DesertLizard wrote:
Phew, very personal post, here goes. I have a suspicion that, for me, arousal always starts in the head. I need that mental stimulation. Physical stimulation by itself does basically nothing. ...
Thank you for putting your self out here and starting this discussion. Personally, i think your answer (at least in part?) is in this gesture. What i mean by that is, your gesture of being "very personal" and vulnerable.
my theory on kinks and kinky people is that "kinks" are a way one personally connects erotically, a way that is considered outside 'the norm.' Even though we are in a relatively safe place (HNG's and similar aside), with other kinksters, we've still been culturally conditioned to feel our needs/wants are abnormal. Even without that added conditioning, i think our needs/wants are naturally a place of vulnerability.
If our need/want requires contact, connection with another person, we are to a degree, dependent on another for getting our need/want met. i see a lot of challenges to that (as anyone in The Cage can likely attest to). Some of the biggies (i think) are self awareness, the ability to articulate need/want (i.e., vulnerabiltiy). Can't have the second without the first, eh?
Some may be shaking their heads and have stopped reading at this point, wondering wtf this ramble has to do with foreplay. For me, it has everything to do with it. i think your "suspicion" is spot on! That arrousal not only "starts in the head" but is sustained and nurtured there as well. i don't think the physical can be separated from the psychological. i believe the "food" that nurtures and sustains our kink (read: "need/want"), is the corresponding need of another. yin/Yang. Top/bottton, D/s, ad infinitum.
i think some of the challenge we encounter of getting our needs/wants met, ties back into how i started this response (i.e., self awareness and the ability to articulate need/want). As complex as this all is, i think in a way it's simple. i think there are others out there who can read and know that you need/want humping and grinding, but don't need/want to make out (more on that one in a few). And a light goes off, if they are self aware, and they say: "Hell yeah, that describes me too." Then if they are willing to be vulnerable, that person (be they a mate or otherwise), they share... hopefully, articulately.
In your case, from what you have shared, i can imagine a day where your mate seduces you with understanding of your need/want. For instance, you may be at the kitchen sink in the morning, and they quietly walk up behind you and grind their crotch into your behind, or they take your butt in their hands and slowly massage it. Either (IT DEPENDS), and then smile and walk away. It's the 'salt principle.' In seduction, the idea is to give something that makes and increases thirst (i.e., awakens need/desire and brings it to the surface... "foreplay").
The only rule to me is that foreplay cannot be done according to rote or rule. It cannot be mechanical. Thats the "IT DEPENDS" part. To my way of thinking, foreplay is not just the beginning of our kinks connecting with anothers COMPATIBLE kink, it is the energy that continues and sustains arousal (i.e. "arousal is the awakening of our kink=need/want). This, is key in my mind: it is the corresponding and compatible need/want of our 'opposite' that attracts and sustains. E.g., it is the need/want of your mate to grind/dry hump, to massage your butt that arouses and nurtures your need/want to grind/dry hump, get your butt massaged. i know i'm putting this in terms that sound cynical, but the reality is anything but, i'm just trying to put it in a personal way for you?
i think were a lot of foreplay and, subsequent lack of arousal, fails is it lacks the aforementioned ingredients. Instead of basing relationship on compatibility, we base it on who knows what? Then when it comes to sex, the relationship often becomes quid pro quo instead of symbiotic. In your case, for example, it might become: "ill make out with you if you'll massage my butt." Not real arousal can be achieved, and certainly not nurtured/sustained because neither has the 'food' the other needs/wants... it's fake food, processed for consumption but not nutritious (sorry, i have a specialty in my practice of reversing disease through diet lol, thus the analogy). Not only will this not sustain, over time it results in things like starvation and resentment because neither needs are being met?
Okay, i said i'd get back to the kiss/make out. i could be completely wrong on this, but i know there's more than one way to "make out." i'm really particular when it comes to making out. Some guys 'make out' like they're a wet vac or like they are trying to fuck my mouth with their tongue and spit. Not appealing to me at all, though no doubt it is for some. Subtle, tentative, searching kisses can make me swoon though (yeah, really lol). But for me, the key with kissing is the same key as what i noted before, it has to be a real expression of the individuals need/want that are compatible with my own individual need/want.
i suspect a lot of guys learn how to kiss and have sex from watching porn. Which is not to fault guys, we have to start somewhere. i think the problem really derives in a culture that conditions us to not be open and vulnerable. School doesn't teach us how to be self aware and communicate. Sex ed isn't. So, most of us entering relationship are in kindergarten, if not pre-school, and we don't even know it. So we pretend to be educated (were expected to be educated) instead of taking the opportunity to learn, which sets us back even further.