ever created. It's a free guide called Get Out of Your Head, a starter guide to releasing the pressure, shame, and shoulds around intimacy. It has four reflection exercises that go deeper than anything you'll find in a typical freebie, and most people feel a shift just after part one. So go grab it at laurajurgens.com/guide — the link is in the show notes. And if you're ready to find out what your specific path looks like, I'd love to talk to you. Booking info is also in the show notes, and I will see you here next week.