Does Cuddling Keep Sex Alive?

If there is a sexual behavior that predicts sex and relationship satisfaction, it’s cuddling after sex.

This is as per Emily Nagoski, as outlined in her book, “Come Together”. This story is a summary of key points that I loved from her book.

I loved this book. Nagoski made keeping the spark alive in long term sexual relationships seem natural and easy and welcoming. She brings hope into the bedroom. She bypasses all the emotional dreg and shows us the portal of sexual opening. She mixes the salient ingredients to compose the proverbial recipe for a healthy happy sex life.

What follows are my notes on the book. Its a good read but here is my summary.

The three characteristics of partnerships that sustain a strong sexual connection are:

1. they are friends who trust each other

2. they prioritize sex; that is, they decide that it matters for their relationship and

3. instead of accepting society’s popular opinions about how they’re supposed to do sex and their partnership, they prioritize what’s genuinely true for them and what works for their unique relationship

What is it that you want when you want sex with a partner?

· Connection

· Shared pleasure

· Being wanted

· Freedom

Spontaneous desire versus responsive desire

Spontaneous desire is the spark that gets lit without planning for it.

Responsive desire is an openness to exploring pleasure and seeing where it goes, even if it is scheduled.

Spontaneous desire emerges in anticipation of pleasure, while responsive desire emerges in response to pleasure.

Pleasure is the measure of sexual well-being — if you enjoy the sex you’re having, you’re doing well.

Pleasure is not desire, although desire can be pleasurable. Desire is wanting, or incentive salience, and pleasure is liking, or hedonic impact.

Pleasure is yes and oh, that’s so nice! Desire is oh, what’s that and how do I get more?

Pleasure is the one that really matters; anticipation, expectation, craving, longing are part of the experience of desire, which can feel delightful but they can also feel frustrating, irritating and annoying.

We plan and prepare for so many things in our lives that matter to us; shouldn’t this include sex?

The cure for low desire is pleasure. If you or your partner has low desire, then talk about pleasure. Create a context that makes it easier to access pleasure; sometimes erotic encounters just happen because you’ve put time and effort into creating a context that makes it easy for them to happen. But believing that sparks can fly without any context or effort is delusional.

How do you feel about feeling good? How do you feel about pleasure?

Go back into early childhood tapes to find out why you’re not having the sexual responses that you want and then ask the question with your partner.

What are we doing and how do we feel in the moments when it’s easiest to say yes to sex? Do we have a wise mindful practice of being able to step to one side to witness our internal experience?

It is normal for a sensation to feel good today and not so good tomorrow simply because the context changed.

If you see your partner frequently, your question is how can I get the spark going? How can I bring lots of pleasure to this person who is so amazing and great and with whom I share a huge part of my life? Can I spark myself with care or stop longing to miss them and instead want to give them pleasure?

Rebooting your sex life: building a pleasure foundation

· Pleasure as the only measure

· Refuse all the lies about sex orgasm taking too long or not long enough etc.

·Unlearn the lie of linear progression from broken to normal to perfect and replace it with the healing cycle

· What is our emotional floorplan?

Healthy, perfect sex is concensual, erotic contact full of confidence, joy, calm, and warm curiosity.

A sex positive mindset requires letting go of old patterns. For example, wanting sex to feel accepted and loved and not anxious could backfire. What we need is to bring our authentic self to the bedroom; to be who we truly are sexually. Pleasure grows from that.

Confidence is knowing what’s true about your body sexuality, and knowing your relationship life history. Joy is going one step further by making peace with whatever you were taught should be true even if it’s not true.

In long-term relationships in order to keep sex going, your relationship must have two characteristics: trust and admiration. You don’t need to want your partner passionately so much as you need to like admire and believe they are worth some effort on your part.

Scheduling time for sex is fine, but you really need to schedule time to make the transition to sex. Learn what you need to make the transition. Trust your partner to turn transition at their own pace, even if it’s much slower than yours and they’ll trust you and return.

If illness, trauma or aging changes your or your partners sexuality, use the limitations to explore, try new things and embrace experiences they might have passed by before. You may not have more choices, but you do have a context that encourages exploration.

Shed all preconceived ideas about how sex should work, and experiment with all the ways it can and does work for you and your partners in the bodies you have right now.

When you or your partner feel sexually ambivalent…

Share a daydream together.

Get curious about the feelings and lovingly put them on the relationship table. Look at them with warmth and curiosity.

When you feel like your mind is mired in deep bullshit, choose love. Hold your anger with love. Hold your despair with love. Hold your love with love. Hold your fear with love. Show them to your partner, so your partner can feel your pain, witness difficult feelings from your internal space.

Can we separate solving the problem itself from the process of dealing with all of the feelings each person has about the problems?

How much am I willing to learn and grow in order to have the sexual connection of my dream?

What do I wish was taught to me/us about this that now we must teach ourselves?

We are capable of feeling a deep sense of satisfaction and completion, and then we can then observe which of our various life endeavors brings us closest to that fullness.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.