Orgasm is the limit of sexual pleasure, the height of bliss? No, our experts say: the pinnacle of sexual experience is those moments when our whole being merges with another. Such intimacy is achieved by lovers who are able to connect with each other both in body and soul. Then they are not threatened by either boredom or monotony.
The first experiences alone, mutual pleasure in a couple — our path to the pinnacle of bliss lies through the discovery of different aspects of sexuality. According to sexologists, the main stages of this path are as follows: the discovery of sexual pleasure through masturbation; discovery of pleasure with a sexual partner; formation of an individual sexual script. “Today I somehow feel the pleasure of making love differently,” says 38-year-old Margarita. — It’s not that the orgasm has become sharper than ten years ago, it’s just that I already know my body better, I trust myself more. I can say that I have matured sexually, I felt inner freedom, which allows me to more easily handle my body and the body of my partner.
“In harmonious love relationships, people can achieve the unity of the three levels of pleasure,” says sexologist Natalya Stenyaeva. “These are the attraction of the body, the attraction of the mind, and the attraction of the soul. To do this, partners must be not only physically desirable for each other, but also interesting and significant.
Free to create
Specialists distinguish between three types of pleasure: genital pleasure (from bodily contact), impulsive attraction (caused by visual, tactile, gustatory sensations) and ideal attraction (based on shared values and arising from strong relationships). “However, this division is very conditional, because we involve our entire personality in the sexual sphere, we realize our value attitudes in sexual relations,” explains family psychologist Ina Bausheva. In addition to purely physiological pleasure, sex for a person is a continuation of non-sexual relationships with a partner. Genital contact is an important, but not the only or even essential factor in sexual enjoyment, and each person can discover their own ways to develop and enrich their sexuality. “In modern culture,” says psychotherapist Alexander Tesler, “purely genital pleasure dominates, moreover, of a mechanical type. Manuals and instructions are multiplying, promising us extraordinary orgasms and trouble-free erections. However, pleasure is capricious and does not obey strict rules, this is eternal creativity.
Understand your body
How to develop your sensibility? It is necessary, according to gynecologist Elena Egorova, not to “go in cycles in orgasm”, but to be attentive to your bodily sensations in everyday life, regardless of sex. “My patient, a woman in her 50s, was worried that her sexual relationship with her husband had come to naught. I suspected that he had connections on the side. She herself felt almost nothing during sex … The problem lay primarily in her attitude towards herself. I advised her to take care of her own body.” Taking care of your body is worth getting used to living in it for real; then desirability and attractiveness will arise by themselves.
Massage helped 36-year-old Elena to perceive her body more sensitively. “I used to perceive sexual pleasure more with my head,” she admits. “I started getting massages because of problems with my spine and suddenly realized that my body knows a lot about me that I don’t even know about. Perceiving new physical sensations, I began to feel my body better and now I understand how important it is to give free rein to the animal instinct: it enhances not just pleasure, but also sexual intimacy, affection.
Raise capital
In adolescence and adolescence, starting to masturbate, we discover our own body. Then we learn to interact with a partner — more or less experienced — and learn from each other. As they mature sexually, each person develops their own sexual scheme, their own paths to ideal pleasure. This work lasts a lifetime and requires the participation of two. To achieve the highest bliss, you need to know a lot about your sexuality. “We are given a lot by nature, and our sexuality is laid in the womb,” explains Natalia Stenyaeva. “But our sexual “capital” must grow.”
“You can love each other with all your heart and at the same time do not match at all, for example, in temperament,” says Elena Egorova. “If you value relationships, your “incompatibility” will not be a reason for parting, but a reason to get to know each other better.” “The moment of merging with another in sex is the best experience available to a person, it is comparable only to the merged existence of a baby and mother,” adds Ina Bausheva. – Proximity with another person allows us to forget, at least for a short time, that we are limited by our bodily shell; it opens up new dimensions of space and time for us, when we perceive reality differently, and these experiences are close to spiritual insights.
push the boundaries
Each of us is able to enrich and develop our sexual experience, but in practice, many couples use the same scenarios for many years. Such lovers make love automatically, considering sex as a duty or a chore. “An example of a happy couple is not a boy and a girl, but spouses who have lived together for 30-40 years and have maintained a rich sexual relationship,” says Natalia Stenyaeva. — This is available to any couple, if people do not look back at the myths (for example, that sex is not needed in old age) or at someone else’s opinion about the boundaries of the norm. The range of acceptability for different couples is different — from marriage without genital contact to the most daring experiments. No one can judge how good and «correct» the sex life of your couple is — except yourself.
Routine is not the main enemy of sexual emotions, the fear of completely surrendering to pleasure can be much more dangerous. “Merge with another can cause fear – fear of absorption, disappearance,” says Ina Bausheva. “Then there are attempts to protect themselves, to block sensations.” This is usually a continuation of relationship difficulties outside of sex that people are hesitant to talk about. “Where there is no trust, openness in relations, there is a need to control, rule,” continues Ina Bausheva. — The partner turns from an equal subject into a soulless object, a means that must be controlled in order to achieve pleasure and protect oneself from a possible spontaneous response. In such relationships, there is no main thing — the opportunity to know yourself and your partner, to develop your «I».
Getting to know each other in order to give each other surprises — this should be the motto of those who do not want to be content with standard pleasure. For Maxim, such an unexpected discovery was … the female aspect of his sexuality. Usually he was active in sex, but this time he experienced the pleasure of being caressed, and then a woman took possession of him. “It was just a miracle. It turns out that I can be a passive man and I’m not ashamed of it. I would say that I became a better lover than before, I opened a new register in myself.
“Pleasure increases due to personal creativity, which distinguishes orgasm from the pleasure in which our whole being is involved,” says Alexander Tesler. — The playful dimension of sexuality is the most important thing. Improvisation is not necessarily successful. But by improvising, we can express that part of ourselves that usually eludes us, and this is a wonderful gift of fate.