I have a confession to make. Before I was married, I used to hate foreplay. I found myself rushing through the preliminaries, anxiously pushing towards the main event. I mean really, who has time for ear nibbles and a kiss on the back of the thigh? I had foolishly assumed that I was more thoroughly evolved, less needy, and more perfectly suited to a heterosexual relationship in terms of my needs and libido. A typical session involved me smiling in tolerance while I submitted to a thorough toe sucking, and then asking for what I had wanted all along. Way back when, I actually endured foreplay. After five years of marriage, I sit here and wonder…what changed?
In the beginning, there was light—in our bedroom I mean. We were a new couple. Sex was exciting. The lights were on. Lingerie was a must. And my future husband was virile and thrilling in every sense. And then, lo and behold, after the first few months of sex, he acquiesced to my requests and foreplay was kept to a minimum. Could it be? Would I be freed from the prison known as petting? We progressed wildly, free of any rules, and then, just as our relationship began to build and deepen, our sex became more and more shallow. He responded to my dissatisfaction with a rather uninspired thirty seconds of nipple-tweaking. I responded to his humdrum technique with less and less passionate involvement. We were engaged, in love, and utterly bored with sex. How could this happen to me? I’d always been the girl who loved sex in any form—boring or otherwise. Then it hit me. I loved sex in any and every form, and our coupling had become just one form—formulaic.
There’s a certain amount of trepidation one feels when one must eat her own words, admit to being wrong, and beg for a little warm-up before the final workout. Thank goodness shame and tact have never been sentiments that weighed heavily upon me. So, I told him. Like the lovely man that he is, he altered his behavior that night. Unfortunately, he got it all wrong. I had taken inspiration out of our lovemaking, and my poor husband was the one left tripping all over himself. It was awful, similar to an extended handshake gone horribly wrong. The corner of his mouth pursed in consternation as he went through the motions. Suddenly I realized what I had become to my lover. I was like a TV that had lost its signal. He turned my knobs—no good. He fiddled with the volume—nothin’. He flipped through the menu—nope. Finally, he resorted to mindless smacking here and there. It was hopeless. I’ll be the first girl to admit that a nice spanking can bring me right around, and yet, there was no pleasure in that foreplay. I had turned it into a session of following directions. With my demands to remove tenderness and sensuality from the equation, I had reduced everything to the physical, and refused to admit the possibility that something far more metaphysical occurs when lovers come together. I despaired for our marriage.
We went on like that for quite some time, refusing to admit that the routine, the emptiness of our actions was wearing on both of us. He would roll back his sleeves and get to work. I would watch with distant horror. Then, one day, it all fell apart. I said “no.” This may be hard to believe, but in our two years together, I had not once said that word in reference to sex. I had never wanted to. And now, I couldn’t bear the idea of continuing on in this way. His shock deepened when the tears began to roll. I’m not exactly the sensitive type, so this bizarre display of emotion was most disconcerting to him. On my end, it was embarrassing, and I felt a little bit like some Joan Crawford-loony dragging my poor husband along on an emotional roller coaster. Strangely though, my little dive off the deep end was exactly what we needed. We finally admitted that there was a problem. All this fear that the magic was gone simply poured out between us. And then the most beautiful thing happened—we began to touch each other with feeling, with intent, with emotion. “And with his pulsing manhood proud above me, the fireworks lit the night and I was blind to all but the perfection of our glorious union.” Okay…not really. It wasn’t perfect. What is? After all, in marriage a couple has to deal with the frightening eventuality that sex with the same person—day in and day out—is very, very boring on its own. The act itself is somewhat limited in its variations. There’s a phrase oft favored by my father that illustrates it perfectly, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat…but not that many.” Hello Foreplay!
We now engage in some very practical methods to preserve the impracticality that makes sex so exciting. Toys? Check. A blindfold? No doubt. A little Web site with some pornographic gems entitled literotica.com? Indeed. A little saucy spanking for a very bad girl? You betcha. Impossibly large dildos in brilliant primary colors? Of course. (I did say impractical, right?)
In all seriousness, though, my favorite bit of foreplay is a little conversation. His too. We talk—not about bills or career worries—but about each other, then gradually the conversation takes a turn towards the tawdry. I know, I know…it’s a bit embarrassing at first. My husband and I both struggled with our virginal, and yes, miserable attempts at dirty talk. I believe his consisted of, “Oh yeah…you’re cookin’ now.” And yet, I was immeasurably turned on by his daring, by his breaking with convention, and even by the fact that he thought I was cooking …whatever that means.
Now here we are four years later. Our noses are insensate to each other’s pheromones, we’re chubbier, put less effort into our appearances, and just generally have little physical chemistry. I know it sounds awful, but…it’s not. We’ve put our faith into something beyond the physical. Foreplay is no longer about erections and wetness. It’s about a connection between us, the kind that happens in the space ‘twixt our ears—the gray matter. It’s the kind of connection that results in what I like to call “drool-inspiring-smack-me-and-call-me-jenny-mind-blowing-toe-curling” sex. Because ultimately, it doesn’t matter how you turn the burners on, it matters that you get cookin’.