How to Balance Chemistry and Connection

As a passionate woman who is a profound lover of men, it can feel like different drives motivate our respective cravings for sex. For me, even on one-night stands, sex falls into the category of love. It’s about union, even if fleeting. I’m a spiritual person. For me, good sex is a taste of a plane of existence where we lonely humans can feel that we are all interconnected.

As you might expect, when I speak to my male friends and lovers (and some non-male ones too), my lofty cravings sound like Greek to them. “Good sex is hot!” they say. “It’s about sweaty bodies rubbing up against one another.” “It’s about release.” It’s not, they imply, essentially about love. On the contrary, for many, love complicates matters.

For some, loving sex and hot sex are essentially opposites.

“I want you now!”

I faced the tension between a desire for “hot sex” and “intimate sex” on a recent date. Brett and I were still in the early days, and the night in question was my first at his truly awesome bachelor pad. He was vague in giving me instructions on how to arrive, such that I didn’t understand until it was happening that I would park my car inside his stunning penthouse.

Let me tell you; an automobile elevator is quite an aphrodisiac.

Perhaps that’s why I wasn’t as forceful as I might have been in slowing him down when he began to devour me. Even before shutting my car door behind him, his tongue was down my throat, hands under my bra. I was still taking in the fact that I was standing in his private indoor garage, a stunning view of the sunset peaking out through the windows in the distance, and he was on his way into my pants.

This date was starting with sex.

It was hot — for about twenty minutes.

It wasn’t my first taste of this ravenous side of Brett.

He’s the kind of man who knows just what he wants and is not afraid to ask for it. Thankfully, he’s also the kind of man who learned long ago that “no” means no. This combination of respect and carnal desire is exactly what I’m looking for in a mate.

But, less than thirty minutes after the elevator doors closed behind my Hyundai Ionic, I found myself scotch on the rocks in hand, my date flipping channels on the TV. Less than an hour earlier, the fire between us could have set off an explosion. One earth-shattering simultaneous orgasm later, and it was gone.

Playing games

Experiences like these cause women to evolve complex strategies to toy with male desire. We play games to keep things hotter, longer. It’s within these games that talk of cows and free milk tend to arise.

Though, thank God, I’ve never had a mother or mentor or friend look down on me over half-frame glasses, wagging their finger with the unfortunate age-old wisdom that men who are given easy access to sex will not commit (“why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”), when a date goes from hot to not in 30-minutes flat, I can admit to the grain of truth in that unpleasant aphorism.

Enter the games…

The choice to resort to games, rather than direct communication, is based on the unspoken assumption that those who want sex now! now! now! and those who want sex to exist in a broader context like love or relationship can never understand one another.

Men have a name for women who play games like these, taunting and then refusing to extend arousal; a tease. Games like these are manipulative. Games make our connections transactional. “You have something I want. I’m going to get it from you, in spite of you,” they imply. I, for one, am interested in neither sex nor love that is transactional.

You might be surprised to learn that, though feminism is one of my core values, in my opinion, games like these contribute to broader #metoo/rape culture. I’m a sexual woman. I know how to arouse a man and know precisely when I’m doing so. When I turn a guy on intending to elicit his arousal but not its fulfillment, it is me who is making our interaction transactional. I’m the one doing the objectifying when I play those kinds of games.

What’s a girl to do?

Cuddling in bed later that night, Brett laughed about the hyper-attention his erection elicited, punctuated by flattering words about the effect I have on him and talk of big and little heads.

In this sexy man, I love his “little head” just as much as I love his “big one.” I love it so much so that I reject his claim that the two are not intimately related, both a part of one beautiful human.

As a tantrika, men often ask me about tantric practices of separating erection and orgasm, generally seen as a “solution” to the “problem” that Brett and I faced that steamy night. Though such practices are powerful when engaged as a part of a total physical and metaphysical transformation, with most men, I discourage them. I love Brett’s liberated sexual freedom. What is more, the hyper-focus he brings to our dates is far more “tantric” than techniques that put most men at odds with their penis. Tantric control of male climax is not the solution for Brett and me.

The solution is communication

The conversations that Brett and I have had since that hot and heavy start to our recent date have been steamy. Their starting point is our mutual desire.

One of the worst things that happened to general relations between men and women was the 1992 publication of the best-selling book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, which implies even in its title, that men and women are fundamentally different, and therefore, cannot truly understand one another. In 2021, when all binaries have become spectra, it’s time for us to put this ridiculous notion to rest.

Men and women are not alien to one another. We are human beings whose differing biologies sometimes motivate differing priorities. Those differences sometimes inspire dates that are more romantic or more sweaty and sometimes inspire priorities that are more inclined towards openness or towards commitment.

The key ingredient here, both for the hottest of nights and for long-term relationship satisfaction, is communication. I love hearing how much he wants me after days of not being able to see one another. I know it turns him on when I tell him in detail how much I love his hands in every part of me for as long as possible. With chemistry like ours, we can rest assured that everyone will come in the end. Finding compromises about the best paths to take along the way is all part of the fun.

Post-Script: If tantra isn’t for Brett, who is it for?

Tantra is a comprehensive spiritual approach to living, of which the sexual practices are a small part. At its core, tantra invites us to come into deep and total presence with each moment of our lives at it arises. Sex, a profoundly sensory and pleasurable experience, is the ultimate practice ground for tantra. The first step of practicing tantra is mindfulness practice. For those who have come to know their minds well and have faced the fears that exile us from the present moment, sex can be a setting in which awakening occurs. In time, after much self-acceptance and self-love, men who walk the tantric path will be moved to transform their natural orgasm to one that is held and experienced in the entirety of the body, akin to the female orgasm. Only once that authentic desire arises from within the disciple is it beneficial to use the mind to separate male arousal, ejaculation, and orgasm.

Copyright 2021 Sarene B. Arias