When patients have concerns about how their bodies function sexually, I invariably want to slow them down.
I want them to feel their body parts, experience the wonder of seeing and touching a nakedperson, I want them to activate their sensorium: Find something about your partner that looks good to you, tastes good to you, smells good to you, and so on.
I honestly don’t care if it’s a “sexual” body part (as opposed to a “non-sexual” part like an elbow, knee, or leg hair); anything we can enjoy during sex IS sexual. The elbow doesn’t know it isn’t “sexual” any more than the thigh knows that it is. Flesh doesn’t think; it waits for the brain to code an experience as erotic, annoying, threatening, whatever.
When couples come into my office with virtually no sexual experience (say, an arranged marriage of a virgin and a near-virgin), they often ask my advice about “how to do foreplay.” Or they tell me they dutifully have some minutes of “foreplay” before attempting intercourse, at which they repeatedly fail.
The idea that “foreplay” would be a period of relaxation rather than of duty, or a set of behaviors that were enjoyable rather than preparatory, is completely foreign to them. Many actually don’t know that some people enjoy those things and do them for pleasure rather than because they’re supposedly required for “successful” sex.
I understand that intercourse is necessary for conception (fertility treatments are still crushingly expensive and even risky for many people), and some couples are in a hurry to conceive. Therefore many people prioritize intercourse over other sexual activities. Far more couples prioritize it, however, because they think it’s synonymous with sex, real sex, good sex, etc …
Many people have seen little or no “foreplay” of even the mildest kind in movies or TV. If they haven’t “dated,” they may have no personal experience of it. Imagine going from nervously holding hands to clueless intercourse — you’d want to do things “right,” even though that pressure only made you more nervous.
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