I Am a Sex Coach, and Here's Why I'm Against Foreplay
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I will go out on the limb to even say that the concept of foreplay has hurt women and our fulfillment in sex.
What is foreplay?
Wikipedia: “Foreplay is a set of emotionally and physically intimate acts between two or more people meant to create sexual arousal and desire for sexual activity”
WebMD: “Foreplay — also called “outercourse” — is any sexual activity that happens before sexual intercourse. You can think of it like the warm-up to the main event.
Planned Parenthood: “Foreplay usually comes before intercourse. The purpose of foreplay is to add to sexual excitement, and, especially for women, to help prepare the body for intercourse by increasing vaginal lubrication.”
The Free Dictionary: “sexual stimulation intended as a prelude to sexual intercourse”
Boston Medical Group: “What’s great about foreplay is that it ensures both partners are ready for the main act – sex. A good session of foreplay will guarantee that your lady is ready, willing and excited. Her inhibitions will be lowered and her comfort level will increase; but most importantly, her body will prepare itself for the penetration.”
All in all, foreplay is the opening act to the blockbuster show. The thing you need to sit through to see the stars and get your money’s worth for the concert.
What’s wrong with traditional foreplay?
In practice, this kills women’s sexual desire. It makes what is supposed to be an exciting sexual experience to be predictable, boring, and an item on her to-do list on the way to something else.
Foreplay reduces women’s readiness for sex to a recipe: if you heat up the oven and do X,Y,Z things in order, then she will be ready. Sounds great, except that it makes the woman just an ingredient in a recipe to get to sex.
As a woman, and as someone who‘s worked with hundreds of women, I can tell you that this feels terrible. And most women hate it — dread it, actually. Nor it is sexy in any way. It feels like something is being done to you to get to an end goal — to get to sex.
In practice, this is how “foreplay” plays itself out:
Sets a goal to your enjoyment of kissing, touching, exploring, a means to getting to sex in the end. It’s very challenging to be able to truly sink into the space and your body, open up to your partner, and enjoy the moment for as long as it is pleasurable because you know that it’s about to change any moment now, and something else will be asked of you, something more will be expected of you. It rushes you to get to the “exciting part.”
Sets a timeframe on connecting, opening up, getting aroused and enjoying yourself. Kind of like you’d not expect the opening act to go on for so long; you’d want it to end to get to the exciting stuff. This puts a limit on how much time you actually need to take to drop into your body, relax, have fun, get aroused and truly be open to sex. Naturally, this leads to performance anxiety and pressure to get through foreplay quickly and efficiently.
Sets expectations for the success of the endeavor. There reason for foreplay is to get you ready for sex, so if foreplay fails, you fail in living up to what’s expected of you.
Sets responsibility for the outcome: if I agree to having sex, and then we proceed to warm me up, I have to hold up my end of the bargain and make my body do what I agreed to do. I have no way out.
Don’t get me wrong, this approach works to have sex.
It gets sex done.
It produces sex.
What it fails to do is to create a safe, pressure-free intimate space to explore, connect, touch and go into the sexual space together at her pace that actually cultivates a woman’s genuine desire for sex.
Most of the time, it forces women to override to real readiness and instead perform — and that does nothing for the woman to want to go through that again.
Foreplay, as it plays out in most couple’s lives, is hard on women. It becomes yet another to do, perform, or simply live through.
The idea of foreplay is a great sports idea: warm up so that you’re able to particulate in the big game.
It does not work that way for women. The quality of the foreplay determines if she will want sex. Foreplay IS the main game, and sex is the dessert part of it.
Foreplay, as we think about it culturally, ignores the thing that actually makes women want sex: the creation of a delicious space of excitement, meeting each other, opening up, exploring, being met, surprised and delighted by your partner. It squashes all opportunity for her desire for sex to emerge out of delicious circumstances. Foreplay reduces sex to something that is mechanically produced as a result of following the right steps.
How boring!
Women are not broken when they reject this kind of foreplay and would rather not have sex at all. It’s not a surprise that the #1 sex problem for long-term couples is that women lose interest in sex. This kind of foreplay feels terrible — and it’s healthy to resist it and do everything to avoid it.
What’s the alternative to foreplay?
For women, all the things that we think of as foreplay — connecting, flirting, kissing, making out, exploring, and playing with sensual touch — can lead to her wanting sex when it is done for its own sake, for its own enjoyment, with no goal other than to be with her and experience these.
It sends a very powerful message to the woman: that the reason why a man is with her is to be with her in these intimate and sensual ways, not to get her to have sex.
Now that’s sexy!
The surprising thing is that when the connection and closeness feel good, when the kissing makes her knees melt, when the sensual touch sends tingles down her spine, and when her genitals are throbbing with blood — and there is absolutely no pressure for her to have to have sex — THEN and only THEN can she truly want sex. Not just be ready for sex because it’s time. But truly want it, for herself, from her own desire, for her pleasure.
Any time before then, agreeing to sex is likely a performance to please her partner or avoid feeling bad that she does not want sex. And most likely, the woman will not want to do that again out of her own volition.
Where foreplay IS the main act — the joy and purpose of your interaction — sex will follow.
Think of it as ALLplay, all the time. It’s about engaging in ongoing connection in tiny doses, often throughout your day.
It’s how you talk about each other’s day — with an ear to longings, desires and fears, not troubleshooting.
It’s how you take time to listen.
It’s how you interact in physical touch, taking time to explore each other, to be sensual.
It’s taking time to kiss (more than 6 seconds) to feel each other when you say goodbye or reunite with a hello.
It’s sprinkling your life with tiny moments of intimacy, often that allow you to keep your connection on a simmer.
It’s about making out, just because it feels good. Touching and fondling, because it feels good. No pressure, no goal — but to be with each other.
And finally, it’s about taking intentional time to lay with each other with no goal, to attune to each other’s rhythms, to have space to explore what arises sexually, no pressure needed.
What does it take to create foreplay as the main act?
Foreplay requires good mechanics.
The kind of setting that allows women to truly enjoy herself requires intimacy.
It’s unpredictable and has no goals.
It asks of your vulnerability and letting each other in.
It requires patience and trusting that all will work out in the end.
It requires both surrender and leadership.
It requires courage to go to unknown places together.
Most of all, it requires trust in timing: that sex might not happen right away, but that when it does happen, it will be powerful, intimate and worth the wait.
To be honest with you, it requires everything of you — and in return, it gives everything back to you.
I call this space Connection Sex because the connection leads the way to the spontaneous and the exciting. Connection Sex focuses on the here and the now, on the lovers present with each other — where everything is possible, but you don’t know exactly when it will happen. It’s a space where you surrender working hard and just be with each other.
It allows you to connect sexually before you have sex. To be sexual without having sex — which is a deliciously arousing space to play.
It’s a space where you feel excited and connected, where you start to feel something wake up inside of you, something new and surprising is building between you two. That’s the delicious part that you lose out on when you focus on foreplay but really have an eye on something else — the sex — in the future.
And it’s a sensual space too. Forget focusing on sexual stimulation for arousal. Focus on sensual pleasure and giving each other stimulation that feeds you, not creates tension that you wish to release.
This is not easy to do — especially if you’ve never been to this place before or have never experienced the kind of safety with each other that would allow it. And the reality is that most couples around the world have never experienced this kind of sex … mostly because we’re taught to work hard to get sex done and over with.
More than not easy, it’s scary. We’re talking about creating a space of uncertainty and not knowing what happens next. You are asked to have courage to face something you don’t know and to try something you will fail at the first time around. It’s a space of vulnerability that asks you to reveal something of yourself — be it a desire, something you are feeling, something new you want to do — and hold the space for your partner to do the same. It’s a space to be seen in your nakedness.
It is risky and scary as it is delicious and exciting. The benefit is that when done with vulnerability and surrender, you enter a new space each time you’re together, a space where you’ve never been, with surroundings you don’t know, where you get to create something new together. Sex is never the same, and it’s never boring. In Connection Sex, you never have sex the same way twice because when you show up vulnerably and open to each other, the connection takes you to magical places. There is no producing, just play.
For women’s sexual desire, THIS is the kinds of space that allows the kind of spaciousness, slow pace and connection that make her sexual desire come alive and realize the kind of passion and energy that a woman is truly capable of.
Even if you might have never been to this place, it is possible. None of my clients had been in that space before working together — but they had a dream and a desire to have it. With willingness, commitment and a big shot of courage, they surrendered to the process in our work together to get there.
How to Create Connection Sex in Your Relationship?
If the idea of Connection Sex resonates for you, it is possible to create it. Here is what it takes:
Commit together to a shared vision and dream that you have for your relationship and each other — and commit to creating it together, as a couple. Talk about what you desire and why it’s important to you. Keep the dream and vision alive, even when it feels like you cannot have it or you are faced with failure after failure. Dream on and trust that you can create it; remember that others have been in your shoes and created it too.
Get all the resources and support you need to create this. Go out of your way to find who can help and contribute to your success. Make sacrifices for your dream. Prioritize it.
Be intentional. Dedicate intentional time for each other. Have intentional conversations. Focus on intentional connection practices. Heal your wounds so that you can truly put your walls down to each other. Extraordinary connection happen when you intentionally build it.
Fail and learn. Failure is 100% guaranteed when you try something new. Your success rate of achieving what you want is about learning through failure, getting back up on your feet, and trying again differently.
Focus on connection, which means attuning to each other and truly listening to what’s needed in the moment. It’s about focusing on what makes you feel close, what feels fun, and what feels right in the moment — not what you’re supposed to be doing.
Resources
Everything I teach and do is about creating Connection Sex in your relationship. Each of my articles focuses on an essential aspect of Connection Sex and what it takes to create it:
Talk about sex and learn about what’s most important to each other
Forget weekly date night! Feed your intimacy daily with small connected sensual practices.
If your partner is an HSP, meet her “pre-sex” needs and let her gifts of sensuality and presence shine through in the bedroom.
Heal relationship wounds that are preventing you from truly letting your guard down with each other.
Support
FOR COUPLES: When you’re ready to create Connection Sex in your relationship and a sex life that reflects the deep love for each other with the support of a skilled guide, schedule a consultation for you and your partner to explore individualized support.
IF YOU’RE A SINGLE WOMAN: If you want to create this in your next relationship, schedule an individual consultation to explore what we can create together to realize your dream.
