Sociologist Desmond Morris addressed this important concept and process in his book Intimate Behaviour and called it “pair fannation” or “pair bonding”. He observed humans in their courting behaviors and saw a process that often included all or most of twelve separate steps. Each step is progressively different and important. The needs of an initial step cannot be met by skipping ahead to another. Lovers often hope that genital-to-genital involvement will instantly create intimacy. They fail to realize, to their great detriment, that intimate bonding is indeed a process.
I have taken the concept of pair bonding and applied it to the sexual enrichment of a marriage and the importance of making love with clothes on. Even though intercourse is an important part of married love, mates need to continually incorporate each of the 12 steps. Here is a simple summary (from Desmond Morris's work) of these important steps that can help you build or recapture a deeper romance and intimacy.
1. Eye to body. Our senses feed our mind information about another person. This includes sexual information, but it is a more total observation. We sort and assess this information as we define attractiveness. We sum up and ponder in our mind the personal and physical qualities that are appealing to us.
2.Eye to eye. People usually watch one another privately and do not directly look into each other’s eyes. Strangers will often b^eak eye contact because this is an invasion of privacy. A friendly smile or an inviting look is often the beginning of more intimate contact. The old song 'Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyesn emphasizes a crucial bonding behavior.
3.Voice to voice. Ofteninitial verbal contact is quite casual but furthers the bonding process. The connecting converation allows more information to be exchanged. Accents, tones of voice, vocabularies, and styles of communication and thinking all give valuableknowledge to the pair becoming intimately involved.
4.Hand to hand. Hand to hand or arm may be more of a supportive behavior at first, as one person assists the other out of a car or lightly supplies directional guidance. It may be a disguised intimacy and lead to more hand-holding if there is a mutual inclination and desire for closeness. Both partners are aware that this is symbolic of a bonding sequence that may in time involve richer intimacies.
5. Arm to Shoulder. The previous steps can be more casual in nature, but this step intentionally brings the partner into closer body contact. An arm around the shoulder communicates a message of close friendship and perhaps love. It iraws the partners together and indicates a deeper desire for intimate companionship.
6.Arm to waist. This is a more direct statement of sexual nd romantic interest. The arm is around the waist and loser to the private areas of the body. Arm to waist is indicative of a growing intimacy and amorous bonding. Like the preceding step, it brings the trunks of the bodies into contact in an increasing intimacy.
7.Mouth to mouth. Kissing on the mouth with the accompanying behavior of a close, frontal embrace is a big step forward in pair bonding. This is the initial step that can create erotic and genital arousal, especially with prolonged and intimate kissing. The man and woman are becoming lovers and are enjoying sexual arousal, with an intimate closeness developing.
8.Hand to head. Perhaps as an accompanying behavior to the intimate kissing, the hands touch and caress the partner's head. The defensive walls are let down and bonding occurs as fingers tenderly stoke the face, hair, ears, and neck. Sometimes the hand will lovingly clasp the head in a com-munication of caring and intimate possessiveness.
9.Hand to body. Intimacy deepens as the hands explore the partner’s body with touching, rubbing, squeezing, and gentle fondling. The trust and bonding is deepening with caressing of the more intimate areas and further sexual arousal. Often couples who do not wish to proceed to com-pletion in making love will stop at this step.
10.Mouth to breast. With this step the bonding behaviors have become private and a new level of intimacy has been reached. The first nine steps, with the exception of caressing a more intimate part of the body, might be expressed in public and the pair bonding developed without a need for privacy. The female breast is covered in most societies, and its exposure is symbolic of advanced intimacy. The mouth caressing and suckling the breast is the last of the pregenital bonding behaviors. This step is usually the prelude of stimulation to an orgasm, rather than a more general step in loveplay.
11. Hand to genital. This is an advanced step in pair bond-ing. Touching the lover's genitals implies a sufficient level of trust and bond of attachment for deeper intimacies. This touching often begins in a teasing, caressing manner. As arousal increases, the partner proceeds to a tender, rhyth-mic rubbing that stimulates arousal. This step can include the intimate behaviors of stroking the penis, fondling the labia and clitoris, and inserting fingers into the vagina. Man-ual stimulation can also lead to the partners trusting each other in the sharing of a climax.
12. Genital to genital. The final stage of pair formation in-cludes intercourse and the potential for creating a life. Each preceding step will have deepened the bond of attachment and intimate connection. The intimacy of intercourse is built on the earlier bonding behaviors that have created a partnership to provide for the possibility of pregnancy. The design is that the couple remain bonded beyond the satis-faction of tbe sex drive in orgasm. The couple will have created an intimacy deeper and more long lasting than sexual arousal and consummation.
If you want to feel more deeply in love and expand into a fulltime lover, devote some time to each of these steps. Let's take them one at a time and explore how each can enrich your sex life. Ralph Waldo Emerson stated that “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” No one wants to be categorized as having a little mind and neglecting effective ways to enrich sexuality. Everyone at times gets into a destructive "consistency." That is why this chaptei de-emphasizes orgasm and intercourse in making love. You need to expand your sexual realities. Certainly you want t be a wise lover characterued by emotional depth and an enriching complexity.
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