Foreplay aka “the entire point of sex,” for most women is otherwise known as everything you do before intercourse. There is no right or wrong with what you get up to during this part of play, back massages, neck kisses, oral sex, fingering, spanking, dirty talk, or sexting before you get together.
Foreplay is especially important for women to feel excited and turned on enough to enjoy penetrative sex. Without it, penetrative sex can be a whole world of uncomfortable or even painful. Yes, even with a quickie will have some kind of lead up.
Foreplay as the lead up to penetrative sex is a bit of a heteronormative term. LGBTQ couples that do not engage in penetration and who may consider something like oral sex as the main event of sex really does call for us to think of ‘foreplay’ in another more inclusive way. You can come up with a term that works for you with the underlying idea that it is made up of activities that are most likely to build up arousal, however, they culminate. Sex doesn’t have to be a linear experience starting with a kiss and ending up with intercourse/orgasm.
As long as consent is involved ‘foreplay’ can be defined any way that suits you. Remember that any activity that gets a person “aroused enough to progress the fun on to other stuff is ‘foreplay’.
Some foreplay favorites are:
- Kissing
- Nibbling earlobes
- Licking and sucking nipples
- Caressing and squeezing breasts
- Sucking and biting someone’s neck
- Stroking or playing with someone’s the vulva, clit, penis, testicles or anus
- Lightly caressing/massaging all over your partner's body
- Fingering a vagina or anus
- Spanking
- Hand Job
- Blow job or cunnilingus
- Complimenting/saying sweet things to your partner
- Take the pressure off yourselves, switch the focus from orgasm and focus on enjoying each other. As long as it feels good for both of you, have fun!
What activities do you and your partner enjoy to build up arousal?
I will admit there was a period of time when I disliked the word foreplay. I felt like many that it played down or minimized activities that commonly fall under the term foreplay rather than include them under the umbrella of sex. As though somehow oral sex was not real sex. My opinion has shifted to reclaiming the term foreplay.
Foreplay is apart of sex and rather than try and kill off the word we need to reclaim it to redefine it so that it can be included with all the other parts of sex - consent, foreplay, penetration/intercourse, aftercare. We need to teach all this and more as all being part of sex. Each word and the activities that fall under it are all apart of real sex, they are all important and they are all as individual as your pleasure.
How do you define sex?
How are you reclaiming the word foreplay?
