While often viewed as the immediate prelude to intercourse, effective foreplay is what happens outside the bedroom. The word foreplay itself can be misleading; it suggests that whatever comes next – the play – is the prized activity. It is seen as the appetiser before the main meal, something to rush through to get to the “real thing”. But if we can broaden its definition, we can transform our understanding of sexual intimacy entirely – what if we stopped treating foreplay as merely a means to an end and started recognising it as valuable and pleasurable in its own right?
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We often think of big gestures such as respect, care, attention, positive regard, friendship and when relevant, erotic connection as the most important ingredients of a good relationship and yes they are. Yet, I believe that it is everyday rituals that make these gestures meaningful.
What are rituals? Rituals can be defined as expected, repetitive, routined and reliable behaviors or activities – sometimes culturally transmitted – that go beyond habit or tradition. They provide a sense of stability and
In his book the Road Less Travelled, M. Scott writes that couples cannot resolve fundamental issues such as dependency vs independency, dominance, and submission in a healthy way without the security of knowing that the process of struggling over these issues will not destroy the relationship.
Committed relationships are not static destinations but dynamic engagements that require constant calibration. At the heart of this complexity lies the idea that healthy partnerships don’t resolve tensions between opposing needs—they learn to hold them simultaneously. Understanding and managing these polarities, rather than trying
A relationship is a creative pursuit – creative because it demands that we look beyond who we are right now and dare to imagine what we might become together. It asks us to constantly recalibrate as we – and our partners – evolve, shift and grow.
But here’s the paradox: a relationship is also about stability, consistency, commitment and reliability. Trust doesn’t build itself on wish alone.
So a relationship needs to be elastic enough to accommodate new discoveries about the person we’ve chosen to share our life with, yet comprehensive enough to answer the question: why you and
What do we mean when we speak about intimacy in a committed relationship? For some, intimacy is equated with sex, others speak of feeling emotionally close and connected. Be it physical or emotional, the one thing that most of us look for in intimate moments is to feel accepted, connected and that we matter to our partner. Enjoy.
This post is about my belief that friendship in committed and romantic relationship is a sentiment that not only will enrich the partners in the relationship but also carry it well into the future.
What is friendship? I often think of the meaning of a friend and what makes their friendship meaningful to me. I know that different friends inspire and evoke different feelings and experiences; some provide warmth and happiness, others provide intellectual stimulation, with some I feel at home and others remind me to stay grounded and what it means to be a friend. Sometimes friends offer a
…What do we mean when we speak about intimacy in a relationship? Some people describe intimacy as being close and connected, others speak about being able to share thoughts and a broad range of feelings and others describe intimacy as being vulnerable and feeling that they matter. This menu was designed to expand the experience of intimacy beyond sex in relationships.
… This menu was designed to encourage unhurried and mindful time together and to nurture curiosity and a sense of discovery.
I ended the previous post with the thought that your partner is and will be to some degree a mystery to you regardless of how long you have known them.
When faced with ambiguous and complex situations as relationships can be, we tend to do two things: we stereotype them and we try to predict what others will do next based on our experience of them, thus our prediction and their response create a repeating cycle or
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We mostly believe that life events influence and change us; we tend to also believe that to varying degrees we are flexible and adaptable; we adjust, try to solve problems in ways that require new skills – we change our views and beliefs of what was important to us in the past and is important to us in the present.
We also only share with others some of our views, doubts, hopes and concerns and as such, we are only partly known to others.
The same applies to all of us.
Although, we assume that we think objectively about ourselves,
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