Add & Subtract - Sex

This week’s subject is Sex

 
ADD BONDING

Lovemaking focused on affection, generous touch, and not pursuing ejaculation, is an ancient practice taught in many traditions: Taoism, Buddhism, early Christianity (as revealed in the Nag Hammadi codices), Hinduism (Tantra), etc. all contain teachings around deep intimacy.

Bonding sex has been explored in the courtly love of the Cortezia knights, Karezza (a term coined by a Quaker doctor), modern sexology and many other areas.

These more conscious, slower forms of sexual connecting increase levels of the “cuddle hormone,” oxytocin. This chemical improves our physical health and vitality, and enhances mental health, countering depression, anxiety and addiction.

Bonding signals look like:

Smiling, with eye contact
Skin-to-skin contact
Intent listening and restating what you hear
Unsolicited approval, compliments, help
Sharing meals, walks, attention on each other
Kissing, holding, spooning, rocking your partner
Hugs, stroking, massage with intent to comfort
Any other loving ways of connecting, engaging, sharing, touching

Spending time together in such ways builds the foundation for connecting sex, leaving us feeling closer, more open and content with our partner.

The benefits of tantric sex, from Diana & Michael Richardson:

“Humans need lovemaking for continued well-being. Relaxing into sex brings you into a state of being that is quite apart from the whole range of emotions [old, stuck feeling energy]. Through relaxation we reach a rare state in which our energy is regenerated, and we become suffused with peacefulness as opposed to frustration. As life force moves upward through the energy centers (chakras), it cleanses and purifies them and makes the inner-body experience increasingly dynamic and alive”

Source: Tantric Sex for Men: Making Love a Meditation

SUBTRACT MATING

Mating sex - hot intense ejaculatory sex - is highly addictive. Brain scans of men ejaculating look like brain scans of people shooting heroin; we are all addicted.

We have evolved to make sure we reproduce, passing our genetic coding down through our progeny. The chemical reward is great enough to make sure we keep doing it.

However, biology would also have us spread our genes through as many mates as possible! The chemistry of cumming means the initial phase of frenzied mating eventually becomes disinterest, satiety, emotional distance. Once in the habituation phase, the honeymoon is well over, the spark seems to have gone out and couples aren’t feeling it anymore.

Rather than staying together in a state of increasing emotional distance, or calling it quits, we can use this powerful knowledge to transform our intimacy into more bonding practices instead.

Marnia Robinson on the chemistry of mating:

“The body uses a spike of neurochemicals to trigger the sensation of orgasm. What goes up at the moment of orgasm must come down. Although scientists aren’t generally acknowledging that there is a post-orgasmic letdown, evidence of it has already turned up in the research of those seeking to develop sexual enhancement drugs.

This subconscious cascade of neurochemical events, which appears to take a full two weeks to return to homeostasis, is behind the ability of Cupid’s poison to sour our relationships….

The subconscious mating program behind our spontaneous sexual appetite works perfectly for maximum gene proliferation. It just doesn’t happen to have our individual well-being at heart”

Source: Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow: From Habit to Harmony in Sexual Relationships

Also, from the same source…

“Animals simply identify and reject those with which they have already sexually satiated themselves. Scientists know this reflex as the “Coolidge effect.”

It earned its name many years ago when President Coolidge and his wife were touring a farm. While the president was elsewhere, the farmer proudly showed Mrs. Coolidge a rooster that “could copulate with hens all day long, day after day.” Mrs. Coolidge coyly suggested that the farmer share that impressive feat with Mr. Coolidge, which he did.

The president thought for a moment and then inquired, “With the same hen?”

“No, sir,” replied the farmer.

“Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge,” retorted the president”

Here's to more bonding connection in your life.