Caresses, touches, care, relaxation and a sense of security — are they compatible with healthy aggression, with that secret that stimulates our mutual sexual interest?
“What a thrill I feel in my whole body when I happen to accidentally touch her hand with one finger.” For young Werther, a mere smallness was enough for happiness — a light touch. And his heart immediately caught fire. In essence, nothing has changed since then.
The basis of love, what strengthens it, is the connection that is established between bodies. It is on this very tangible foundation that the happiness and harmonious development of the couple are based.
“To live together means to live with the body of another person, in contact with him, his smell, voice, appearance,” recalls psychotherapist Marina Baskakova.
The tenderness of hands, the warmth of the skin of a loved one — this is sometimes enough to make our life joyful.
“When I’m nervous at work or lose my temper in front of a computer screen, I remember last night, my friend’s body pressed against my body,” admits 37-year-old Sophia. But why do we need the bodily presence of a partner so much?
Early experience of pleasure
“Because we spent our first 9 months of life in full, covering physical contact with our mother, and this state turns out to be a paradise for us, to which we then unconsciously strive to return,” explains psychoanalyst Svetlana Fedorova.
“We are born with the need to be touched, to be caressed. Based on this early bodily experience, and not just our adult relationship with a partner, our sexuality develops.
Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott has long noticed that in order for a child to feel that he exists and enjoy life, he needs his mother or the one who replaces her to carry him in her arms, caress him, take care of him.
Physical intimacy allows the child to realize that he exists independently of the mother, but at the same time — to experience excitement, pleasure from touching, from grabbing and sucking on the mother’s body.
Body to heart
Psychoanalyst Didier Anzier went even further in thinking about the importance of the carnal in our mental balance, quoting essayist Paul Valéry: «The deepest — and therefore the most thinking — is the skin.»
Didier Anzier clearly explains the function of the skin and touch: it is with their help that we begin communication and for the first time get satisfaction. This is the original, archaic connection.
It is she who determines our sexual relations in adulthood, in particular during love foreplay, when we enjoy oral and tactile contact, caresses and kisses. If we did not experience this in childhood, then access to the body of another person, to desire, sexuality may be impaired.
Writer Michel Houellebecq illustrates this dependence. His character Michel was left to himself in infancy when his mother flew to California. This event traumatized Michel, he suffered from depression for many years and could not be attracted to the woman with whom he was in love and who also loved him devotedly.
Impulsive sexuality transforms in adulthood into bodily communication with another person.
Sexual contact, that is, a partial and purely bodily return to the womb (or acceptance into oneself of another), turns out to be the only way to restore primary pleasure.
Then how to explain the appeal to psychotherapists of couples who claim that they love each other, but cannot maintain a sexual relationship and lose physical intimacy?
“If the symbiotic relationship with the mother was not successfully completed, was suffocatingly close or, conversely, too distant, the adult continues to look for tenderness, maternal warmth and complete merging in partners,” explains Svetlana Fedorova.
“And this hinders the development of mature sexuality, which involves both healthy aggressiveness and a sense of the boundaries of one’s body, one’s wholeness.” In other words, does maternal bonding undermine the couple’s erotic well-being?
Tenderness versus sex?
According to psychoanalyst and sexologist Alain Eril, “everything is really based on a paradox: how to build a space of safety and at the same time an area of adventure?
In many cases, the couple prefers safety, and that’s when «de-erotization» comes in.
A mother-child dyad arises, which is very reassuring, but completely cancels sex. Here is how the psychoanalyst and sexologist Ghislaine Pari explains it: “Too much tenderness stifles sexuality. After all, this emotion is connected with our childhood, with how our parents loved us.
It occurs in the context of the prohibition of incest and therefore blocks sexual desire. It is necessary to be able to change the mood, to dress up in a seductive outfit in the same way as we enter the role of the father or mother of the family.
The close proximity trap
In order for caresses not to become boring, each requires a willingness to move from one role to another, avoiding too close proximity. Desire fades if we know our partner too well, if we go naked at home, if we use the bathroom at the same time …
It is necessary to return modesty, to increase the distance, so that the mystery returns. Sexuality arises from curiosity about the body of another, when we eagerly catch the reflection of desire and pleasure on his face.
Do not forget about the role-playing game, about the alternation of shyness and shamelessness, about the surprises that such a game is preparing for us. Without giving up tenderness, we can see the other in a new image, feel intrigue, turn touch into a game, and therefore, save desire.