WHY Explore EROTICISM?!!!

Well, you don't want to leave yourself or someone else feeling like a cherished partner but a famished lover ... that's WHY!!!

Wherever you are in your life ... single, dating, cohabitating, married, estranged, separated, divorced, widowed ... EROTICISM is alive and well within you, and that's a good thing!!!

Eroticism is that "state of being" which invokes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. This quality can be found in any form of artwork (photography, sculpture, painting, drama, film, music, or literature).

"Envelope" by Roy Dunn

The Medical definition of Eroticism is: 1) the arousal of or the attempt to arouse sexual feeling by means of suggestion, symbolism, or allusion (as in an art form); 2) a state of sexual arousal or anticipation (as from stimulation of erogenous zones); or 3) insistent sexual impulse or desire.

"The Lovers" from the Veronese Collection

However, good intimacy doesn’t guarantee good sex. In fact, sexuality isn't really a metaphor of a relationship, but a parallel narrative.

Today’s partners seem to be looking for ways to reconcile their need for commitment and longterm relationships with their need for freedom and individual fulfillment.

"Sea of Feelings" by Leonid Afremov

Sex is not something people DO, but more a place they GO, inside themselves and with another, or others ... gaining access to an entire world of EROTIC experiences—fantasies, wishes, and preferences;

frustrations, unmet needs, and unfulfilled longings; hurts, past and present; the quality of arousal and desire—everything that permeates a person's inner experiences of sexuality that he or she may never have spoken of openly.

Most of us grow up in sexual silence ... often learning to associate pleasure with guilt and shame and regret. Personally, I think that when adults carry sexual secrets, they’re only continuing what they learned as part of a normative sexual socialization.

"Venus in Fur" with Amanda Lisman and Tim Campbell

Regardless, the real mystery of eroticism lies herein ... love and desire relate, but can also conflict. Meaning, our emotional needs and our erotic needs aren’t always neatly aligned.

For some, love and desire are inseparable; but for others, they’re sometimes irretrievably disconnected. The care, worry, protection, and responsibility that nurture love can be a contradiction to what ignites desire.

In fact, for many people, sexual excitement flows from not feeling responsible or emotionally beholden. That unburdened experience is precisely what allows them to feel sexually free. Metaphorically, “The red-light district shouldn’t be located anywhere near a person's home, family, or relationship.”

Tomu Uchida, Director Yoshikata Yoda, Writer (1960)

The idea that you can ask the same person to give you an anchor, safety, and predictability, and also give you mystery, awe, and novelty is relatively unheard of and certainly not often practiced. Many partners think to themselves, I have the relationship and/or family I always wanted, but this is the last place where I can imagine bringing my sexual self.

For them, their sexual self is often associated with something freer, more transgressive, that doesn’t want to play it so safe, or be good and dutiful. In turn, there are many people who are creative in so many areas of their life, but choose not to bring that creativity into their bedroom(s).

To one person who loves another, he may feel responsible for his sexual partner, so it's hard for him to feel his own pleasure or mounting excitement ... being there for the other means a disconnect of self.

Yet for another, it's the reverse. He feels comfortable inside of himself, but doesn't know how to connect to his partner. Thus, he turns to someone with whom he has no feeling or concern ... "porn" and "one-night stands" to avoid the responsibility of pleasing another.

During sex, the same behaviors can be either delicious and delightful or hurtful and violating. We need to be reassured that when we’re assertive, it’s not in a hurtful way and that we're not being judged for our sexual appetites.

When a man says that nothing pleases him more than to see a "turned-on" partner during sex, he's really saying, "If my partner's enjoying it, I know I'm not hurting anyone." ... no fear of being a predatory threat.

(1984)

Conversely, women are socialized to be caretakers. To feel sexually free, they have to have the permission to think about themselves without feeling responsible for the well-being of the other.

What turns her on is to be the "turn-on," to have the permission to feel her own narcissism. It is only when some people have freedom from feeling responsible for the fragility of the other that they can really let go sexually.

And this is WHY I challenge ANY and EVERY person to explore Sexual DRESS-UP and ROLEPLAY as an option to overcoming his or her traditional roles in the bedroom ... add a little spice and let go sexually and without judgment!!!

Of course, it’s one thing to say all this and quite another to make it come alive in the bedroom.

So practice makes perfect, right?! Start with touching each other (giving) and stop thinking, "Am I doing this right? ... I’m getting bored ... This is annoying ... Why do I have to do this? ... It’s always me doing this ... I told you to shave.” Just connect!!!

Then at some point, switch it up by taking your partner's hand to please yourself (taking)! TA-DA!!! Feel a new freedom when your partner takes pleasure from you, as well. Suddenly, you don’t have to feel totally responsible for your lover any longer.

In other words, learn what it means to allow the other person to please themselves with your hand. In turn, discover how to USE your partner, in the good sense of the word.

Afterwards, you can look at your experience: “What was easier, to give or to take, to please the other or yourself?” In this way, you begin to extend your awareness of your own EROTICISM and without apology.

I write Erotic Romance novels to create evocative thoughts and conversations, and to help individuals connect or reconnect with their sexual selves and erotic energy. In connecting with themselves, they can better connect to another or others ... no shame or guilt or regret, just fun, love, and adventure within a safe, sane, and consensual atmosphere.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/904903

Of course, sex is only one part of a relationship and can only translate if your capacity for curiosity about each isn't exhausted within minutes of interacting ... so get to know one another by going places and doing things together outside of the bedroom (dating and courting). Who knows what will happen?! Certainly, you already know what's NOT happening ... so explore and embrace eroticism, and for all the right reasons.

Excerpts taken from "The Mystery of Eroticism," January/February 2016, by Esther Perel, MA, LMFT, an author of the bestseller, Mating in Captivity.