Making Sex Last

What part should sex have in our lives? I want to defend one answer to that question, suggested by Tantric sexuality, that says that sexuality of a certain kind can be something that enriches our lives as a whole.

(One very important caveat to what follows: I’ve long had some interest in Tantric sex, but have not studied or practiced it in any systematic way. So I don’t want anything I say here to be taken as a serious interpretation of this set of theories and practices.)

It has struck me that one way to take the goal of Tantric sex is this: it’s about making sex last. Sex is  a human practice, something that we can spend a little time doing every once in while and in a  way that brings us pleasure but has little carryover to the rest of our lives. The goal of Tantric practice is not just better sex but sex that has a large impact on our lives beyond itself.Tantric practice is about many  things: It’s about having orgasms that last longer and are more powerful. It’s about having multiple orgasms that build and last over a longer period of time. It’s about ignoring orgasms altogether and stimulating oneself and one’s partner so that one can create a sense of connection and ecstasy without being concerned about having an orgasm. It’s about paying attention to all the ways in which large and small variations in position, pace, and pressure change and enhance what we experience in sex. It’s about creating more time for sex.

And the point of these practices is to allow sex to overflow from the small place in our lives we typically reserve for it and make us more relaxed, focused, and aware as a whole. When sex overlows its own place, we  luxuriate in   and   thus reconcile ourselves to our bodies. We become grateful for the body and mind that makes sexual pleasure possible. We learn to attend to every moment and thus feel more alive as  result. And we gain the ability to put things that distract us or cause us anxiety out of mind.

All the practices Ive mentioned aim to make sex last. But the one practice that most makes sex last, I believe, is to use sex to make love—or if that’s not possible—at least make deep and profound friendship. For what makes sex most lasting in our lives is to find sexual pleasure in getting to know, trust, appreciate another person in sharing the pleasures of sex with him or her. The practices of Tantric sex seem to me ultimately not about sexual pleasure itself but about attending to the person or persons having sex. They are meant to encourage us to give sex the time and attention we need to make love or friendship out of sex.

In the end, it really doesn’t matter how many or how overwhelming one’s orgasms are—orgasms don’t last that long in any case and it doesn’t take a shattering orgasm or one that lasts ten minutes to achieve the physiological or emotional benefits of an orgasm.

What does matter is for sexual desire and pleasure to be something that two people create together by paying the kind of exquisitely close attention to one another that only comes from—and that further helps to enhance—mutual care, concern, and love. That’s the best way of making sex last.

It would be nice if sex were always like that. But, despite the fact that we live in a culture that seems drenched in sexuality, it very often is not. And one reason it is not is that the understanding of sexuality that we inherit from the Ancient Greeks and—in their criticisms of it, from the Church Fathers as well—does not see sexual desire and pleasure as something we create with another person but as a way of using another person to fulfill desires that come from within us. At its worst, this tradition thinks of sex as something we take from someone else, as a form of conquest.

It’s no surprise that a tradition of thought that looks at sex in this way is also going to see sex as a powerful force that needs to be limited and constrained. Such a tradition will see sex as something that comes from a lower part of us and that can threaten the higher things we value—spirituality, reason, and even love itself. And that’s why, in the main Western tradition, the goal is precisely the opposite of making sex last. It is to put sex in its limited place.

While it may seem that since the sexual revolution of the sixties we have let sex out of that limited place, I would disagree. We’ve learned to talk  more and more about sex–which is not altogether a bad thing. But we’ve done it without changing how we think about sex–which is a bad thing. And so our obsessiveness about sex distorts it’s importance in our lives. We tend to think that a narrow view of sexuality, one that sees it as different or even cut off from the rest of our lives, is much more important than it is. And we fail to see that from a broader point of view, good sex is part of, and enhances the rest of our lives, and not just our love lives (as if our love lives could be boxed off from the rest of our lives, either).

Dabbling in a very way of thinking about sexuality has helped me to call our traditional ideas into question and lead me to the notion that the best sex lasts beyond the moments we give directly to it. It is the sex that ultimately flows through and enhances every moment of our lives.