LOVE:PICTURE THE BEST SEX YOU'RE EVER HAD

Picture the best sex you’ve ever had. What made it good? What made it so fantastic that you still talk about it for years and years afterward? What makes it that go to image in your head for when you’re with someone who doesn’t really know what they’re doing and you need that extra little bit of encouragement to get things going. For me, it’s something like the unbridled passion of “Last Tango in Paris” mixed with the kind of tragic love only illustrated in Victorian romance novels.

Having someone who knows what they’re doing in the bedroom is always fantastic, of course. We’ve all been with someone who isn’t so good with the bedroom dynamics; but, being psychically good at sex isn’t just enough. There is a psychology behind the sex: a desire, a burning need for your sexual partner, something that transcends the physical of the sexual act itself. Love: its love that makes sex truly rewarding, truly worth experiencing, and utterly, mind-blowingly fantastic.

I reflect on this fact considerably now that I’m single. I struggle often in my current dating life because I find it so difficult to just go out and have sex. I find myself nervous and self-conscious around them: afraid of exposing myself when I am at my most vulnerable.  I still find myself slipping into analytical thoughts during the act of sex. “Does she like what I’m doing? I really don’t think she does. This isn’t as good as it was with my ex. What am I doing wrong?”

This thought is the one that I have most commonly when I am with a new partner. It’s a terrifying one. One that immediately kills the mood, makes my erection disappear, and forces me to throw my face into the pillow panting with the explanation that I am just too tired,  too whatever comes to mind in that very second to continue. Why was the sex with my ex so good? It wasn’t just because she her body was amazing. It wasn’t just because she knew where all my buttons were and how to push them all at the same time. It was because I loved her and she loved me. In those moments when we were in the throes of passion and ecstasy, no two people had ever loved each other as much as we did; and no one ever would thereafter.

Love then was the key to my sexual success. Love was the reason why it never got old, it never got boring, and that I never wanted it to stop. I was expressing myself to my ex in a way that I did not and would not express myself to any other person. And love, or rather the lack of love, is why my sexual escapades after I have moved on have been so disappointing. There is no emotion behind my acts. There is of course a passion, of a sort. Lust. There is such a thing as a passionate lust. But that’s all it is. There is no wanting, no needing, no burning desire that over takes me. My loins are not on fire. They just sort of tingle.

It’s this lack of blazing loins, the ever present unexciting tingle, that has lead me to the conclusion that sex – look out folks – should wait. Immediately jumping into bed with someone isn’t going to do you any favors. In my case, it leads to me being disappointed, sad, and questioning my sexual prowess  I do not want to think about my ex-girlfriend when I’m trying to bang some other girl. I want to be thinking about how the person I am with; how beautiful, wonderful, and sweet they are. I want to be thinking about how this sexual act is representative a truer emotion, a hope that this feelings will lead to something down the road. Yes. I want to have “hope sex.” Hope that this particular erotic phenomenon is going to endear me to my partner and my partner to me. Hope that this person finds me just a beautiful and amazing as I find them.

Truthfully, I tire of the carnal representations of sex and the culture of sexual empowerment through promiscuity. Yes, you are beautiful. Yes, you are smart. Yes, you can have anyone you want and should have anyone you want. But that does not mean that my desire for meaningful, yet equally has hot, sex need be devalued and looked down upon. I’m not asking a person to fall in love with me and marry me within a week’s time. What I am asking for is the chance to experience an individual as a whole person, to get to know them, experience all of them, so that I may be attracted to every piece of that person.

Waiting is the true key to sexual fulfillment. When I know a person, feel comfortable with that person, I can truly be sexually free with that person. Free from nervousness or self-doubt or depleting images of your ex-girlfriends. Let me get to know you; let me like you; let me experience you as a person. Only then can I truly experience another person sexually. And that’s what it’s all about. Daring to wax philosophical, sex is all about giveness and the giving of one individual to another. It is the highest form of givenness, wherein the sexual act constitutes a “gift”; a powerful gift. And it should be a meaningful one as well. Waiting for sex is not a bad thing. It is a gift.