It's a shame that even though women are making equal pay for equal work and rising in the ranks of business, industry and the professions, when it comes to sex, many of us are still not getting our due.

Some bad old habits and beliefs are keeping us from having the best sex possible. I'm suggesting seven simple, common-sense ways for women to have more fun and fulfilling sex:
1. Don't Talk Yourself Out Of What You Need
It's too easy for us women to convince ourselves to settle for less. We're so helpful and accommodating, so eager to please and afraid of rejection that we're quick to give up the things we need, including when it comes to sex.

What we need to see is that doing this will leave us chronically frustrated. While it's true that every relationship requires a certain amount of compromise, going without the things that we really need just doesn't work. We'll end up unhappy in the relationship or resentful toward our partner.

The bottom line is, we need to know what we can't live without, sexually, and what we just can't live with. We ignore these non-negotiables at the expense of a fulfilling sex life.
2. Accept Your Body As It Is Now
We need to be in touch with our bodies; with what feels good, what feels not so good and what feels wrong. We also really need to stop judging ourselves in terms of our weight and our shape. Only a superficial dope would give us a hard time over our imperfections. If someone makes us feel bad about our physical selves, this is more a reflection of his inadequacies than of our own.

Our negative self-talk has to stop. The running commentary on how fat we are, how much cellulite or how many wrinkles we have is guaranteed to kill the mood, often before it even starts. Feeling good about our bodies is crucial if we're going to let go and enjoy ourselves. Being physically self-conscious will keep us from experiencing the joyful abandon of great sex.
3. No Pets In The Room
We might love Fluffy or Rover, but they don't belong in the bedroom when we're being intimate. Our pets are very territorial and could get jealous or want to play, too. Dogs might bark or even growl. Cats might jump onto the bed and start walking around. We can avoid these disasters by remembering to shut the door and leave our four-legged friends outside.
4. Enjoy The Give And Take
The best sex is the kind in which each person is trying to please the other one. The sharing in sex is one of the things that make it great. It can be technically amazing, but when one person gets the impression that the other person really isn't there with them, it can ruin the whole experience.

What makes someone a fantastic lover is not their technical ability or their repertoire of moves but their attentiveness and their efforts to make their partner happy. When both people show that they really care about meeting their partner's needs, sex becomes something wonderful.
5. Share Your Needs And Feelings With Your Partner
If you can't ask them for what you want in bed, you shouldn't be sleeping with them. Good sex happens when we feel safe and at ease. If we're afraid to ask for something or to tell our partner that we don't like something, sex will never be more than mediocre.

This second tip follows from the first one, in that once we identify what we want and don't want, we have to express these things clearly. It's unfair to expect our partner to be a mind-reader and "prove" that they care by somehow knowing what we want without our having to tell them. Healthy sex comes out of healthy communication.

There comes a time in a relationship when three words can mean a new level of trust and intimacy or profound embarrassment. It's a moment immortalized in pop culture everywhere from Rachel and Ross on “Friends” to the more platonic relationship between Paul Rudd and Jason Segel’s characters in “I Love You, Man.”

With all the pressure around these three words, they are bound to come out a the wrong time, and Glamour’s 2012 Guy survey found that a full 50 percent of men admitted to saying “I love you” by accident (i.e., before they meant to), with the biggest “excuse” being “it just came out” (56 percent). Being drunk at the time (23 percent) and saying it during sex (13 percent) rounded out the top three reasons for premature confessions of devotion.

There was another question that got a “yes” from over half of survey-takers: Saying “I love you” first. 56 percent of the men surveyed by Glamour said that in past relationships, they’ve been the first to say those three words. A study published in the June 2011 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology produced similar results; researchers at MIT surveyed 100 undergraduates and 47 heterosexual couples and found that in two thirds of relationships, men were the first to say “I love you,” and often think about saying it a full six weeks before the women in the relationship.

But the results of the MIT study also showed that those three words may have a different meaning for men and women: Men were happier to be told “I love you” if they hadn’t yet had sex with their partner, while women were happier if their partners confessed their love after a sexual relationship had developed. Those findings suggested to researchers that men associate the phrase with physical fidelity and women see it more as a sign of emotional intimacy and commitment. "Men may be more impulsive in the way they express love, but what love means to men and what love means to women may be very different," study co-author Josh Ackerman, assistant professor of marketing at MIT Sloan School of Management, said in a press release.