Touch

Keeping the Embers Alive

Just a few days ago, I wrote about the importance of touch in relationships. Emphasizing the importance of touch is one of the foundations of all of my work. I believe that offering your lover consistent, loving, affectionate touch is even more important than orgasms for the long-term health of your relationship. This isn’t the sexiest, most glamorous message, but from all of my research it is apparent that lack of loving touch is more likely to dry up a relationship and inflict more physical and emotional pain than a lack of orgasms. Both are important, but non-sexual touch is where I would begin to strengthen and maintain a loving relationship.

So I was thrilled to find an article in The New York Times about how to maintain love and affection over the long term. Researcher Sonya Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, insists that the focus must be on strategies to maintain the embers of love and affection, rather than focusing on the all out blaze of lust that first consumes us early in relationships. Her top suggestion? More physical touch:

“A pat on the back, a squeeze of the hand, a hug, an arm around the shoulder — the science of touch suggests that it can save a so-so marriage,” Dr. Lyubomirsky writes. “Introducing more (nonsexual) touching and affection on a daily basis will go a long way in rekindling the warmth and tenderness.”

She suggests “increasing the amount of physical contact in your relationship by a set amount each week” within the comfort level of the spouses’ personalities, backgrounds and openness to nonsexual touch.

– That Loving Feeling Takes A Lot of Work, NYTimes, 1/14/2013

In addition to upping the amount of daily touch you exchange, I also advocate strongly for a regular exchange of massage. Ten or fifteen minutes of focused, skilled massage from your lover does wonders to relax away chronic stress, increase intimacy and strengthen the bond between you and your partner. We created a whole series of couples massage videos that guide you in learning highly effective massage strokes and offer five minute massage sequences so you can fit in massage no matter how busy you are.

So forget for a moment about how to swing from the chandeliers or achieve hour-long orgasms. Focus on the building blocks of love and intimacy, those daily moments of touching your lover that are vital for sustaining the love between you. Research is mounting that this is where the magic is – those tiny moments of connection that add up to a lifetime of intimacy.

A Lover’s Touch in Moments of Anguish

Love Last night, my partner and I were getting ready for an intimate evening together. We had a long, focused day working together, and were ready to shift towards being lovers. We work together from home, running PleasureMechanics.com and supporting one another in our individual art projects, and we need to make a focused effort to spend time together simply as lovers. It is all too easy to let our work permeate every date night, every meal’s discussion, every evening together. So sometimes, we declare a holiday from work for a few hours, and give one another massage, make love and try to be with one another without distraction.

I was so ready for a few intimate hours with my gorgeous lover, and was feeling excited and a bit high on our accomplishments of the day. Charlotte was about to get in the shower, and I was looking forward to spending the evening loving her up. Then, the phone rang. I made the mistake of answering it, to be greeted by a mentally ill family member screaming at me: a full on rant and a dash of insults followed by hanging up on me. This is a relationship I have heavily invested in, and the call shook me to the core. Any chance of sexy time was completely dissolved by that phone call.

But what happened next is the important part. Instead of retreating to a book, or numbing myself out with sugar, or spending the whole evening on my own rant about how I had been wronged, we chose to simply cuddle. We turned on a DVD of a favorite show (Girls by Lena Dunham), got really cozy in our day bed (who needs a couch when you have an extra queen size tempurpedic bed in your living room?) and cuddled. I sank my head into her chest and let my breathing calm down, matching her inhale breath for breath. I felt her arms around me and was brought back to the present moment. We laughed together, she stroked my back and held me tight. And with that choice, the choice to bring our bodies together for the simple comfort of touch, I was saved. Saved from hours of toxic stress, saved from flashbacks of years of emotional trauma with the caller, saved from the slippery slope of despair. My lover wrapped her arms around me and with her touch beckoned me back to the reality of my love, my family, my life.

I am reminded that these moments count towards creating a phenomenal sex life. The choices we make in the most stressful and scary times matter. Do I choose to turn away from physical intimacy, to reject touch and seek the numbing effects of food, porn or drugs? Or do I turn towards my lover, take a deep breath and allow myself to be held? These are the moments that add up to create the culture of your relationship. Last night I was reminded of the power of a simple embrace offered in a moment of upset. Turns out, these are the moments that make all the difference.