Sex provides some of life's most intoxicating moments -- and some of its biggest downers. Whether your experience has weighed heavier on the ups or the downs depends entirely on your "sexual blueprint." We all have one. It's our brain's reference for how we feel and think about sex. Influenced by everything we're presented with sexually, it starts forming in our subconscious on the day we're born. If you've been exposed to positive and healthy people and events, your blueprint will be positive, and your sex life will thrive. But if your sex life isn't as fabulous as you'd like it to be, it's time to figure out why - and break the pattern. It comes down to these four saboteurs.

The genes you inherit influence your personality, your relationships with other people and your sex drive. If your mother or father had a high or low libido, there's a good chance you do too. We're all products of the generation before, and our parents' attitudes toward sex heavily influence our own. If you grew up with strict, religious parents who shuddered at the sight of bare knees and stuck to the stork story until you were 20, you will obviously have a different sexual blueprint from someone whose parents walked around naked and sent the kids off on dates with a wink and a condom. Even if you end up with strongly opposing views - which often happens if parents' attitudes toward sex were extreme - you're still reacting to their initial viewpoint. How your mother and father relate to each other sexually also has an effect. We learn how men treat women, how women treat men and how a sex life functions by the way our parents behave toward each other.

Your Ex

Almost all of us have a significant ex hovering hauntingly in the back of our mind. How this person made us feel about our body and sex often dictates how good in bed we think we are. A loving, emotionally generous ex leaves us feeling sexually secure, which means we'll most likely go on to other caring, satisfying relationships. A manipulative ex who constantly criticized us sets us up for more of the same.

Sometimes sex problems stem from an unhealthy obsession with an unfairly intoxicating ex who seemed to steal our libido along with that favorite CD. Some people still fantasize about an old lover months or years on (come on - no one's that good), and all subsequent lovers come in a sad second place. Other exes sabotage our sex lives by acting as substitute boyfriends, stopping us from moving on. Sex with an ex is awfully tempting when you're both single, both horny and - the clincher - you've done it before.

Your Favorite TV Stars

There are two types of sex: manufactured and real. Manufactured sex is what you see dished up on TV and in the movies: sexual nirvana where everything and everyone is perfect. Real sex is what real people do - and it's rarely, if ever, perfect. But we never get to witness people having real sex, so our perceptions are based on the fantasy celluloid version. Even though we intellectually know life really isn't like Wisteria Lane, if we tune in to Desperate Housewives often enough, our subconscious starts to believe it is. And we start feeling flawed because everyone on telly seems flawless.

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