When I interview men who want better sex with their partners, it’s the same disheartening dialogue again and again. It’s like a bad broken record.

“I like sex more than she does. She’s just not that into it. I don’t know why she’s not that erotic. I love it when she climaxes and I’m really into being inside of her, and I’d love to try new positions, and ….I want to figure out how to turn her on.”

Even as the “therapist,” I’m bored. Why is it so challenging for men to get that we don’t care about what you need to achieve in bed?

If you want to turn a woman off in three seconds, just get really graphic about all of the things you want to try and do. Yuk.

It’s not that we don’t like these acts, we just don’t like the way you talk about them.

There’s no intrigue when you name positions. Tell her what you want to do to her in the way you look at her, or you savor your wine — how you feed her, or moan when you place your hands under her ass — or in how you smell her hair, or push her up against a wall and eat her alive with your eyes.

Men talk about sex and give away all of the details, when what turns women on is anticipation. It’s the possibility of what you’ll do and how she’ll feel with you that makes her ache for you.

Don’t tell her on a date that you give great tongue. Demonstrate it once you’re in bed. When you tell her, you spoil the fun. Now, she’s not in the play of her imagination, she’s wondering if you can possibly live up to your claim. Chances are you can’t.

“My wife doesn’t like to try new positions.”

This is because you haven’t learned to do the basic ones with any finesse.

Karen Brody, copyright 2009. All rights reserved. For reprint permission, contact the author.

If there is one thing I could get men to truly “get,” it’s that there is no magic bullet for how to please a woman – whether that’s in bed or out.

But men will search because that’s what men do. Men solve problems. She’s not sexually satisfied? Well, let’s fix that.

I’ve got to give men credit: They try hard. They go out and seek that answer because doing good by women is in their nature.

Initially, they don’t want to believe that there isn’t a magic bullet – that the path they’re on is a dead-end. Everything else can be solved by finding a solution. Is this a cosmic joke? Is she trying to hurt me, to disable me?

But when they open to it, men get that women are not to be solved, but to be loved and appreciated, and through that embrace there is great pleasure and joy with women. By letting go of the quest to “solve” women, a man surrenders and opens to love.

What women want isn’t definable in the way of a phrase, or a specific action, or a technique in bed. What women want is true greatness in a man.

Yes, being a sensitive, attuned lover has its benefits, but it’s greatness that gives shape to what lasts and to what inspires a woman’s love.

A woman wants a man who isn’t easily defeated by her disappointment, by her moodiness, by her anger, by her criticism, by her dreams. She wants a man who can love though it and see through it, and bring forth her loving core with his own.

To be a woman is to be a contradiction – not because women are trying to be difficult. It is simply the nature of being feminine. She is wired to emotions, to feeling, and everything she does is tied to her desire to be impeccable in love.

If you can make space for the feminine, not fight with it, not try to fix it, a woman will blossom and shine in your presence. If you can encourage her femininity – her sense of the world through feeling, emotion and love, she will support you in your quest to be great.

Men often make the mistake of trying to be great in bed before they’ve learned to be great lovers in the realm of the heart. This is because men tend to find love through sex, where women find sex through love.

If you really and truly want to learn how to please a woman, encourage her femininity – her path of learning to be great through loving – and be sensitive to that path, as like yours, it is mired in challenge, disappointment and triumph!

When she complains, when she is stuck in the intricacies of relationship and self-doubt, help her love through it – this is her purpose in life.

When you can be a champion for her purpose she will love you deeply and fiercely – and she will give you the gift of sex that is passionate, and from her heart.

Karen Brody, copyright 2009. All rights reserved. For reprint permission, contact the author.