Erotic Intimacy

Erotic intimacy includes both, sensuous and sexual activity usually between two persons and the sharing of reactions, thoughts, and emotions that are involved in these activities.

Actually, erotic intimacy includes a wide range of behavior. Everything from hand holding to all day love-making, also broad range of physical contact such as:

• Foreplay or non-coital sexual activity
• Bathing together
• Swimming together
• Pleasuring
• Caressing each other’s body
• sexual intercourse
• The afterglow

Barriers to erotic intimacy

Erotic intimacy is sometimes difficult to develop and at times, barriers may emerge. One of the main barriers is the narrow focus that most people place on their behavior in this area. Usually, people tend to focus on sexual intercourse as if it were the only expression of sensuous or sexual feelings toward another person. If fact, proceeding too rapidly to and through sexual intercourse is one of the major complaints many women have about their physical intimate relationships with their partner.

Another barrier to comfortable expression of erotic intimacy occurs when one ignores one’s apprehensiveness about a particular activity or the timeliness of a particular behavior. Apprehensiveness ignored can produce sexual barriers, blocks, and turn-offs. One of the sources of apprehensiveness may be the fear that is involved in erotic intimacy.

Fears connected to erotic intimacy.

• · One fear is the fear of being touched. Some persons are not very accustomed to being touched, to being caressed, to being comfortable with tactile stimulation.
• There may the fear of breaking a taboo. There are a number of taboos in many cultures related to erotic intimacy. Even when a person is married, it is often difficult to turn off the effect of some of these taboos with which they have lived prior to marriage.
• There is the fear of losing control of oneself, of abandoning oneself to physical enjoyment.
• Physical intimacy frequently involves giving up control, and for a person who is afraid of loosing control, this can be an anxious situation.
• Many people fear pregnancy as a result of erotic intimacy. Although contraceptive birth control techniques are readily available, people hold fears about pregnancy, perhaps from information or myths that stem from childhood or adolescence.
• These fears can interfere with feeling comfortable in a physically intimate relationship.
• There is the fear of sexually transmitted disease (STDs), which in many cases is a realistic fear particularly if either of the partners has engaged in sexual activity with other partners and if either of the partners are not practicing safe sex techniques.
• There is the fear of guilt or condemnation either from peers, family members, or in some cases from the church.

For many people, erotic intimacy is a novel experience. For a person proceeding into a physical intimate relationship, there are many new things to experience. If a person is apprehensive about novel experiences, the fear associated with novel experiences will create barriers to physical intimacy.

Overcome obstacles to erotic intimacy

One of the main things a person can do is to take things at his or her own rate – a rate with which he or she is comfortable.

It is important to give oneself permission to say "no" when "no" is the right answer for you; and conversely, to give yourself permission to say "yes" when "yes" is the right answer and being willing to take responsibility for the consequences of those decisions and actions. When these yes and no answers come from one’s own personal system of values, one’s comfort with erotic intimacy increases.

Become aware of one’s fear and what may be producing the apprehensiveness about erotical intimacy. Once the fear is acknowledged, one can work with it.

In summary, there is no one norm for erotic intimacy other than behavior that is compatible with the feelings and beliefs of each partner involved in the relationship.