Okay men, raise your hand (or simply nod in sullen agreement) if you've even had one of those days where you and your wife have been eying each other up all day. Flirty text messages flying back and forth.  Leaving little notes around the house full of cryptic innuendo. Wearing her favorite fragrance. Having brief conversations on the phone full of titillating descriptives. All of this in anticipation of getting intimately skinected to one another later. And then...

You ask a brainless question about her choice of clothing, or make a sideways statement about weight whose context is misconstrued, or simply fail to see, remember or do something rather important and BAM! You've killed the mood and sex is abruptly OFF the table... for the evening, possible for the week depending on the severity of the crime. Of course, you feel blindsided and you have no idea how you went from the Playboy Penthouse to the Devil's Dog House.

If this sounds familiar, just know that you're not alone. There are many men who have inadvertently murdered an otherwise amorous mood. I call these moments instances of "Sudden Libido Disruption". Sometimes the SLD is so great, the rift now between you so wide, that there is usually little chance of recovery, if any.

So how do you avoid the relational faux pas that result in SLD? Well you have to start of by understanding what has taken place. As I've mentioned earlier, for many women intimacy is tied inextricably to the heart and mind. This is why it's important to keep the focus on the two of you throughout the day. Those breathy phone calls and sexting go a long way to filling her thoughts with being together. A major barrier to arousal is anything that would cause her to become distracted or preoccupied. So you don't want to introduce any topic, situation or circumstance that might hijack her mind. Mindjackers can manifest in the form of frustrating circumstances (ugh... you didn't take the garbage out like you promised and now there are ants all over the kitchen!) or financial discussions (wait, I thought YOU were going to pay the gas bill?) or even comments that prompt "futurisms" (sigh.. I just have to lose this last 15 pounds before Christmas). It doesn't even have to be that she's necessarily mad at you, but the result is the same: SLD.

The bottom line is this... be mindful of what you say and be sensitive to where she's at emotionally. You won't lose with healthy doses of encouragement, attention and good ol' fashioned romance.