This Kind of Sex Could Evolve the Human Race
On the power and pleasure of meaningful connection.
*THE ORIGINAL VERSION of this story appeared in Better Humans.
It started right before I left for my three month excursion in Asia.
I’m not a shy one. Generally, I feel comfortable sharing my sexual experiences and asking others about theirs. This is because what I’m not always comfortable with is my sexuality.
What I mean is I don’t always feel capable of expressing myself fully. Sometimes I don’t know what I want and other times I’m in touch with impulses that don’t feel entirely formed. And then are the moments when I hold myself back because expressing myself feels too uncomfortable.
I’m still working through layers of shame thanks to experiences in my late teens and early twenties where the expression of my sexuality was either shut down or unable to be received.
When I share my stories, however, and hear others in return, I realize my experiences are completely normal. Everyone is scared of something. Being validated in and of itself has taken me to deeper levels of freedom.
In the past four months, however, I’ve been discovering something even more liberating!
Rather than talking about the all so common performance anxieties and shame issues, I’ve been having eye-opening conversations with people about shared experiences of deep pleasure that don’t fit into standard definitions of sex and as simple as they are point to one thing only: the need and subsequent pleasure we humans derive from meaningful connection.
The Power of Kissing
What happened was three months ago, I started up a convo with a British friend of mine in Berlin.
I’ve been seeing someone new and when we kiss, everything melts away. My whole body awakens and a dynamic unfolds where I feel emotionally met and fully embodied and at the same time in another dimension beyond this Earthly one.
Anything becomes possible.
I noticed something similar one night while we were holding hands, the play occurring between our fingers felt like an intimate and intense sexual dance. I thought: Wow, hand sex!…this is a promising prototype for a full-on sexual experience.
Redefining Sex
I shared this with my friend and added somewhat anxiously that we hadn’t quite yet entered that cosmic place in the “full-on” realm.
I am using the term “full-on sexual experience” to describe a traditional definition of sex which involves penetration, oral sex or other forms of sexual play resulting in orgasm.
My friend’s response: Not only is he having similar experiences, he sometimes prefers making out. He, too, is able to reach levels of intimacy and pleasure standard sex don’t always bring him.
Then, a few days later I’m at the sauna with my new South African friend and he tells me something he’s never admitted to anyone before: the type of porn that turns him on the most is make-out porn, watching two people madly make out being his jam.
I wonder, does make-out porn exist or have I misheard? I forget to ask. I’m onto something way more interesting…
The Power of Touch
A few weeks ago I was in the mountain town of Dharamkot, a small village in the north of Dharamshala, India. One evening, I’m on a balcony drinking a beer with a lovely guy from Varanasi.
We get into it.
Not sex, another convo. He tells me of an experience from several years ago that profoundly changed his relationship to sexual pleasure.
He hadn’t had sex for quite some time and was on the hunt.
He met someone he was attracted to and they did their thing yet he left feeling unfulfilled. Weeks later, however, he meets another woman.
They spend an entire weekend together, feeling and communicating only through touch but without stimulating each other in areas we typically think of as erogenous zones.
It was a turning point-a massive one.
He reached a place of intimacy he had never experienced before and through that, a new world of physical pleasure opened for him. He’s now going slower with his partners, achieving orgasm no longer being the final frontier.
I could relate. I had a similar experience three years ago. I was with a good friend and spontaneously one night we began exploring each other’s bodies in the same fashion. Before I knew it, hours had passed and although I knew something powerful was occurring, it wasn’t until the next day that I could feel how much my heart and body had opened.
We met up and instantly I felt a sweet vulnerability arise within me. He too felt tender and open. We both felt seen.
It’s been one of the best sexual experiences of my life. I felt more satisfied that night and in the following days than from the pleasure all orgasms that year had brought me.
Unlike most orgasms, there’s no come down after an experience like that!
This conversation, the one on the balcony that is, gave us both a sense of relief and excitement. Not only were we “normal”, we felt a future full of endless and exciting sexual possibilities. Our shared relief, in particular, made me realize the extent in which unhealthy and limited notions of sexuality are ingrained and silently working in us causing unnecessary fears and blocks.
And the more I speak, the more I hear from men and women all over the world say the exact same thing:
The pleasure coming from simply kissing and touching not only lasts longer but often is more fulfilling.
Why is This Type of Sex More Fulfilling?
Goodbye, performance anxiety!
When kissing or touching is the main focus, the pressure to sexually please the other person is likely to be less intense. There are fewer possibilities to explore and less things to think about making it easier to let go.
Speaking of thinking…sex doesn’t require much of that! At its heart, it’s a playful and creative act. Foreplay doesn’t have the word play in it for no reason. More foreplay typically leads to a better orgasm and foreplay only without orgasm, as we are finding out, can also be the main act!
While less performance anxiety may be part of the picture, something more interesting is at play.
Hello, intimacy!
When the focus shifts from climaxing to slowing down and being in the nuance of an exchange (kissing or touching or both at the same time), the experience naturally goes deeper.
The whole being-ours and that of our partner-can emerge with time and all parts have a chance to be present and in dialogue-the emotional, physical and spiritual.
All of which naturally creates more intimacy and its ultimate — that blissful, delicious state of fusion.
Feeling at one with the other paradoxically requires the recognition of the other!
So long lasting pleasure, where does it come from?
From the excitement of the physical contact and its opposite-from a place of deep relaxation and trust.
No orgasm required. Everything (and everyone!) is made whole because nothing is released!
It’s also why being sexually skilled is not required for good sex to happen.
I love this bit by Dr. Sue Johnson in her book Hold me Tight:
“Lovers can be tender and playful one moment, fiery and erotic another. They can focus on achieving orgasms in one interlude and in the next, on gently journeying to the place poet Leonard Cohen calls ‘a thousand kisses deep”.
Confined to sex, we pressed against
The limits of the sea
I saw there were no oceans left
For scavengers like me
I made it to the forward deck
I blessed our remnant fleet
And then consented to be wrecked
A thousand kisses deep
-Leonard Cohen
The more I began to think about it, the more I realized the experiences we’re all getting so hot about is actually a tantric sex practice.
What’s Tantric Sex?
Originating from ancient Hinduism, tantric sex focuses primarily around creating a deep and intimate connection. It’s a meditative form of sex where the end goal is not orgasm but enjoying the sexual journey and sensations of the body. It aims also to move sexual energy throughout the body for healing.
Many of us are craving intimacy. When I talk with those who are on paper sexually free, I hear not only dissatisfaction, but also a sadness. Engaging in one night stands, for example, being something that at one time brought satisfaction, is now a source of pain.
Most of us are no strangers to that sadness in whichever form it arises- the sense of longing for an authentic and meaningful connection that has not yet been fully found.
Is it no wonder then that these kinds of sexual experiences are so gratifying?
One of my favorite thoughts on pleasure comes from Osho in his collected works, The Book of Secrets Three. He says the deeper we can enjoy, the higher kind of humanity will be born.
When we access the deepest realms of pleasure with (and through) another, we get in touch with our essence which leads to all kinds of creativity within and outside the sexual realm. We heal physical and emotional imbalances because our mind, body and spirit are back in sync.
Most importantly we no longer have to demand that another person be the sole source of our joy, our power and happiness coming from within…where it was always to be found.
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