Lee Suckling: What you're missing before sex

If you're dating somebody new, this behaviour is what you're doing all the time. When you're in a long-term relationship this sort of behaviour always wanes. Photo / Getty Images

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Lee Suckling has discovered a new way of looking at sexuality and sensuality

Foreplay. It's the thing you do before the main event. The little touches, the kisses, the massaging… it's all supposed to elicit a sexual rise out of your partner before the temperature is turned up.

According to sexologist Esther Perel, whose research is dedicated to exploring the tension
between the need for relationship security and the desire for sexual exploration, foreplay isn't something you do for five minutes before sex. Foreplay begins, Perel says, at the end of every orgasm. It's something you're doing with your lover for days and hours before you next copulate, not something cursory that immediately proceeds it.

This has become my new way of looking at the sexuality and sensuality in my own marriage. When going through dry spells, my husband and I always ensure we talk about the "why". It's important, if we're not having sex for some reason, to acknowledge the internal and external factors in each of us that are having an effect.

Doing so is a key component in understanding each other's needs and wants, and how acute personal, professional, physical, and mental aspects all play a part in how sexy we individually feel.

But Perel has taught us something we've been missing. Emotional foreplay. Checking in with each other, and keeping sparks flying when sex is not imminent to heighten sexual tension between us.

If you're dating somebody new, this behaviour is what you're doing all the time. There's always a sense of anxiousness between dates, and you keep the heat up during your down time with touches, gestures, texts, photos, videos, and so on. Despite no physical touching being involved, all of this is foreplay.

When you're in a long-term relationship this sort of behaviour always wanes. Things become less exciting and this is normal. Yet reviving it (in some sort of way) helps reconnect couples on their sexuality/sensuality spectrum in ways they mightn't have experienced for years.

This is what's happening now in my own relationship, which is currently going eight years strong. My husband and I engage in foreplay with no ulterior motives every day. It's not for the purpose of getting the other into the bed.

We've started sending text messages complimenting the other person's body again. We'll tell each other about the sexual thoughts we've had throughout the day. We have reminisced about times when sex was particularly memorable, or even mind-blowing. When we're sitting on the couch or cooking in the kitchen, we properly make out – tongue and all – and then go back to non-sexual activities.

All of this is part of the foreplay Perel speaks of. It literally begins every time we finish having sex as we start all over again. Foreplay has become a long, drawn out process, and the result has been more frequent and exciting sexual encounters. Foreplay is absolutely necessary for good sex, and when it has a strong emotional component, it's all the better.

Physical foreplay remains essential, too. It's something couples can engage in for hours before they will actually have sex. There are lots of ways to demonstrate light physical foreplay throughout the day: a nibble on an earlobe here, a massage on the back and shoulders there.

Touching each other's erogenous (but non-genital) body parts is also great physical foreplay, and it can be fun, cheeky, and done in public to intensify sexual tension. The hands, the sensitive border of the lips, the décolletage, the side of the torso, the hips, the haunches of the lower back… within your partner's comfort level, all of these zones are prime places for foreplay when they don't expect it.

Foreplay is, in fact, everything that happens between orgasms. If you think of it as such, rather that something obligatory and tedious to warm your sexual partner up, any bona-fide sex in your sex life will be vastly improved. Make the effort today – and every day – and just see the difference it makes in your overall daily levels of arousal.