We all wonder if we are good lovers. ''Are they enjoying it?'' or ''am I good enough?'' We want to be valued and enjoyed, which puts pressure on us in the bedroom department. We all want to do it right, give the best experience, the most memorable. But because the emphasis has been placed on the outcome, the end result, it has also led to performing and pleasing. Much is written about how to please a woman in lovemaking, but what about our men (or the more active partner in a sexual partnership)? With concerns about their size, their erection, how long will they last, whether they're hitting the right spot and so forth, the pressure is on. The belief that we need to become different or better from how we are does not help us a single bit, but just hinders our personal development. In a similar way, the obsessive idea that “I have to have an erection” or that “I have to have an orgasm” creates only subsequent mental tensions that make it difficult to approach pleasure and the entire range of emotions we experience when we make love.
For most people, lovemaking becomes a chase after increasingly stronger excitement. Love making happens with a tenseness, much too fast, without delighting ourselves in the pleasures of ourselves and each other. When we begin to relax into lovemaking, allowing ourselves to flow between arousal and relaxation, our hearts and bodies open and the experience resembles the way lovers immerse into lovemaking in the beginning of a relationship.
Most young men enter their first sexual experiences with a penis that is already desensitised and toughened through fast, rough masturbation (many adolescent masturbatory experiences are rushed, for fear of being discovered, and rough). Add to this the male sexual conditioning of what it means to be a man sexually; a man is only a man if he can 'take' (satisfy) a woman sexually. This forces him into 'doing' instead of 'being' as he believes he must get as hard as possible, as soon as possible. The default goal of sex for men in this paradigm is ejaculation. The ejaculatory urge, together with a reactive sexual drive, means the sympathetic nervous system kicks in for men during lovemaking. The sympathetic nervous system is our fight-or-flight response. When we are in this state, our muscles contract. If we look at the response in most men's bodies, the muscles, especially the gluteus muscles, contract, building up to ejaculatory orgasm. The breathing becomes faster and erratic and the heart rate begin to go up. The excitement builds until the point of ejaculation.
For a lot of women, they are guided into their understanding of sex by their male partners. We learn to make love like our partners do and for the most part, they are not necessarily equipped to be the best teachers. We learn to do as men do, we push for ejaculatory orgasm, or whatever will please our partner. Yet that peak orgasm , however delicious it is in that moment, is a short lived experience. When a woman's awareness and energy is swinging away from herself in pleasing her partner, and a man's awareness and energy is projected outward in performance, there can be no genuine exchange of sexual energy and the experience will more than likely end up in an fast, explosive orgasm, rather than the long, slow, sensual burn when all the pressure to perform, to orgasm, to do anything, is taken off the table.
When we move away from putting the responsibility and pressure on men to make us feel sexy (that is within us alone), to initiate sex (expressing desire in a way that is confident, intentional, and barely restrained is sexy - plus it will make you feel sexy), to have that erection ('soft' penetration is a beautiful alternative style of lovemaking) or to have or give you an orgasm, we bring relaxation into our sexuality. I am not referring to laziness here, but of allowing ourselves to enter a space where anything can occur. When we open ourselves to an experience of no expectations, but being fully present and aware with our partners, a whole new dimension of intimacy and energetic exchange unfolds. Relaxation forms the 'vessel' which contains arousal. Pleasure and arousal comes from a place of relaxation, not tension.
So I invite you to create a sacred space for your partner. One in which there is no expectation for him to do anything other than be present with you. Gaze gently into one another eyes, keeping that contact throughout. Open yourself to him, as if in an offering. Be there, fully present. Gently caress him, feeling the connection between your heart and your hands. Let your hands vibrate with love. Touch his body with pure delight as if this is the first time you have touched a body so exquisite. Get to know his body, explore it. And keep gently reminding him to relax, to surrender, breathing deeply. And when you begin to move into lovemaking, keep the eye connection, staying present, and slowly, deeply, deliciously build your sexual energy together. If he feels the ejaculatory urge is coming close, either slow down or even let him exit you for a while. Hold each other close. Breathe deeply. Keep relaxing the body as this allows an expansiveness to occur, bringing more sexual energy and easing the sexual flow between you as it moves through your bodies. Build the energy, until again it becomes too exciting, then slow down and savour the energy. This inward and upward swing of our sexual energy happens as bodies and genitals relax, no longer compelled by erections or orgasms, and that same energy spreads and expands deliciously through the body. From doing to being, like a beautiful flower opening and blossoming.
Next month: Making love to her...
Karen O'Moore August 2014