689 thoughts on “Developing Intimacy with Myself & Making Love”

1. Thank you Nicole and adding to what you hare shared could it be being intimate with God, and thus being at one with this heavenly vibration, allows us to start the road of return to being able to share the love that we all have equally?

2. Nicole this is so timely as I’m working on intimacy and to read that it is about developing it with yourself first is so important to feel. And I agree it needs to be developed in oneself otherwise searching it from another is pointless and at times destructive. This is where we then can turn to blame, blaming of another for not fulfilling you. When it always, if not often is with you first and foremost.

   It requires a consistency and commitment to developing intimacy, and bringing nurture and love for oneself is a beautiful gift we can give to ourself’s.

   I look forward to further developing this intimacy so I can share with another too and reflect that there is another way…

3. “sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.” Living from the love of the inner-heart brings an intimacy that is felt by others.

4. Nicole I love how you have shared that intimacy, which in today’s society, is seen as being sexual, actually does not have anything to do with sex, but everything to do with how much we connect to ourselves and our essence in total honesty and openness.

5. Being intimate with oneself begins with being totally open and honest about how one is feeling and not having any judgements about this. And as Nicole so beautifully said – in all that we part-take in, how we move how we do things and how we speak and how we are to allow our own innate tenderness and delicateness. This is intimacy first and foremost. And then from this can come true connection with another to share these qualities. This for me has been and still is a work in progress, and it is great to know that this is about deepening this all of the time.

   1. This blog busts all pictures of what intimacy represents. It has no sexual energy. It is a love of you first before another without the physical activity. That is magical to feel.

6. I love this sentence Nicole: “Making love is more than what happens between the sheets: it’s a way of living, a touch, a gaze, and a gesture in every movement in me, and in another.” If we make lovemaking about the way we live then by the time we go to bed with our loved one, it is simply an extension of our day and this is super special.

7. Yes, as Nicole did, ‘I now hold and love myself as the beautiful woman I am’.

8. Letting love in and out. I feel as humanity this is a big one for us to learn … but it doesn’t have to be ‘big’ it can be super simple and easy and of course feel incredibly beautiful. Are we ready for that?

   1. What is being shared here is that love is non-imposing, non judgemental and deeply connects us to God, and thus brings a magnificence of being Soul-fully connected, as we can all do, as this blog is sharing.

9. ‘Making love’ is not another name for a certain bedroom activity with another. Such a definition was alien to me a few years ago. But the more I care for myself the more it makes sense that you can make love anywhere, love is a quality, not an action.

10. True intimacy is letting people in and as you have shared Nicole, so we have to start by letting ourselves into our inner-most, essence or being open to our Soul-full-ness, so we can then start to let others into our open inner-heart.

11. In reading this I have felt how there is a lot of room for me to be more loving and intimate with myself in each moment, tuning in to how I am feeling, how connected am I with me in each moment and what I need to bring in my livingness.

    1. Absolutely Vicky – this blog is a great reminder for us all as women (and men) to keep connecting with ourselves on a deeper and deeper level and realising that intimacy is actually a very beautiful way to get to know oneself and ones essence.

12. The love and intimacy begins with ourselves first… then the flow on effect to our relationships is greater love and transparency.

13. I’m sure there is a difference, a difference that must be felt well before it is paraded about. In our social constructs we can see “making love” as a soft and tender experience, like from those romance movies from the 80’s. But perhaps that’s not making love either, is it possible that making love can be passionate with fireworks – yet, truly tender and honouring of the person? When we remove the need for relief, for somebody to hold us and all of the other baggage we bring into the bedroom, what opens up is way beyond what we can imagine.

    1. And this way is always there when we choose to connect to our beingness- our inner-fire works.

14. Making love like all true relationships start with ourselves. This is nothing sexual but a deep intimacy, respect and connection with ourselves.

    1. And that starts with how we are living with ourselves, what quality are we choosing to live in.

15. Intimacy for me means being open and responsive which includes being open to my own body and how it really feels and responding sensitively to that, rather than hardening and over-riding my body and how it feels and forcing or pushing through.

    1. Great point Andrew – the moment we harden or push, then we lose our connection to our essence and hence the intimacy is gone.

16. What I got from this is how much we want from another whilst we do not give it to ourselves.. Which of course should be naturally our way of doing so, but because we have got so far away from our truth, needing this from another is accepted as normal. That is why we need to live our true normal again.

17. The power is in our willingness to rise beyond and step out of the shadows.. Moving in the light we are and can feel on this very day inside ourselves. It is that simple. Our willingness is our choice.

18. Intimacy is very much related with transparency, how open and loving can we be in every moment of the day.

19. When we truly start to care for ourselves we understand how much love we hold and can honour ourselves with, as we make that our every choice we begin a relationship within ourselves connecting to love that we are first and from there we are able to share what true love is.

    1. Building a foundation of care and love for ourselves enables us to then share this with another.

20. Intimacy, caring for and loving another is felt when we choose this way of living with ourselves.

    1. Choosing to live with a quality, ‘A quality and intimacy that supports me to feel, love and honour my body, always.’

21. Your love-life is how you live your life.
    The quality we live, the transparency, the openness and the level of intimacy determine whether it is love or loveless. The quality of physical lovemaking in bed depends on how loving you have been with yourself and others during the day.

    1. How we live in every moment has a ripple effect in many ways, ‘That the way you live, the quality you choose to live in and from, govern whether you have sex or make love?’

22. One of the quotes by Serge Benhayon: ‘Making love is being you and doing what you do’ (Esoteric Teachings & Revelations, p 419) has brought me a different and much broader understanding for what love making entails. How I can be simply myself in anything that I do and bring more love into the world with everything I do.
    This quote from Serge also started a beautiful conversation with one of my close friends who shared that she never looked at making love like the quote said before and that for her making love was more about physical intimacy in bed. We concluded that how we had been cooking together in the kitchen was also making love and how lovely that felt.

23. The only way I have been learning to truly open up to people and yes concern the activity of making love, is to be open and loving with myself. Nothing else has worked, it makes sense love yourself the way you know you should be treated and this holds you and others.

    1. Absolutely, bring to yourself what you had been seeking from another, ‘What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.’

24. It’s so important what you’ve shared about not treating physical intimacy as a ‘peak’ of a relationship but loving each other to the absolute nth degree in every moment and making them all count.

25. How you perceive and approach physical intimacy with a partner will make all the difference to whether it is sex or making love. I feel a lot of women use sex as a way to feel loved or at least momentarily valued, as an ‘up’ moment in a dull relationship, because they feel they should or a bartering tool to keep their partner happy. I would say that very little intimacy just comes as a natural extension of how lovely you have been with each other in the day or week before. When I was choosing this way of being physically intimate, what was missing was my love and valuing of myself, which would flow onto my partner.

26. Intimacy is about allowing more of our true selves to be seen in full.

27. We can put so much empthasis on having sex or that ‘truly’ intimate moment with our partner we lose focus of all the little moments where we can then the same quality to. Then when the ‘moment’ comes we almost freak out as the build up has been so huge. Whereas when we see each moment as an opportunity to make love with ourselves, our partner, our friends etc,, then we are already living this love so when we come to share the physical act of love making with our partner then it is a celebration of what we both hold dear rather than something we need or want because of the physical nature of it.

28. To learn to and then truly love ourself brings a beauty to life that is beyond anything we have made life to be. It clears out the emotions, the expectations and the many pictures how to be and how to look and what to get and how our relationships should be. It gives us a clear and solid starting point in every moment.

29. Letting go of judgement of ourselves is huge, it gives us ourselves the space we need to heal.

30. Rarely is it talked about or known about being intimate with ourselves, not in a sexual way, but in everyday things but this is actually really important because it is the foundation for all of our relationships and way in which we live life.

31. The concept of making love is not really widely understood, I myself have only come to understand it in the last few years. The fact that it doesn’t even have to be a sexual act is a turning point in itself that asks us to actually look at how we are living and if we are living love in our day… or not… and if not, then what are we living in our day?

32. It is a very selfish and controlling way to live, that is to expect another to love us in a way that we want when there is no or very little love lived towards self. It exposes arrogance when nothing but the individual/self is sought.

33. When we hold back love that we are, we are hurting ourselves and others at the same time, leaving ourselves love starved and wondering where we could ever find it.

    1. Learning to fully love ourselves, and from there opening our hearts to love another is a great learning to master.

34. This is a beautiful description of what love/making love is :
    “Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.”
    How much are we willing to seek this love inside and build from our core inside : love ?

35. I am at the point where I can feel I can go deeper with my partner and be more intimate, but I am blocking this level of intimacy with myself first. And so I feed the game of how I don’t truly appreciate me and therefore cannot truly appreciate the relationship I have. So it is great to read this blog and the enormous shift that says no to the comfort of life and yes to love.

36. A beautiful blog to read Nicole, thank you for sharing the love and intimacy that you have nurtured and developed within yourself and can now give that love and intimacy with others.

    1. Building love and intimacy with ourselves is like a stepping stone, ‘ Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.’

37. Everything in life is open to different qualities. Everything is a movement and we can move in different qualities. This is applicable to every aspect of our lives. To know this is important since we tend to segment life in a succession of moments. The more we understand that it is about quality, something opens up and that is that your quality now is not independent from your previous movements. That is why we end somehow considering movement as our primary focus somehow.

38. Great blog Nicole. I really get what you are saying here about that deep caring for our own bodies and how that can build intimacy, tenderness and delicateness with ourselves which is actually awesome to feel and naturally awesome to share with another.

39. We need to knock out the confusion that most people have around intimacy meaning sexual. Intimacy is about allowing another to see who we truly are in our essence and we have to start with feeling that connection within ourselves first before we can be intimate with another.

40. When we hold ourselves in love we can then do the same for another and thus bring the intimacy that we all want in our relationships.

41. Imagine that making love all through the day just by the quality of our movements and interactions, that sounds much better than keeping it to just between the sheets.

42. “..the protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts: the hurt I felt of not being able to truly connect to another.” – This is a revelatory statement Nicole, and one that can help dissolve the illusion and belief that putting up walls to ‘protect’ ourselves from hurts actually works for us, when in the end the pain of disconnection hurts more than anything and is what we crave the most. Beginning with intimacy with ourselves first is thus the key to sharing it with others.

43. When we say making love is only the act between the sheets it means we ignore how we are together and with ourselves every moment of the day. Changing the meaning of the words like that allows for fights, abuse and arguments, lack of decency and respect. Yet the truth of Making Love is about every moment however much we change the meaning the reality still stays the same, making love can only be as amazing as it can be when we live to the truth of the words.

    1. Making love can be in a very deep conversation that truly connects and evolves(expands) our living forward.

44. Today I remember a conversation I had with an ex partner. Being naked really does not mean that we are transparent, we could be walking around the house naked, laying down next to our partner naked, having sex, but we could be covered with layers of protection, layers of hurts and put barriers between us more so than two people who are completely dressed.

45. It makes so much sense that if we are enjoying how we feel when we move, talk, eat, breath and appreciating ourselves in those movements throughout the day, that we will be more loving and transparent with others.

46. Gorgeous blog to read and super supportive for anyone on a path of self discovery to live and be more love. I love this summary: ‘Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself’

47. “the protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts.” We think others are the ones to cause the hurts but actually they only highlight the self-inflicted hurts we have created. The part of us that doesn’t want to see that we chose the outcome we now have (the hurt) is what avoids others.

48. Whether we make love or have sex is determined by either our level of transparency or how protected we are.

49. It makes a lot more sense- as love is full, how can love for another be true when you do not have that same love for yourself?

50. What I am finding is that by being gentle and tender with myself I am less focused on the hustle and bustle going on around me. The more gentle I am, the more I want to be gentle with myself and those around me.

51. Nicole I love how your post so clearly describes how making love is all about the quality in which we live everyday life, like how we speak, converse, relate, touch, work, to make the physical sexual act of making love what it is – an extension and deepening of love from what’s already been established.

52. I find and have found there to be such a focus and pressure on making love or having sex all being about how you perform in the bedroom when it really has nothing to do with that. Sure we can make it all about the physicality but when we do this we miss out on the fact that we have a gorgeous divine being with us and can essentially make love in every moment and movement with them, why wait until you are in bedroom! And then if you do it is never going to flow. I knwo for myself the more I live the love I am with mysefl 1st and then with another the less there is any pressure to perform as it becomes an act of confirmation and feels completely out of this world.

53. I work with groups of people all the time, and one of the most constant theme that is there, stifling peoples expression and in general their lives, is the lack of self-worth… In all of its degrees.

    1. I read your comment Chris and went wow, and then could feel how lack of self worth has impacted deeply how I expressed myself in all areas of my life – mainly making myself less than others.

       1. That’s so true Jacqueline… the Effect that it has on our expression is quite profound… And consequently of course as ourselves works reawakens so does our expression

54. ‘I could feel the protection I had built up over the years to avoid getting hurt no longer allowed me to feel the depth of tenderness in myself, nor in another. ‘ So true Nicole, our protection ends up hurting us in the end as we are missing out on the deep tenderness and connection we can have with ourselves and others.

55. We crave from others what we do not give ourselves – what an enormous abdication of our personal responsibility and how sad that we do not value ourselves enough.

56. Making love is no holding back with creating as much space as you need to feel to understand and be absolute with how you are and therefore need to be with another.

57. Making love is so clearly about surrendering to the connection we all have to our divine origin. If I connect to the knowing that I am a multidimensional being and live this during the day every touch, every gaze, every movement is making love and combined with another it is an even bigger confirmation of our sacredness.

    1. Gorgeous Monica. When we surrender to the love that we are, grace can flow through us and can be felt in the smallest of details, for example, in a smile, in our touch, in our every movement, which can be a beautiful reflection to others of who they are too.

       1. Yes, it is almost like connecting to multidimensionality multiplies everything, so all is touched by love.

58. ‘Making love’ described in a way that it is ‘living love’ or ‘sharing love’, thank you Nicole.
    Sometimes the true meaning of words can struck me, for example when I realized for the first time what falling in love and meant and being in love and how different that was from the emotional interpretation I had always given it.

59. Thank you Nicole, it is indeed a confirmation of your love that is then extended to others. Simply by allowing it to be lived yourself first.

    1. When we live the love ourselves then we naturally bring it to everyone we meet and interact with. When we do this together then we get to see the depths of the Universe and it is beyond what we can humanly think of.

60. How many others is this true for? ‘What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself’. I know this was true for me although now I can appreciate just how much this has changed and how much I do love and care for myself .. although this is and will always be work in progress to the next level to go to.

61. I can feel the delicate tenderness in the way you write Nicole – it’s so tangible. We all walk around and ‘look the same’ but the way we do is hugely different. If we connect to our true tenderness we don’t need to smash life out but make love with every move.

62. I love the very real and practical way you have felt intimacy with yourself to be Nicole. It makes it so relatable and accessible.

63. I don’t think many people would consider that the difference between making love and sex was the way they lived. From my childhood I heard that the difference was if you were in love or not. However I am now realising that most people have sex, as there isn’t an alive, growing love between them and the definition of intimacy is restricted to a physical act.

    1. Yes I didn’t consider there was a difference except for if you were ‘in love’ with the person or not. I love that this way considers the way we live as the fore-runner to the outcome. It feels less on and off – more a natural extension of the love we are already walking.

64. “Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.” A beautiful realisation and invitation for us all to live the love that we are.

65. “Making love with another is simply… a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.” How beautiful is this… so exquisite, thank you for sharing Nicole.

66. Yes Nicole, it makes all the difference if we interact with another from a place of absolute love and honouring of ourselves, and then making love is something that can occur in every moment and movement.

67. ‘Making love is more than what happens between the sheets: it’s a way of living, a touch, a gaze, and a gesture in every movement in me, and in another’ Are we making love as we go about our day or are we avoiding connecting with ourselves and others? Allowing ourselves to express the love that we are may mean being more open and potentially vulnerable yet how delicious this feels when the protected and guarded way leaves love outside.

68. ‘Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.’
    So true — the beauty is that nothing has left us, the love is inside..

69. So beautiful what you have shared Nicole, thank you for sharing your experience with us. “Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.”

70. So much about how we currently see love and relationships is about getting something from the other person, whether it’s the emotional version we call love, gifts, attention, or sex, it’s a give and take scenario, rather than as you have written Nicole that it’s a sharing of the love you already are and have chosen to live for yourself each day. We can see in these two different versions where responsibility gets mixed up, emotional love means another is responsible for how we feel and if we receive love or not, whereas true love is the essence of who we are and it is up to us to live each day to experience what that love is, and then share with others. In the second example love is our responsibility, which in other words means to live who we truly are.

71. How could I ever think protecting myself to not get hurt is the way and yet I did. When I feel fragile and nurture myself there is also an openness to let others in and allow their care and tenderness embrace me.

72. We make a big deal of techniques and precautions to have pleasurable sex. We’ll do anything it seems to get it ‘correct’. Except see that we’ve got our wider view of life inside out. Making love is not a momentary hit we sustain life with, but something we build with every move that we make. Thank you Nicole for highlighting this is the level of responsibility we need to take.

73. What a game changer! If we don’t live love with ourselves than we can’t make love with another.

74. I love what you have shared here in that intimacy starts with ourself and is not something that happens overnight. This is something I have experience the more I love and care for myself especially in the little way the more I can be this with others to.

75. Our quality is key and first established in one self.. to find then the sharing of that quality with another. Hence we can see in our world today, that much of us all are investing in our outside love and attention, yet lack the love build within, and we often see that this clashes and in truth never ever works.

76. This is so beautiful and very inspiring. If we can love ourselves and live with that love we have so much more to offer and we don’t need to crave anything from someone else. The quality we live and move in is everything, and if we take care of that and honour ourselves we already have everything. Very lovely.

77. Making love carries no judgement, it simply is love and being expressed.. What we have come to; the current definition is only a very small version of what making love is. It is the re-interpertation coming from the contraction of holding back our full love. No worry yet to be, for when we start connecting to the wholeness that love is about, we will easily lay out the falsities in the open and no longer play ball with them.

78. “How could I truly love, make love to another, if I was not able to love and make love with myself first? Being intimate, living a quality, warmth and tenderness in another’s touch, a touch that I could so easily give to myself but instead chose to deny.”

    There is an exquisite rawness beauty, power and honesty in this statement Nicole. I found it both inspiring, and a bit confronting to read as it asks me the same question. An invitation to deepen the opportunity to bring and make love with myself first.

79. Well said Nicole, “Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.” and so it is that the quality of relationship that we have with ourselves is what governs the quality of relationship that we bring to another.

80. Building intimacy with myself first offers the opportunity to connect with others more as I can feel how delicate we all are in essence.

81. ‘Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.’ This is beautiful Nicole, it highlights how important it is to live love in our life and allow love to be expressed through us consistently.

82. Making life about love is the only way that things will change in this world.

83. Making love is a confirmation of the way we live, it is not exciting or draining in anyway. Perhaps for some this is boring though in my experience making love in whatever form is deeply honouring and truly touches us on the inside well before the physicality of what is happening.

84. This is very beautiful Nicole. In living in an intimate relationship with ourselves, with our love, we cannot but live in this same quality with the world. This for me highlights the power we all hold to make love through all we do and in all our relationships, and the responsibility that is ours to embrace as we are constantly impacting the world through how we live.

85. A beautiful blog that highlights that love is a quality in which we live with ourselves and not an emotion or a need.

86. “Making love is not just what happens between the sheets, nor is it a quality that only occurs in one moment. Instead, it’s a quality that is lived in each and every moment of every day. A quality and intimacy that supports me to feel, love and honour my body, always” If we do not have this quality that you talk about with ourselves then we can not truly make love with another.

87. The greatest wisdom in relationship I know now is that it is never just about the other but equally about you. Together you make the love grow and expand by your own commitment fo unfold deeper within yourself.

88. So many people, self-loathing is just the way it is… It is such a dichotomy that people can still get around, and seemingly function in life with such a destructive pattern going on in the background… And yet that is what is happening people are just functioning… There is so much more to life living and loving.

89. Making love with another is only possible if you hold yourself in love as you move in life.

90. It’s true. The love and adoration we look for from others are the things we need to be giving ourselves. There is then no need to look for these qualities from someone else.

91. Beautifully expressed Elizabeth and so, so true. If we reserve love and intimacy only for people close to us, it is no longer a true form of love and intimacy because like you shared this is to be shared with the world.

92. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body.” In connecting to our tenderness and fragility we tap into a quality in which we are all held equal and it is from this quality of being we have for ourselves first, we begin to then see it reflected by others too. Making love is an intimate expression that holds all as one and that is hugely inspiring.

93. Discovering the difference between these two has been a life changing revelation. To truly make love with another, one can never stop making love in all they do.

94. When we talk about intimacy and making love we tend to think that intimacy and making love is just what happens between the sheets and is a quality that only occurs in that moment but actually it is not. Intimacy is an emanation that comes from the movement of delicacy within and will be there in any moment we connect with this. And when we connect to people from this movement we actually are making love, no sheets required as our delicacy is an expression from the love we all equally hold and are made of.

95. Building and establishing intimacy with ourselves does take time and commitment, ‘it’s about building a quality I choose to live, making choices to nourish and nurture myself, to feel what my body needs to eat, to wear, the time I need to go to bed and how and when I need to exercise.’

96. Until I met Serge Benhayon, I thought that having sex with a partner I ‘loved’ was making love. Now after years of observing what truly loving relationships look like, I know that making love is how you move around each other, glance at each other, speak and touch throughout the day. In writing this I feel women already know this and is why they refuse to have sex (feign tiredness, headache etc.) or at least expect to have foreplay when there hasn’t been this level of harmony and intimacy in the day. It’s like we try to cram all the missing intimacy and connection into the event of sex, rather than foster it throughout the day.

97. By choosing to be tender and intimate with self, we build an intimacy with ourselves, ‘I could feel the protection I had built up over the years to avoid getting hurt no longer allowed me to feel the depth of tenderness in myself, nor in another. Busy keeping everyone at a distance, I became more aware that I was missing the intimacy and connection I so desperately longed for from another, within myself.’

98. The love that we are comes naturally, and so when we allow it to be in us, being present with ourselves and treating ourselves preciously so, we will see how easy it is to love.. And this rocks out any complex situations or theory we have made love to be. Which is far away from its true meaning.

99. The connection in making love feels much stronger than the physicality of whatever it is that is happening.. so much is communicated through this silence.

100. ” That the way you live, the quality you choose to live in and from, govern whether you have sex or make love? ” This would have to be true , for the way one lives affect all that one does . One can only be touched by love if the person touching you is living love.

101. “How could I truly love, make love to another, if I was not able to love and make love with myself first? ” You make such an important point Nicole. We can only give to another that which we have first given to ourselves.

102. I love how you describe intimacy as something we first build in how we are with ourselves and that it is then something we can naturally share with others – that it’s not limited to being a sexual expression but actually a natural virtue or quality to be in all our relationships.

103. There are so many beliefs and ideals about “sex”. It is great you are sharing your own experience in developing true love and in effect true making love to another. It is very much needed, as the focus in general is always in finding the perfect partner with whom you will finally have the most amazing time in bed. Instead of building this kind of intimacy with yourself first, as it always starts with ourselves.

     1. That is a great comment Stefanie and very true. We make sex purely physical and we leave out the beingness, the element of ourselves that is multidimensional. From our being we can share amazing depths of tenderness, delicateness, warmth, and our sacredness, beauty and stillness together. And this sharing of ourselves, this intimacy of letting another truly know, feel and see all the beauty we are can be part of everyday, meaning every moment can truly be about making love together.

        1. The moment we say yes to our multidimensional being, “sex” gets a total different face- in fact how you beautifully described: it is an extension of making and expressing love in all our ways everyday. Actually it then reduces the significance of “having sex”, as intimate lovemaking is actually no big deal, as it is lived all the time.

104. Absolutely beautiful blog Nicole. The description of love making has never been more clear for me. Sex sells but love is something that we are and can choose at any time.

     1. And it is nothing more exciting than normal life together. It is just a colour and expression of the day, like cooking together or walking together. It is often said as the highlight in a relationship- not for me- there are many equal moments during the day, that I love and I feel the same connection with my partner as being in bed together.

105. Making love between the sheets is a confirmation of the love between two people who chose to share the love they live with themselves and each other, a surrender of the body to the love felt by both equally.

106. Thank you Nicole, it is through the support of Esoteric Healing sessions that I too have relaised how much I have lived in protection most of life and the more I let go of these layers in my body, the more I too can open myself to receive the huge amount of love that is there all around me.

107. Being protected I have learnt is not the answer, it does not stop us from feeling hurt, and it does not allow us to feel tenderness, ‘I could feel the protection I had built up over the years to avoid getting hurt no longer allowed me to feel the depth of tenderness in myself, nor in another.’

108. ‘Making love is more than what happens between the sheets: it’s a way of living, a touch, a gaze, and a gesture in every movement in me, and in another.’
     I love your definition of making love, it is revolutionary and true. After a day of making love in the way we live and are with ourselves and with another there can be the confirmation and celebration of this love making by surrendering to – and making love in the flesh.

     1. Beautifully said Monica. You remind me that a union with another is only truly possible if we live in union with soul.

     2. And the big word in this is “surrendering”. The more we are surrendered in ourselves through our everyday movements, the more we can be it with another.

109. Beautifully expressed Shami, what you’ve shared is gold. A huge majority of people’s understanding of intimacy and making love is not what it truly is. Thank you for clarify the true meaning of making love and intimacy because we all need to hear the truth.

110. The art of making love is all about the way we live, then life is a loving act and making love is a confirmation of this life and the grander purpose it can have because in true intimacy we can see the Godliness in eachother, which is beyond spectacular.

     1. Shami thank you for expanding the conversation and the true purpose of seeing the Godliness in each other, and that even such a private moment as making love can be done so in service to the all. The point about making love being a confirmation of what has already been lived highlights the one life philosophy, that there are no peak or special moments or separate activities, but just one continuous livingness of love each day.

111. The idea that making love happens in everyday moments, and that the physical sexual act of love making is simply an extension of that is revolutionary.

112. Naturally, the more intimate and delicate we are with ourselves, the more we feel others innate delicateness, and how could we not honour that when presenting in a relationship?

113. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body.” I too am finding that the more I appreciate and confirm my own delicate and tender touch the more aware of it I am when other’s are deeply tender with me too. It’s like a double confirmation of who we are when we express from this intimacy it then encapsulates our lives from all angles.

114. Imagine that this was taught at schools? How to have a foundational intimate relationship with yourself first, and what making love truly is. This would revolutionise what we currently call sex education, which focuses mainly on the biological aspect.

115. Thank you Nicole all we need to do is connect, connect with our body and feel who we are, everyday.. From there much will grow..

116. Making love can be in everything we do with anyone and everyone. It is not exclusive like plain sex is.

117. Just considering that making love starts with us and is not reduced to a moment into the sheets, allows its expansion and opens us up to a redefinition and a new experience of Love, which is something that lives within us, first and always before any opportunity of sharing it.

118. Making love in this way is so much more expansive than what we have reduced romantic love and sex to.

     1. I agree Jenny, we limit ourselves and everyone misses out when we focus on love being only with one other person.

119. Great blog Nicole for how can we ever expect from another what we are not prepared to give ourselves?

120. It puts a whole other slant on it when we come to understand that love starts with us and of course making love is an extension of that. And to do this how we live, take care of, love and be tender with us is crucial and in fact the more we embrace this, the more we come to understand that this is our natural way, that by nature we are love and it’s about finding how live and express this in life, starting with how we are with us.

121. Making love is more than what happens between the sheets: it’s a way of living, a touch, a gaze, and a gesture in every movement in me, and in another.

122. Making love is more than what happens between the sheets: it’s a way of living, a touch, a gaze, and a gesture in every movement in me, and in another. Making love is something we bring to all our relationships.

123. I truly enjoying making love with myself, it is nothing sexual…for example, when I am tired and I put myself to bed, that is such love for oneself especially in cities that do not sleep. Putting myself to bed when my body tells me it is tired can be a love deeper than making love with another when we are tired…these are the things we have to truly feel and not just take it as face value that being intimate with another is always a deeper intimacy than being true to ourselves. Sometimes we may feel to override what we feel lest others have reactions, but when we truly respect and love ourselves, this love when expressed fully is always felt by another.

124. Thank you Nicole. Love is very easy to find if we look within ourselves but it’s usually the last place we look!

125. I really enjoyed reading how now love making to you is an extension of the quality you hold within yourself – so beautifully put and changes the whole concept of love making – that it is confirming and honoring and you can never go and seek love making to feel better because then it is just sex.

126. Loving ourselves with gentle tenderness offers a deeper connection to a delicious intimacy with ourselves. It really does put a halt to seeking from others what in truth another cannot deliver. No one else can re-connect us back to ourselves, this is a choice we need to activate. And tender loving self care is the way.

127. Beautiful line ‘Busy keeping everyone at a distance, I became more aware that I was missing the intimacy and connection I so desperately longed for from another, within myself.’ We crave intimacy and love but are we willing to instead of looking for this outside of ourselves; first give this quality and level of attention and care to ourselves instead? As is it not like for like? If we cannot do this first for ourselves then how on earth can another truly do this for us?

128. To chose love pervades every area of our life and others feel this also, amazing when this is developed in a physical relationship but not necessary as an end result. Relationships come from a commitment and foundation in quality, is that quality love or not love?

129. Super gorgeous tender blog Nicole. I feel very surrendered having read it and can feel the gift it has offered me to take into my day.

130. A beautiful message to remind us to claim what intimacy really is, that we know, and we can life. For us to claim it back – again.

131. “Making love is not just what happens between the sheets, nor is it a quality that only occurs in one moment” it is a continuous quality in our movements and the way we present ourselves to others with no holding back but a transperancy of the love of who we truly are.

     1. Beautifully shared Francisco. Everywhere we look we are confronted with images and ideals that link sex with success. True success is found in the living connection that we have with ourselves and share share with others.

132. If we expressed intimacy with ourselves and with others, and let people see all of who we are with no hiding anything than there would be far less separation between people, and far less beliefs about who we have to be as ‘men’ and as ‘women’

133. So true Nicole when craving love, intimacy from another we are missing the most delicious divine source of intimacy that is already with-in us. Being wiling and open to exploring all that is readily available is the most delightful and wondrous choice if I approach it with absolute tender loving care.

134. I remember the first time I felt tenderness in my own touch – I had been saying to a friend that i didn’t feel tender, I had been trying but couldn’t feel it. In that moment I connected to my fingertips and ran them along the top of my forearm. My touch felt so tender and delicate and I burst into tears. It was there all along , I’d just refused until that moment to accept and appreciate that it is a natural part of me.

135. Over the last few years my relationship with myself has reached depths I never initially thought were possible. Now I am starting to realise that the sharing of this love for myself with another is equally vital in order to deepen this relationship. For when I hide away my lovely, caring, beautiful nature from others I hide it from myself as well. And when I allow others to see and feel my love of myself I am in that love and then they show me the next deepening step which is beautiful.

     1. Beautifully said and so true. The more we deepen our love with ourselves the more we can then share with others which in turns allows us to deepen further – it is exquisite when we are like this with others.

136. In having sex everyone is in fact craving love, but it is about how much we are willing to drop the guard that determines the quality of the experience we receive- whether that is in the physical act or in everyday life, love and making love can be in every moment.

137. What does it feel like when I don’t feel like me? Often it is subtle so I brush over this and keep going and doing. This is one of the key indicators that I’m not actually being all of me, my mind and body together as one. Rather the mind is running the show and my body is expected to keep up. A moments pause works wonders when I’m willing to be aware that this is what is happening.

138. Before I heard presentations on making love versus sex with Universal Medicine, the only difference I saw was if you loved the person or not. And what loving someone meant back then was a completely different story too! I would have absorbed this idea from the many sources that influence us, so I am sure it is common. It is quite beautiful to hear that lovemaking is an ongoing part of a relationship, not what happens in bed. I absolutely agree that what we seek from others is what we don’t give to ourselves. I now use this feeling of seeking to know what I need to give myself.

139. Loving ourselves to the bone is well worth it – and in honouring, revering and nurturing ourselves, we inspire others the grace to follow suit and allow for others to honour us equally.

140. I know the protection of which you speak and the guard which seems to keep people out even when we want so desperately to connect. And this is where the science of love is important. I have found that before I have become protective or unsettled around others I have already gone into a form of protection with myself.

141. Making love is an expansive and forever deepening Livingness that does not only limit us in the bedroom under the sheets or with the act of sexual intercourse. When we truly make love, it is our every moment with ourselves, our partner and with life. The fulfilment of this is love being confirmed within ourselves, and therefore the sexual act is a part of, but definitely not exclusive of the broadness of what making love involves.

142. Could it be true-love-making is so all empowering it connects us to all our previous incarnations so we feel the truth of allow are? So what if we all started to make love our sheets would light up and there would be a different type of smoke pouring from our bed than what used to be portrayed in movies?

143. That totally takes an way the pressure of perform – to be a good ”..” what ever role that might be. It totally opens up the floor to be you and not be anything else. To simply love and love oneself and another. There is no game or fight or flight in this ‘love’, as it is real and there present. When we allow to be love and let it all in – we will instantly bring it out – to people. This is more of where love making is about – and indeed it is not about you and another under the sheets. Even though this of course can be part of it. Powerful piece of writing Nicole, thank you.

144. For a very long time I have done exactly the same, seeking, longing and craving the love of others. However, it has never been true love I craved, because when true love knocks on my door I reject it, I reject the loving touch of a man by contracting away from it, I reject the loving words of a wise woman because I don’t feel worthy of them, so all these years I have been convincing myself that the love of others is what I need have been years living a lie, because the love I was craving was the love I was not giving myself.

145. I have realised that I am intimate with myself and others in some situations an not in others. When I am not, it is because I have a protection to keep out that kind of closeness…because I have labelled intimacy as a closeness that is only held for special occasions and yet, in truth, I am intimate when I am sharing all of my beingness with another, no matter the occasion. This is not the kind of intimacy that has been touted as being it, it certainly has nothing to do with physical touch or sex. It is a meeting of souls and as such it is true love and joy.

146. Reading this blog again it is so quick to come back to the realisation that any intimacy we are craving from another is a sure sign that we are not honouring the intimacy that is available to ourselves.

147. ‘The protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts: the hurt I felt of not being able to truly connect to another.’ This is gold Nicole and a great reminder how powerful it is when we let go of our protection we begin to feel a grander love and connection for ourselves and others.

     1. Well said and very true. Being ourselves allows for openness with others and the potential to expand the love of us all.

     2. That is a great point as it is so true. It all begins with ourselves and the way we are. It can be so easy to blame others or say this or that but ultimately it all comes back to us. The more we let people in and drop protection the more intimate we naturally are with others and also ourselves.

148. Wow Nicole, how beautiful to read. I love the last line “Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.”

     1. Yes this is often what is ignored in most equations as the need for another to make one feel great takes its toll over time when we are asking to find others to show us the what true love making is.

     2. I love this line too Nikki, it reminds me why it doesn’t work to seek love outside ourselves. To experience true love with others, we first have to experience it with ourselves and to live love through and through.

        1. Perhaps it is not possible to experience true love externally unless we have connected to our own love.

149. This is so inspiring Nicole, I have just completed Sacred Esoteric Healing level 1 and have surrendered so much in my body in a way I have never before I can really feel that the quality you describe of tenderness and love is in me and something I can nurture and share with others.

150. The greatest thing we can do for ourselves is to heal our hurts and drop the protection, for in keeping others out we only ever hurt ourselves, and the deep hurt is that we are not able to truly connect to others as this is what we all want. We are not meant to be alone and separated.

151. Intimacy begins with a deeply loving, accepting and understanding relationship with ourselves – appreciating all that we are and therefore bring in every moment.

152. A beautiful sharing showing us that there is so much that we can give to ourselves and that it is ok to learn and be loving with ourselves, that it is ok to invest in ourselves deeply so we can fall in love with ourself first.

153. Re- reading your blog Nicole and I feel the depth of the words, tenderness and delicateness, intimacy and making love. Words that describe how we can be with ourselves, building a loving relationship with our body and from there sharing this divine love with others. How different from the protection you had built up to shield yourself from the hurts, the hardness and disconnection that we create from being guarded is never true and harms in every way, ourselves and others.

154. What you have written here Nicole highlights the difference from wanting something from someone or feeling like you have to perform, to feeling like you have everything you need inside already, and that getting together with a partner is an extension of that self love. Awesome.

155. Developing intimacy with self, starts with our connection to our bodies and a level of appreciation and confirmation for what is already natural within us, for it is only then that our movements communicate an openness and a holding for another to be themselves.

156. ‘How could I truly love, make love to another, if I was not able to love and make love with myself first? Being intimate, living a quality, warmth and tenderness in another’s touch, a touch that I could so easily give to myself but instead chose to deny.’ This is so true. We harden when we neglect our bodies creating barriers that inhibit us from feeling true intimacy.

157. Developing intimacy with oneself sets a benchmark of how you are with yourself, other people and what you will accept in the way they treat you. This benchmark is in keeping with making love, being a living way rather than a one off event.

158. A very beautiful blog Nicole confirming how we can make love throughout our every day. How often do we consider or explore a relationship with intimacy within ourselves? I lived for many years under the illusion that intimacy was a quality that was only experienced with another, and more so, from another. I have since discovered that holding an intimate relationship with ourselves is one that deeply honors who I am in essence, based on honesty, openness and willingness to surrender to truth and love, through which we move and live in connection to our stillness, our sacredness within. And then as you have wisely shared – ‘Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.’

159. “What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.” This is true for me too, I was seeking the love from another that I denied for myself, therefore I was never satisfied, even if it was there I could not see it, how could I when I was looking for everything outside of me rather than inside of me.

160. If we are not intimate and loving with ourselves then we can not be this way with another, it all starts with our relationship with ourselves.

161. At heart we all know there is a big difference between making love and having sex.

162. Everybody wants love. Everybody is love. When we feel the love within ourselves and express that naturally, people around us want it, because that is who they are too.

163. It is wise to consider the quality that we are sharing with another and indeed all others for this will be a direct flow on effect of the quality in which we live and conduct ourselves in, in the whole of life.

164. It is very interesting to see that this fact of that we need to love ourselves first and foremost to make love with others has not been shown to us from young and making us feel that we are worth everything we know are worth. Letting go of these beliefs of pleasing others is a beautiful tool of coming back to loving ourselves, letting go of the protection.

165. I have heard along the lines of “Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.” before and yet it’s not sunk in like it has today. What I could feel today was an appreciation of how I do now love myself, how I am in tune with my feelings on a deep level and not shy about sharing my feelings with others. So now making love doesn’t feel like this ‘I have to love myself first before I get to make love’ but I feel that when the time comes it will be a great marker of how I am loving myself (and possibly highlight areas I can love myself more deeply). Thank you Nicole.

166. Why has sex education never taught us the basic principles of loving yourself first? After all it would seem that there is a ginormous amount missing if we just make sex about the physical and not about what it is truly all about – celebrating love already lived.

167. Making life about making love is a sure way to express as much of ourselves as possible in each moment. When we are connected to and feeling our inner essence, it’s difficult to NOT express and make love to everything that we do and bring that quality to all we meet.

168. ‘Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.’ I read this and feel that this making love is in all we do, making a cup of tea for colleagues, writing up reports, saying hi to the neighbour etc. How lovely to have that quality with ourselves and share it with others.

169. This is beautiful to read Nicole. It is an invitation to simply allow us to be and feel our tenderness and deeply cherish ourselves.

170. ‘The protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts: the hurt I felt of not being able to truly connect to another’. One of those moments when you realized you are the one who is causing your own pain. Great realisation.

171. I have always known that there is a difference between sex and making love, but settled for sex because I kidded myself that it may lead to love. It doesn’t. What leads to love is the tenderness, care and respect with which we go about all our interactions – building relationships in which the physical act of making love is simply an extension of our every moment together.

172. “Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.” Most beautifully expressed, it gives us the freedom to just be and allows us to unfold the love that we have for ourselves and everybody else.

173. The definition I and many have grown up with puts it out of reach of understanding that it is something of a way of living and not just as act. It is actually a quality of energy and it is a great demise of the quality of live if we start calling just the act making love when it is not that at all if the quality of love has not been lived in us.

174. It is the most deeply loving experience to share love making with another, which is something naturally warm within us that simply wishes to be expressed out. This intimate love is also what we can always give back to ourselves. Often when I am in stressful situations, I come back to this intimacy with myself, which is always there waiting for me no matter how many times I have chosen to forget it, it is always there waiting for me.

175. I attended a Sacred Movement class yesterday and as I let go of the protection held in my upper chest and brought my attention to connecting to parts of my body the delicacy felt in my arms was exquisite… my arms felt so precious. As I reflect it revealed to me the intimacy I could feel within the group because of my choice to connect more deeply to my body.

176. The love and tender care you have for yourself is strongly felt in your words Nicole and what you share shows that we can all develop an intimate relationship with ourselves and it makes so much sense that this then naturally extends into our life. Instead of being a permanent receiver we are then the emanator of the love we all yearn to have.

177. “Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.” Powerful words and makes so much sense, for when we live the love that we are the reflection of love is offered and can have amazing ripple effects.

178. I have learned that we can’t truly be intimate with another if we have not developed intimacy within myself. I have felt this play out a lot in my own life, whether that is with a partner, family, friends, it doesn’t matter. There is a level of protection that is there, we can keep ourselves detached from others. I have felt this shift when I let go of that protection and go deeper within myself, this opens me up and I can let people in.

     1. Yes, agreed, and what I find very inspiring is that once we open up to exploring this, there is always more… an amazing unfolding to more intimacy, connection and relationship

     2. I agree, its just not possible to be intimate with another if we are not able to be intimate with self, as the layer of protection keeps others out. I too have felt this in my life, as I started to work on my own intimacy I could feel the layer or protection come down and the openness of others.

179. Living love within yourself every day is a way of living that has no comparison to living without it.

180. It starts with self first, ‘ I had to begin to be tender and gentle with myself, drop the guard and let people in, if I was to truly feel intimate with myself, let alone anyone else,’ and it feels gorgeous being this way.

181. The world is completely upside down from what I thought growing up. It was all about getting a boyfriend and then ultimately experience having sex or when it was done harmoniously and romantically making love. But life is not about that! It is not the end goal although it is really beautiful to experience and enjoyable. Life is about love everywhere and every moment and this is huge to accept and apply.

182. I have always known that the care and intimacy with which two people shop together, for example, is making love, and to hear this shared in this article and the comments that follow, is an incredibly beautiful confirmation of this.

183. Why isn’t ‘Developing Intimacy with Self’ a subject at school, what would our society look like if this was a precursor to ‘Sex Education’?

184. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body”… So often we put the ball in the other person’s court in saying that they are the ones that need to be more tender or more intimate, that making love is not possible till they are a certain way…yet true intimacy begins with ourselves first and our willingness to be tender and intimate with ourselves and then drop the guard with others. From here we can then find ourselves in a space where we can share that intimacy with another, and this then can develop into making love – under the sheets or walking down the street together holding hands…There is so much for us to explore, it is, one could say, never ending, the depths that we can go to, that we have access to, should we choose it.

185. This blog has been written in the quality of intimacy and surrender – and as I read it this time I felt how powerful it is when we let ourselves drop so tenderly into ourselves. It is infectious, inspiring, a holding invitation to surrender also. Having sex as opposed to making love when this tenderness and yumniness is our day the day connection with ourselves is absolutely alien, an abhorrent abuse to the preciousness we know we are and carry.

186. I would say almost everyone on this planet knows this feeling…it is powerful how you express it….”What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.” We look outside and are continually disappointed that we are not offered the love that we seek, understanding that it comes from within first, turns everything around.

187. It is deeply empowering to come to a place where you recognize that it is the protection that we create and build up to shield ourselves from the hurts that is in fact what is causing the suffering due to keeping us separate from another… for it is only then that you can choose to offer yourself another way to be that will bring you the love and connection that is possible.

188. beautiful sharing, Nicole. Intimacy is the key to knowing true love.

189. ‘Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.’ So beautiful and very true Nicole, making love is something that extends way beyond the bedroom and is a celebration of the deep love that has already been lived throughout the day.

190. Imagine all the books, videos and websites that are out there dedicated to having sex. Now consider that they were replaced by insights into honouring and loving yourself. When I stop and feel what you present Nicole, it’s not surprising to me that there has been an insatiable quest for ‘the secret’ to sex for all of human history. For who wouldn’t miss the love and tenderness that you can have with yourself?

191. Intimacy is the heart’s connection to the all and from this we encapsulate every movement made from our bodies. The beauty of our every movement can be an intimate, tender love moment and this then flows on to all others we encounter. How cool is that?

192. This is such a wonderful blog to read on Valentine’s Day, a day where most people expect or want someone else to make them feel loved. My whole body released tension when I read your words and I can feel that although it’s walking around feeling rigid and protected is something I’m used to it’s also something I can change by simply making a choice.

193. I think most of us know there is a difference between making love and sex but generally those in a relationship would consider they are doing the former. Universal Medicine has opened my eyes to the possibility that making love is a non stop thing, not just a moment confined to the bedroom. The way we pass each other in the house, the way we speak during the day, all add up to making love and the act itself can be part of the celebration of that love.

194. Universal Medicine has supported me to get to a whole new level of intimacy with myself and my partner. So yes – a touch or a gaze or the way we talk to each other can be so beautifully intimate, and then making love is a confirmation of this, rather than something we use to feel intimate. It is a totally different way of being together where each moment is not ever greater than the next, but at the same time our intimacy can deepen with each movement.

195. “What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.” This is so true. Learning to bring true love and intimacy to ourselves in our everyday can then be shared in making love with our partner.

196. Truly truly beautiful, thank you. I, for the first time realized and felt after the last sentence, that I never truly felt complete within myself and my day and before I made love in a physical way, hence it never truly was making love. It is the first time I can feel that without judgment, as your blog supports that very much. Just observation. I can feel how I indeed came from denying myself, my love and light and beauty and instead I looked for it outside of myself and from others to fix it up! ! WOW! I will ponder on this more further.

197. ‘What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.’ And there it is: all our unmet needs projected into the search for fulfillment through sex. For many women too, a lack of true connection and intimacy with our fathers also propels a similarly desperate seeking. We have a lot to learn about ourselves, and about our relationships with others.

198. In answer to the opening question, no, I’d never stopped to consider if there was a difference between making love and having sex. I could feel there was a difference between the starkness of sex and the warmth of making love, but never questioned whether I was actually actioning one or the other with the end result that making love dropped well and truly out of the equation. There’s a case for true sex education in schools, starting with the principles of self-love and self-worth.

     1. Absolutely, Victoria. It is inspiring to consider what our relationships will look like when we maintain, teach and honour intimacy and care for ourselves from a very young age.

199. Every choice and movement we make builds to the next so it also makes sense that the quality we do these in builds the quality of what we experience next.

200. “Making love is more than what happens between the sheets: it’s a way of living, a touch, a gaze, and a gesture in every movement in me, and in another.” This is not commonly thought or felt in society today. We are so indoctrinated with the visuals of instant gratification, sex sell, the porn industry, the music industry and more, which all fosters sex being the be all and end all, when making love and making it about more than what happens between the sheets is so much more loving, enriching and intimate than any sexual encounter could ever be.

201. The world is deeply missing intimacy. Look at the rise and rise of porn, and the rise and rise of dating sites that are used not so much for connection as they are for instant gratification. We crave connection, yet are not honest about the fact. But intimacy is not just physical, nor does it need to be experienced just with another. And the reason we do not realise this is because we are not delicate enough with ourselves to understand just how deeply sensitive, and deeply feeling we truly are. And so, subconsciously, we seek intimacy outside of us, and sometimes in ways that cause us problems and complications in other areas of our life.

     1. So true Adam. Whenever we rely on something outside of ourselves to prop outselves up we set ourselves up for complication, drama and disappointment. There is no love another can bring us that we don’t already have first within ourselves.

202. We cannot truly love another until we truly love ourselves. This needs to be repeated over and over until we live en masse, the truth of these words. The love we are is the love we share and thus the love we make (magnify) when it is expressed with all.

     1. Once again, true pearls from a Master of words and their correct use, used in a way to ignite the truth in another. Thank you Liane!

203. I’m not currently with a partner but what you share here Nicole is equally relevant to anyone we live with and anyone we spend time with. Those final moments of the day are very telling of how we have been the entire day. The connection – or lack of it – in simply expressing good night is the confirmation of how much I’ve shared myself with all who have come my way that day. Have I lived in celebration of my love, or have I shut myself down and put up a wall to others and to myself.
     And when we go to bed, be it on our own or with a partner, all we have lived is in that honest and vulnerable moment where we lie there, with our body replaying our quality back to us.
     Making love is a universal quality that we can choose to be in and express throughout our day, always.

204. This is amazing, it is in the quality we hold ourself that true making love exists. Holding ourself in the most loving way gives us no other possibility than to hold others in this same way.

205. This is an awesome blog for me to read as I am learning to deepen my level of intimacy, be more open and allow the true meaning of making love be part of my every day. Most of us crave intimacy and I have discovered what we miss the most is the intimacy with ourselves.

206. Love how this blog breaks the view on a term that we use with a general meaning that’s widely understood but falls short of the whole picture. It makes sense that we cannot truly give or receive love unless we have mastered both with and within ourselves first.

207. I love it so many opportunities for intimate moments were we can confirm the loveliness that we are.

208. The term ‘making love’ seems to be still owned somewhat by the bedroom. What you offer Nicole is an insight into seeing this term differently, a personal insight. What happens when you change the meaning of a word like love? You are able to dictate how we use it. Here is another insight into words and love, http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/truth-in-words/change-the-meaning-of-love-and-see-what-happens.html

209. From what you say Nicole I can see how developing intimacy and building a loving body is not something that we can switch on and off, it has to be part of a willingness to develop that quality of openness and deep care that can be felt by ourselves and others in our every move and every action. There is such a great reward in appreciating ourselves and being committed to being a body filled with love as a result of the care we take.

210. Something I have found that if I am not making love with myself then how can I possibly expect to truly make love with another whether it is physical or not. Ultimately for me making love is when 2 people who are cherishing and being love themselves come together whether passing by, talking or the physical love making act. Otherwise if we just say it is about sex then it negates this and is purely physical when we are soo much more than physical bodies.

211. Very inspiring to read your blog, thank you. One of the gems for me was “But when I make choices that are truly caring, loving and supportive of my body, I can feel my tenderness and delicateness again.” It’s so interesting isn’t it, that what we crave to feel most we can give to ourselves.

212. “Making love is more than what happens between the sheets: it’s a way of living, a touch, a gaze, and a gesture in every movement in me, and in another.” To come to this understanding turned my life upside down, or did it fact finally turn it up the right way? So how come we got it so wrong for such a long time? But as the saying goes, better late than never, and I for one am enjoying falling in love with myself after all this time.

213. Developing a love and intimacy with yourself can be a tricky task at times as you navigate through the times that you have been super hard on yourself, or hurt by others and have put up walls of protection, but as you let go of that, and let yourself in and others, it is most gorgeous.

214. The beauty is we can discover and learn the loving tender care of ourselves. When this suggestion was first made to me maybe ten years ago I cried. The tears really where about how far I had come from knowing what this actually would look like in my day and shocked that I didn’t really know how. But the more I am loving and tender, gentle and honouring the more I love how I feel and it’s the most amazing snow ball effect we can offer ourselves.

215. This is such a gorgeous and inspiring piece of writing Nicole. As I was reading it I felt the inspiration to deepen more and more the tenderness with me, the preciousness with me, and in so doing knowing so joyfully that I come to another full, without emotion need – and what an amazing quality to bring to an intimate relationship with a partner.

216. .’…I started to feel for myself an intimacy I already held within – but had never before felt or explored.’ Yes it is all there the moment we accept and are willing to go there, it is an interesting process to let go of hardness and judgement. Just explore with openness how tender and delicate we can be with ourselves and then with others. How we actually are with this tenderness and delicateness.

217. We really can’t love another, let along make love, if we are not in love with ourselves first. It can always look and feel like its making love, but 99.9% of the time it will still be very sexual and not in truth love making. This is a process for us all, learning to go deeper in that love for and with ourselves; only that will turn the dial on what it really means to connect in such a way.

218. This question is worth Gold – simply because it brings us right back to were it is truly about – love: ‘How could I truly love, make love to another, if I was not able to love and make love with myself first’..
     This question reveals the lack of love in all areas we might have looked for love and or asked love from.. But we can feel and truly see that it always come first from within and then to share.. Not the otherway around, which would be an easier thought, yet more complicated mind and way to life – as it does not work that way. It will not be a consistent true lived love.

219. I enjoyed your use of words and the way you have brought a greater clarity to the true meaning of words. The way in which you have shared about love and intimacy, has just jumped off the page for me.

220. Its a huge concept to adopt, how we are with ourselves determines everything that plays out in our lives.

221. Seeking the love we deny to give ourselves is a core reason to why we settle for emotional love instead of true love.

222. I didn’t realise how much of my life I try to please others. This is something new for me to feel. It can be as simple as speaking to someone for longer than I feel to. I didn’t realise how damaging this is to my body. It will be interesting to feel where else I do this. It may be holding back myself – but I’m still exploring what not holding back means, I know the words, but to actually feel it and live it – is a very different thing.

     1. Pleasing others is a real killer – I know how easy it has been for me to go into this mode thinking that is the best way to be but ultimately all that happens is you both suffer. Whilst we may often think the other person may not want to hear the truth deep down, at least for me, I do not want anything less. I also know deep down when I am not being loving and so to be called out for it is no surprise – something it does show though is how much the other person actually loves me – for if they did not they would not call it out. Plus pleasing comes with a real needy and clingy energy which does not feel nice when you actually take the time to feel it and not just look at the acts with your eyes.

        1. Well said James, this I am learning.

        2. Being needy actually repulses another – they may not realise but it actually puts people off being around you.

        3. It is amazing how much we can sense a needy person a mile away. It is like when we are needy we try to agree with everything being said etc.. in case we lose the person but actually what we are doing is making that a reality – we completely set ourselves up to lose the person we were trying to keep by being needy with!

223. I loved re-reading this blog as it is so true. Making love cannot be a switch we click on in the bedroom just like we cannot choose to be love with some people and not with others. What we do in one area of our life effects all other areas of our life. The same goes for making love. I know I have felt the vast difference between what it is like to have sex which, for me, stems from relief, desire and satisfaction to actually making love which is a deep connection with another and is literally out of this world – at least that has been my experience!

224. For a long time I thought I knew what making love was. Now I know that making love and having sex are poles apart. Making love brings the lived quality into a relationship, its something that can’t just be saved for the bedroom but needs to be lived consistently and then flows on with all we do.

     1. So true Christopher, love is a word that I continually have to update myself on. As I deepen my connection to my innermost the love that is becoming available to me just keeps growing.

225. Beautiful description of what making love is Nicole – a confirmation of the love we have lived.

226. I have come back to re read your article Nicole. I, personally am forever deepening intimacy in my life, with myself, house mates, family, work mates, friends. Essentially every aspect of my life is constantly calling for a deeper intimacy, honesty and truth. It is very revealing when we begin to feel intimacy as a choice in the quality in which we hold ourselves and others. It shows us just how little consistency we have lived with and where this needs more attention.

227. I love to consider that every day offers me new awareness, I can choose a fresh start everyday in how loving I am with me and others.

228. What a clear awareness and understanding…”What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself…” No one person can give to another any more than one can give themselves. Self love and self care certainly are foundational to the relationship we have with ourselves, and then, the relationships we have with others.

229. It makes so much sense that making love is something we first do with and for ourselves before we can make love with another.

230. Yes Nicole, thank you for sharing that.. Since when we are young we seem to have been taught what intimacy is and how it occurs in life, and so we experience it ourselves.. Often I heard people say and talk about having had expectations about this subject that at times were less then they would have wanted.. Craving or looking for something that was not totally in there.. I too have had recognized this for myself.. And found out that indeed , the reason why I felt like that was not because I wasnt enough – but I was simply missing the connection within me… Now it is the more I allow myself to connection to more I am myself and expressing naturally the love I am and the making of it.. So naturally I can express who I am and not hold back sharing the love I am with them. As making love is an expression that can be simply in handing a spoon to someone! And not just what happens in our beds. When I start to feel the truth of making love now I am inspired to connect even more. Incredible powerful we all are when we choose to e connect.

     1. I feel that what you have shared Danna, is the power of true alchemy.

231. How crazy is it that we spend a lifetime allowing ourselves to be shut down from who we truly are, denying ourselves the warmth and tenderness there is to be had for ourselves, and which we instead, so desperately seek from others. What if a shift away from being praised for what we can do and accomplish as we grow up were all that is necessary for things to change. What if more focus was brought to how lovely a child is just for being them, nurturing that loveliness of them as they are, their warmth, tenderness, preciousness, delicacy, innocence, and truth speaking (the part we want to shut down which leads to shutting everything of true value to be shut down). What if….

     1. I agree Jeanette that it is time for our focus to shift from what a child can do; run faster, jump higher etc, to “how lovely a child is for just being them”. After all they are such beautiful little beings who are filled with an innate wisdom, natural honesty and the absolute joy of life, here to remind us of what we may have lost somewhere along the way.

232. that we can actually bring warmth tenderness and gentleness into our own lives is for many an eye-opener… And that this actually have to take place before we can truly open up to others is a process of redefining and letting go of such entrenched paradigms, that it does need to be introduced as early as possible into our children’s lives.

233. When we come to the realisation that we create every hurt that happens to us, it is life changing.

234. When we develop self love it is easy to see that having sex is abusive to the body, and extremely dishonouring of ourselves, whereas making love encompasses more than just the physical act.

235. To explore the difference between making love and sex is an invitation to consider the quality and detail that lies behind so much of what we do. I understand more and more that everything is either making love or not, and in a world that simply yearns for the love we all know is possible, it is hard to make any other way of living make sense.

     1. There is always so much wisdom in your comments Matilda ❤

236. “the protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts: the hurt I felt of not being able to truly connect to another.” This I know and feel to my core and yet I still struggle to let go of those hurts. I am making those changes you speak of and are deeply inspired by your sharing of what supported you to evolve.

237. “How could I truly love, make love to another, if I was not able to love and make love with myself first?” I like blogs like this because making love – especially to yourself – is much more than what we are led to believe. It is way beyond sex or masturbation. It is about dropping the layers of protection and healing the hurts so we can feel the love on offer and the delicateness and tenderness that is there underneath the hardness that we choose to hold onto.

238. A truly beautiful blog Nicole. If we were to follow this oh so wise advice the world would be a hugely different place.

239. Making life about love is such a beautiful way to live. Living harmoniously and lovingly with a partner is living (making) love and then the physical act is simply a joyful extension and confirmation of that which we already live.

240. Often we spend a lot of time searching for love and intimacy from other people without realising that if we are not able to be loving and intimate with our own bodies then it is not possible to truly share this with another.

     1. Very true Anne and when we make choices that are more loving and intimate with ourselves the need for seeking it outside of ourselves disappears as we feel content with the intimate connection we have to ourselves.

241. …’I started to feel for myself an intimacy I already held within – but had never before felt or explored.’ These words speak of your sensitivity and deepening relationship with yourself Nicole. Just the fact that you express the presence of intimacy within, grounds this truth all of us to embrace.

242. What I have realised about making love through the physical act is that on a surface level there is absolutely no difference between it and sex. But what is experienced is so much more than what sex could ever be. I have found the more open I am during the day, with my partner, the world and myself, the more of me I can embrace and bring to the bedroom. It is definitely a celebration of true love and not just a physical arousal.

243. I very much relate to what you have shared and when you say, “What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself’. It is like we then demand it from others rather than actually giving it to ourselves. But how can we ask of another that which we 1st have not given to ourselves? It makes no sense!

244. To be intimate with myself is such a lovely way to be. To me, when I am intimate with myself, I live in full appreciation with who I truly am, a super delicate, tender and loving man. When I allow myself to live that my body comes alive and starts to emanate a vitality and joy that can be felt by all and is the key for developing that same intimacy in my relationship with other people.

245. Being intimate and loving ourselves is the key to being intimate and loving others, I love how you have highlighted this fact Nicole;
     “How could I truly love, make love to another, if I was not able to love and make love with myself first?”

246. ‘when I make choices that are truly caring, loving and supportive of my body, I can feel my tenderness and delicateness again.’ and how beautiful that is , my natural state of being.

247. When I let go of the picture of what intimacy is, I have discovered that truly nurturing and being intimate to myself can be just saying everything I feel without perfection, often messily, but still commiting not to hold back my feelings. This intimacy with myself may or may not meet with a reflection of intimacy with others instantly, but the intimacy with self allows me a deep solidity to keep moving in life, towards the direction I know is true for me.

248. Beautiful exploration of intimacy and making love, both expressions that go far beyond what happens between two people; it starts with us and how we live and are with ourselves and from there the ripple effect goes out and informs our every movement, if we so choose.

249. When I heard Serge Benhayon present that intimacy is just a much deeper understanding of someone it changed my whole perspective on what I thought intimacy was. I thought intimacy was physical touch but now I see that physical intimacy is just a later outplay of a much deeper and richer quality.

250. Being tender and gentle with ourselves is huge step towards, allowing love in an out and so allowing people in our lives, seeing them, appreciating them and enjoying love. There are moments when I feel so full of love and so open, that I feel so much and I am so open, I go wow, is this real…and yet it is the truth of how I feel. I have gotten used to protection and guard, but that is not real it is just what I said a protection and guard. I am learning that love is enough, lived within and expressed.

251. Intimacy deepens when we surrender to our knowing, listen attentively and act accordingly in obedience to the science on offer.

252. “How could I truly love, make love to another, if I was not able to love and make love with myself first?” – it starts with how we are with ourselves first…this I know to be true. The more I am loving with me, the more understanding and love I have for others, so there is nothing selfish about loving oneself, it is crucial to loving others.

253. This blog has been revealing to me how I have not always truly nurtured and honoured myself, and the feeling of lacking intimacy proves that. I love how Nicole has laid out the simple path to true intimacy and making love and I can see how through holding on to our hurts and focusing on judging ourselves and others we keep that protection and guard up that stops us from feeling that deep connection with ourselves, which is what making love is based upon.

254. Equally important is what we allow during intimate experiences with a partner- we know deep within if we are touched by someone with a truly loving touch. The feeling is exquisite.

255. Nicole in the absence of a life lived with love in each moment I grew up understanding making love to be between the sheets. What never occurred to me, or what i did not want to see, is how can someone “make love” if they are not first living love in each moment? And then if you are living love in each moment how is that not “making love” in each moment? There are different ways we express that Love but I feel that society has been sold very short by trying to keep “making love” separate to all that we do.

256. I have often considered that a trip to the supermarket together is one of the most confirming and love making experiences ever. To want to share the intimate and caring activity of choosing food and household goods together is very beautiful.

257. The difference of making love or having sex is the same as having a 8 course meal that is prepared with everything that is editable prepared to be shared equally and is meant to be an enjoyable 5 hour dining experience where the desert is just the end of a memorable journey shared with someone we love or skip it meal, eat the desert and go.

258. It has taken me years and years to finally understand the word ‘intimacy’. I am so glad I have started – better late than ever!

259. Making love begins with connecting with ourselves, and from this knowing and feeling our essential beingness comes the ability to choose to nurture, care and be in touch in every moment, energetically and physically, with ourselves. As you say Nicole, it s a long unfolding, but beautiful and worthwhile. It leaves no room for the purely self pleasuring satisfaction of the urge to be stimulated through sex. The natural sexual parts of ourselves come into play, and I mean playfully and lightly, when we come from the true love and intimacy that you describe so simply and clearly. There is an enormous difference between the two; sex for sex’s sake conceals and suppresses intimacy, coming from the inner connection deepens it.

260. “Making changes and different choices in my life was very revealing, and at times still is. But when I make choices that are truly caring, loving and supportive of my body, I can feel my tenderness and delicateness again. I begin to feel like me, then I know that the choices I am making are true, and it is the only way to live.”
     Becoming re-familiarised with our naturally tender, delicate quality is a marker from which we can inspire our next steps.

261. I used to think making love was something done in the bedroom but now see it as far more than that. Making love is being love in full with another, no holding back, no guard or protection – we are all from love and so when we let ourselves simply be the love we are we then naturally share this with others and for me this is making love. With the physical love making this is something that you can share with you partner but is something that is an end result and confirmation of the love you share and have built together rather than a climax or a relief or anything else. There are soo many ideas and pictures about making love and having sex that these need to be looked at and really seen for what they are – otherwise we all miss out on true love making both in everyday life and in bed!

262. What is so beautifully described here is the difference between our pictures and images of what love is and involves rather than love as a quality that can be inherent within all our movements.

263. ‘Making Love’ is when I look into my partners eyes and we share this moment of deep connection and confirmation. We look behind the scenes and see the Universe in each other and in our connection. These moments I can also have with others but for it started with one person I choose to trust. One person who I love dearly. The expressing and appreciating of this did build a foundation on which I did go on and opened up for more people. And I see that it is a development in trust. Trust in me, that I do and will see the love that we are and connect to this love, support it in its expression, instead of picking the pieces of not-love-expression. Trust that I will be aware of the beauty and talents of others, trust that I will support them in shining out their light. The knowing that I will let go of hurts that may well come up and heal so I can open up again and not be closed for connection. So I agree from my heart, it is the intimacy we have with ourselves that we can bring into our relationships and so – into the world.

264. Its great when we realise that the intimacy we may long for with another actually is a symptom of missing that intimacy and relationship with ourselves first… because this then is the beginning of developing self care and self love which then changes the way we go about everything we do.

265. The quality we choose to love in- that is exactly it- what quality is it we decide to have for ourselves?

266. This is very beautifully shared Nicole, I can feel in your words the realness of this. As a woman, for the first time in my life I too have been developing an intimate relationship with me and getting to know I am complete as I am. It’s the loving relationship that I continue to deepen in me, that changes everything, including my relationship with sex. Sex has become about connection and love just as I hold that within me, for me, I too share that with another.

267. The protection we invest in gets harder and more brittle as we walk along with it. It holds us in an adversarial stance towards the world, towards others – it prevents us from breathing and feeling life in all of its glory – it stops us from feeling and breathing ourselves back to who we truly are. Making love is not an action, nor a term misused to cover up sexual relief – it is a way of living – a truth we all know yet have so easily covered up.

268. I have had so much shame, confusion and uncertainty around sex. I had heard that it was a beautiful thing but never felt that until I heard and let myself feel the difference between sex and making love. The difference is huge and yet we pretend we don’t feel or know it. Sex is a disconnected physical act. Making love is a confirmation of the love that we are – an expression of the preciousness of love.

269. “How could I truly love, make love to another, if I was not able to love and make love with myself first? Being intimate, living a quality, warmth and tenderness in another’s touch, a touch that I could so easily give to myself but instead chose to deny.” I never truly understood what intimacy and making love with self was until I started to connecting to my love within. Through this I began to understand intimacy and I allowed my self to feel and be in this way, it took a while but I began to feel the tenderness and gentleness.

270. Making love, being love, creating a body of love that we live every day … everything we do is in hardness and function unless we make it about Love.

271. Nicole I love this blog, it is only now, after many years I am relating how I do not cherish, love and adore myself, yes there are moments, but the consistency is not there. I am always giving myself a hard time, and thus transferring it onto other people. This has been exposed in a relationship, it’s almost like I live by rules instead of listening to myself.

272. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body” completely agree, I too had to build that intimacy with myself with true care before I could even consider it with anyone else. I have to consciously make choices to support the deeper level of care for my body to feel my delicateness and tenderness.

273. So true, I would not allow myself to feel the tenderness in another, until I could feel it within myself…”To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body:” I know I was so in my head that my body was dragged along, I was almost numb to what was really felt, and now there is until with head, body and heart, when the head try to wander off, the body lets it know and they are reunited. And with this unity has come an awareness of tenderness, gentleness, and what it means to receive love and live love.

274. I have definitely found in my life experiences so far that we cannot be intimate with others or go to a level of intimacy, if we have not developed a level of intimacy with ourselves. I have realised this from having in the past lived a life where I was looking for that intimacy from others outside of myself. This did not ever end well, it created expectation, angst and imposition on others, leaving myself always feeling like i wasn’t enough also. This has now changed for the good, knowing it is something that I must feel for myself, not looking to others for it.

275. Nicole I love your description of making love in this blog – ‘It is feeling the tenderness and gentleness in a touch, a gaze that holds me lovingly, a warmth that can keep me warm and safe in the coldest of nights’ and it has made me ponder on just how much I actually do this with everyone I meet in my day, not just my wife and kids.

276. Whenever there is a need to find intimacy from the outside, it is a call within me to deepen the intimacy with myself, to deepen the love with myself. When I deepen my own love with me, it becomes more clear where I still hold protection with others and I can be more honest about it. What this is showing me is, if I truly build a loving relationship with myself, this takes away the need and attachment of looking for this outside of myself, in effect, this breaks down the concept that relationships being valid only when we have a partner, it also exposes that in love there is zero need and attachment. In fact, in my experience people do not even have to see each other or physically meet to still feel held within each other’s love.

277. I recall Serge Benhayon sharing recently something along the lines of you don’t need to physically touch to feel held. If love is present, it will be felt by the other. It emanates out from us, and embraces.

278. Intimacy is about a quality we bring to ourselves and everyone else. Our first task is to develop that quality.

279. As we develop a tenderness with ourselves we realise that our body has been waiting for this connection for aeons – there is a deep aching that we have allowed to come between us and letting go of our hurts. As we slowly allow ourselves to open up and make space to spend time with ourselves in intimacy we begin to feel the deep healing that is taking place, and allowing us to unfold like a beautiful delicate flower in the spring emerging from a long cold winter.

280. Letting go of our protection reveals great preciousness, tenderness and fragility and therein begins an intimate relationship with ourselves and all others.

281. I agree that when we start to really value and claim the tenderness within our own bodies we can then can start to honour and appreciate the tenderness within another. Nothing feels more exquisite to me than being held in tenderness and deep love. There is no drug on earth that can create that feeling deep within, and the fact that we recognise it instantly shows we know we are made of it.

282. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body:” So true. In depening to be intimate with myself I only can feel what is offered to me from others. This is very enriching.

283. Well said Nicole, what a great sharing. After all if we are not being loving with ourselves and deeply cherishing ourselves how can we love and deeply cherish anybody else.

284. It is the ultimate irony that we build of protection to prevent being hurt yet this is what creates hurt in our bodies. We are designed to be open, at ease and fragile with ourselves, and others. Any hardening away from that is like a kink in a hose, building up pressure inside. No wonder heart disease is such a worldwide health problem.

285. It feels like a deliberate re-interpretation and watering down of the words ‘making love’, that they are used interchangeably with ‘having sex’. This is similar to the use of the words spirit and soul as interchangeable. By not knowing and recognizing the vast difference between them, we lose the essence and marker of what the true version can be and don’t have to be responsible for choosing the lesser/false version.

286. Seriously, I keep accidentally coming to this blog, this will be four times in the last few days. The first few times I thought that it was just a mistake, I have already read this article but by the forth time I realised that it wasn’t a coincidence and that usually these things mean something. So I considered just the title of this blog and in that felt this issue I have with true intimacy with myself. When I was in my twenties this played out in my relationships with men, I never enjoyed having sex or being intimate with my boyfriends. The only advice I was given was to masturbate and get to know my body, this did not help, in fact it further disconnected me. Since being apart of Universal Medicine I am amazed that nobody is presenting about true self care and intimacy like Serge Benhayon does, its about loving yourself as much as you want to be loved by another.
     So simply and life changing bout not often lived or presented by a body that lives it.

287. ‘To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body: how I was with myself, how I moved, spoke and lived moment to moment, feeling the tenderness in my own body, and then in and from another’s body’. What you have shared here Nicole is so special and I feel how this is so simple, which makes it possible for everyone. My arm was tenderly and delicately touched by Serge Benhayon at a special function and I will never forget what that felt like in my body.

288. It is huge understanding this pattern of looking to others for loving contact and intimacy, being hurt when it doesn’t turn out as we expect, building layers of protection which stops us experiencing this even when it is openly offered. It is a catch 22. It is very empowering to know that although society promotes and encourage this looking to others and blaming them for everything we crave, the answer lies within us! The connection, honouring and intimacy we crave is one that starts when we start living that quality with ourself in our own lives.

289. The very protection we create with the notion that it protects us from being hurt, is such a falsity… when it is the very thing that causes our pain. This is so true Nicole, and exposes the enormous lie we have created and swallowed that love is something that occurs between 2 people rather than something I hold for myself.
     It also exposes the fact that it suits us very well to subscribe to ideals and beliefs, because only through this subscription do we set up the scenario that will seemingly cause us to be hurt. Such a game we are playing… set up the hurts, then hold onto them for a lifetime thereby justifying why we can never truly love another. Collective craziness is all I can end up saying to that.

290. I am very inspired by this article, it makes you consider how much love you are giving another if you struggle to give it to yourself.

291. I love the point you make about needing to be that tender and gentle with yourself to be open to feeling it from another. We have so much protection around that if another was that tender and gentle with us we might not appreciate it. We have to be the change we want to see, feel and experience.

292. Absolutely gorgeous Nicole,
     I loved reading every word and something I wished that was taught from a young age what Intimacy means in it’s true sense.
     Just beautiful – Thank you.

293. Making love with another is simply the activity of a day lived in love. I’d heard Serge Benhayon talk of this a few years ago but not being in a partnered relationship at the time I couldn’t fully grasp it, although could feel the truth in what he was sharing. Firstly this began with myself as I deepened the way I was choosing to be with me, loving my moves, honouring me, being intimate with myself and then sharing that with those around me, lightly touching another’s shoulder, sharing honestly, looking into someone’s eyes, just feeling me as I stood with someone and feeling our connection, absolute intimacy. I then got to feel this in the activity, one on one. Totally different from the drive and doing of having sex, which I got to realise was mostly all about the outcome, a relief. Writing this, that was how I was living my life before. So whether we choose sex of making love, it’s a reflection of how we are choosing to live and be. Making love was divine being in each moment and gorgeous but not really different from what I was already experiencing with me, when in connection with myself, doing the washing up, moving or connecting with another.

294. “I became more aware that I was missing the intimacy and connection I so desperately longed for from another, within myself.” Reading your blog I remember that I always felt so empty when searching for love in the sexual act and the line above totally explains why. I missed the intimacy with myself, that is the being deeply loving and caring in how I am with myself. Without that nothing feels complete or full.

295. For me intimacy is looking in someone’s eyes knowing we are equal and one and/or feeling a deep warmth and tenderness in being with myself . When I feel intimate with myself, this feels like I appreciate myself and everything that I am. It is a nurturing expression which I love to be with on a consistant level.

296. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body” This is so beautiful to read as my body fully understands what is being presented in this line and can resonate in full with its meaning because it comes from the same livingness in which we are all connected as one.

297. Yes Nicole, what if there is a big gap between the different ways you can say “I love you”, what if there is a huge change in the alternate ways you can open a door? What about the way you get in and drive your car? What if this difference is there in everything we do in life, like another language we never realised we could speak – and yet it holds the keys to our heart? Your words inspire me to see that this difference is huge. The Love we all seek actually lives in every moment of my life, that I choose to embrace with awareness and an open heart.

298. Beautiful Nicole What a way to live!

299. ‘I could feel the protection I had built up over the years to avoid getting hurt no longer allowed me to feel the depth of tenderness in myself, nor in another.’ This rings true for me as a man in relation to just how I had constructed so many elements of my life in order to prevent me from expressing my sensitivity and tenderness to avoid a feeling of vulnerability only hurting myself more than anything I was trying to be protected from.

300. I find that having sex has an energy of its own that takes over. It’s a forceful energy that has a need and a want. It’s easy to disregard the actual person by allowing the sex to be the most important thing. I find that the sexual energy reduces when I connect to the whole person and meet them for who they are. In this there is space for love.

301. It is a very beautiful thing, to learn to be intimate with oneself. It enables us to build a much deeper connection with ourselves and in turn we then can feel what is true for us and what is not, so it becomes very clear when an expressed behaviour does not come from true love, and equally very simple to say no to it.

302. This is such a good point, Nicole – “the protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts: the hurt I felt of not being able to truly connect to another.” Once we realise that what hurts is not being truly connected with ourselves and another, we can let go of the protection and allow our bodies to surrender to the love that was always there.

303. Dropping the guard and letting people in has always been a bit of a challenge for me, and I asked myself ‘how do I do that?!’, sound ridiculous now that I have come to more of an understanding that letting people in is only a matter of letting go of my own protection and allowing myself to feel my tenderness and vulnerability, and of course, dealing with my hurts on an ongoing basis and letting go of what does not belong in my body anymore. For me, knowing the difference being sex and making love is ground breaking stuff, and now I know I don’t have to wait for a relationship to find the love that I crave, I can have an intimate relationship with myself right now without the need for sex with another, by making love 24/7 with my movements, my gestures, my honesty and caring for myself at a ever deepening level.

304. ‘Making Love’ is a core directive within and something that as children we naturally do. We are all born with an innate tenderness and when this is honoured within us it is such an automatic expression. When we respect and support our children to be tender, open and honest, their ability to make love manifest is awesome and something we as adults need to be constantly reminded of, so that we too can re-claim our inherent ability to make love an effortless and natural part of everyday life.

305. Being needy in a relationship and looking for another to love and support you leaves you feeling empty. There’s a vast difference when you are able to joyfully snuggle up in bed with yourself and want to be with yourself. Not in a way of shutting people out, as many can do this too, use being single to avoid letting people in, but if you love you, and can’t wait to come home and snuggle up with yourself, to make yummy food, enjoy being with you in every moment, then that will change your relationships with everyone, for you are not looking for anyone be it work, family, partners or friends to bring you anything because you are full of yourself. And in that there is no need so it allows the other, the relationship, the space to be and feel for themselves, with no pressure or need. Now that is love to me.

306. ‘I could feel the protection I had built up over the years to avoid getting hurt no longer allowed me to feel the depth of tenderness in myself, nor in another.’ We are so brought up to be tough, that no-one inspires us to stay in touch with our natural, delicate tenderness, and eventually we forget it is there. How beautiful, then, to know that reconnecting to it is simply a breath away, and to know that it is there in all of us equally, men and women.

307. Perhaps we can also state that making love is saying ‘no’ to what is not love in another’s behaviour or expression. Therefore the most loving thing could be choosing to not be in a relationship where sex comes before love. It is absolutely no ones duty to feel obliged to have sex and note, this is a man talking!

308. You’ve nailed it on the head Nicole. We’ve been deluded – or delusional, we could say… to ‘think’ we need or ‘crave’ another to fill a void that exists within ourselves. I’ve been there, fully…
     Yet enter the richness of our own hearts and be willing to heal all that which has hurt us in life, and we heal this need and craving. It can be confrontational at times, to truly see all that we’ve played out in our relationships, but deeply worth it, for in the richness that is there to reconnect to, and then, share with another – without the constraint of needing them to confirm that which we already are – the connection becomes a pure celebration.
     And yes, this extends absolutely into our intimate relations… Today, I see ‘sex’ as purely about filling an emotional need. ‘Making love’ – is the union and deep joy of expressed unity between two who are dedicated to their own healing, and living the richness of who they are, without reservation. And, it is amazing.

309. And how glorious it is, when we live such love in relationship with ourselves, and are able to share this with another – without need or condition. The experience of living this is absolutely exquisite.

310. In living in this way, we have already made love, well before making love, and so there is no beginning, nor end.

311. “Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.” – this is gorgeous Nicole.

312. I love this Nicole, and it reflects my developing understanding of intimacy. I realise the biggest barrier to me being intimate with others is my relationship with myself. Therefore, being able to be intimate with others, starts with developing a truly intimate relationship with myself. I feel like I have to get to know myself all over again, and I might have to take myself on a first date!

313. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body.” I too have noticed a real depth of intimacy from my own touch and it is from this surrender to what has been there always a whole new level of awareness and love has opened up for myself and everyone around me too. I love how exploring our movements can recalibrate our souls and open us up to greater expansion and inspiration on tap. The beauty of our own intimacy and movement in totality.

314. This is such a gorgeous comment. Wow, i feel appreciation for myself that i hadn’t before, in that recently i shared with a work colleague how I was feeling about work. It opened the door to not only clearer, more personable and personal communication but there is definitely more openness and caring and respect shown towards each other in terms of sharing physical space, use of words, humor and attitude that wasn’t there before i opened up and said simply what i felt.

315. ‘Busy keeping everyone at a distance, I became more aware that I was missing the intimacy and connection I so desperately longed for from another, within myself.’ This is such a reciprocal science – what we do another we do to ourselves and what we do to ourselves we do to everyone else.

316. “That the way you live, the quality you choose to live in and from, govern whether you have sex or make love?”. What I get from reading this is a bit comical in a way…..I had a picture of 2 people coming together to have sex/make love and before they get into bed they are super busy, doing this that and whatever, in their heads, rushing around and then they get into bed, look at each other and go OK…here we are…let’s get it on/ or lets start the intimacy now.

     That it is somehow like a flick gets switched. But what you are sharing with us all is that there is more to that….that the moments leading up the the bedroom are equally as important and set the quality of what ‘action’ happens in the bedroom. Fascinating stuff to think about it.

317. ‘…I started to feel for myself an intimacy I already held within – but had never before felt or explored.’ I teared up when I read this line Nicole. To discover the preciousness of ourselves and our ability to love and be intimate with ourselves is life changing and indeed would solve every relationship problem including that of inter racial and inter country relation. We are the answer that we look for on all those levels, outside of ourselves. Thank you for this ‘gold’ of an article on making love and intimacy…

318. ‘What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.’

     Though I have been honest enough to admit this to myself intellectually I had not fully felt this in my body. Recently I’ve felt the very real possibility of having a relationship with myself that’s more than an I should be having a relationship with myself but not knowing where to even start – so inevitably defaulting to intimacy substitutes like food or TV. It’s started with giving myself space to be, observing if judgement comes up and knowing I don’t have to go along with it; connection with my body through simple movements; knowing the pipe dreams of someone doing my job of loving me is an energetic impossibility; and letting go of once core beliefs that loving me could never be as good as being loved by another. As I accept my responsibility of loving me I can see life can be beautifully simple, joyful and harmonious.

319. Just taking a moment to consider that this might be a possibility, that there might be more to making love than I had experienced before has given me an opportunity to develop a loving relationship with myself and others that I had not realised was possible. I hope your blog inspires others to consider the possibility there might be more to living love with ourselves and others than we have experienced to date.

320. Coming back to this beautiful blog makes me ponder on why I choose to be both intimate with myself and not. It’s so lovely to be intimate with myself, as if I’m caressing myself constantly energetically, yet I’m disconnecting from being intimate as well. There’s resistance to really feel what is the deeper reason. I can feel blame, hardness and also an identification with whatever I feel, whether that being the true me or any emotion. I’ve not taking responsibility to the level that I cut the emotions right away when they enter or try to enter. There’s still indulgence in emotions. Allthough lately I’ve become much more honest and see the identification. There’s a lack of trust underneath, as if I’m not safe enough. This also has created the feeling of ‘having to do it on my own’. A belief that I’ve tried to prove to myself pretty much all my life, yet I’m blown away with the support on offer. It is really me choosing, nobody and no one else.

321. There is a sense of deep preciousness when reading “ a touch that I could so easily give to myself . . .”. This is so simple and as many are discovering absolutely essential for living everyday with joy.

322. Intimacy is developed between two people when we let our guards down and open up to be vulnerable. First of all we must allow this with ourselves before it is possible to have this with another.

323. Being and reflecting love is our most natural way of being. It is therefore natural to be intimate and loving in all of our actions, whether that be with an intimate partner or in any activity. What then stands out is how far we have stepped away from this as a society. We see the extremes of this through domestic violence, for example. And then there is the less extreme, but equally damaging reflection we get when someone speaks harshly or with a tone that puts someone down. We all know what is and isn’t loving immediately.

324. I too am feeling the intimacy of being truly with myself more, being more tender and living in a way that allows my heart to be open. I thought I was open and loving before but it is obvious to me now that I spent much of my time being speedy and protected and not feeling my self or my body so I was unable to connect deeply.

     Now I often find that I feel “in love” with people who I speak with and in truth I know I have always been Inside a great one Love with them, I am just more aware of it now and its so beautiful.

     I enjoy the part in old movies where they refer to the ‘feeling’ between two people as “making love” when they may not have even held hands or kissed! When did we lose touch with this meaning of “making love”?

     How have we allowed ourselves to get so far away from the true meaning, feeling and lived loving ways that we can confuse sex with love making? How far away are we from a true understanding and a truly loving life that many of us have not even experienced the true depth of making love at all?

325. One opposite of protection is transparency – to let the other see all of you, including all your glory.

     1. There’s no greater protection than being totally unprotected.

326. Bravo Ariana. I am just learning to be open and honest and not keeping things to myself. I figure that if I am as honest as I can be with others, they can take it or leave it, but at least I have expressed my truth, and as long as I keep on working with the intimate relationship with myself, others will begin to feel it and my relationships will deepen. ‘Intimacy feels like it breathes the air of truth…’ love it.

327. If that’s what making love truly is Nicole, I’m going to start dating myself right now! And why not, I have only just gained an understanding of what it is to have an intimate relationship with myself, and that means being honest, open, gentle and caring towards myself, and then and only then, can I pass this preciousness towards myself and cherish others in the same way.

328. Recently in a relationship I had with another there seemed to be a lack of connection and therefore intimacy. We had not seen each other for a certain period of time. I was very openly appreciative of seeing them after not seeing them for some time and while I had not seen them I appreciated the relationship we had already established. This person was not feeling the same and was shut off to me for whatever reason. So I allowed them some space, and while the space was not joined by them after a day or two I expressed honestly how I felt. Immediately everything changed. Intimacy was back. There was again an awkwardness of just how open you can be with any other. Its love and something I cherish in all and as Nicole says that comes from your openness with how you feel first.

     1. I have learnt that often anxiousness and reactions can come up in people and that if I openly express how I am feeling this breaks down the barriers and allows us to go deeper with not only our relationships with ourselves, but our relationship with each other. So I am totally with you on this one Rik, opening up to another with honesty without holding back, without the fear of being judged or ridiculed, opens up the flow of intimacy and is a way to deepen relationships and evolve. Of course, there is always a chance that someone can walk away from love and that is their choice, but at least you have given them the opportunity.

329. The more I drop my guard, appreciate myself, deepen my expression and nurture, the more I can allow another in and deepen in my expression of love.

330. It is the greatest gift to give to yourself to feel and continually explore the intimacy you hold within and just how tender and delicate you actually are. Offer your self the space to rediscover who you are for it is you – it is a moment to moment way to live not a single chosen moment.

331. I am discovering that intimacy is a forever deepening process, the more we allow ourselves to surrender to the depth of Love that we are and to allow our true expression.

332. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body” I agree, intimacy commences with self first by the simple ways we treat and connect with our bodies.

333. The concept of being intimate with myself was completely foreign, until I came across Universal Medicine and learned how being tender and loving with myself also reflected out to others around me. Discussing intimacy with others has shown me that so many believe – as I did – that you can only be intimate in a sexual relationship. This is so not true.

334. Nicole, this really makes sense, ‘I realised during these healings that I had to begin to be tender and gentle with myself, drop the guard and let people in, if I was to truly feel intimate with myself, let alone anyone else.’ It feels so true that if we are not intimate and loving with ourselves then we can not be this way with another, it all starts with our relationship with ourselves.

335. Such a beautiful blog and sharing Nicole building a relationship with love with ourselves first is reflected in every movement and way we are and this is shared with everyone. A brilliant reminder of the love we are and the real truth about making love being in the every moment.

336. ‘Have you ever stopped to consider if there is a difference between having sex and making love? That the way you live, the quality you choose to live in and from, govern whether you have sex or make love?’ – These two questions alone opens up for a discussion that we don’t hear in our society. Thanks Nicole, for starting the discussion.

337. Making love doesn’t have to be just between a couple, it can occur between any two people at any point in time. It is an energy that is felt when both people being love, beholding each other in this love and allowing the love to grow and expand between the two and then also to others. No sex required.

338. Nicole there are so many pictures of what Intimacy and Making Love are all about, from candles in the bedroom to romantic music yet what I’ve come to understand and what you share is that all of these are not actually what intimacy is really about, as without first building a deep and true connection with oneself how can we have intimacy with another.

     1. A deep and true connection with ourselves leads to us being very transparent to others. Once we see ourselves in great detail, it also becomes available to others.

339. I can see more and more the importance of loving and caring for myself as when I don’t the love is just not there for anyone else.

340. “…to be tender and gentle with myself, drop the guard and let people in…” This is such a focus of mine as I have felt and therefore absolutely know that my tenderness is a direct invitation to others.

341. This is a beautiful re-claiming of what the phrase ” making Love” really means. It begins with our inner relationship with our true delicacy and beauty, qualities that are not dependant on what we do or achieve. It then unfolds into our movements, thoughts and interaction and then is finally celebrated physically with our spouses or partners – not the other way round. Making Love manifest in this world is our inherent purpose.

342. How can we ask someone to fill something within us, when we have forgotten what it is in ourselves? It becomes a thirst that will never be quenched.

343. I used to yearn for the tender touch from my partner, and yet I wasn’t giving that same tenderness to myself. As I’ve deepened my relationship with myself, my touch and movements are so much more tender and delicate, and there is no yearning for that from another but a welcome and an openness when it does come.

344. Our natural way is to be making love with everyone constantly, how far then, from our natural way have we all chosen to get, that we are only just beginning to have conversations about making love as opposed to having sex?

     1. I agree Amina and the beautiful thing is that deep down we all know that our natural way is to be making love with life constantly, which means that we don’t have to sell anything to anyone but simply remind them of what they already know.

345. Instead of wanting which comes from emptiness – I can choose to give (to myself) which comes from fullness. This explains how different I feel with either one or the other option.

346. We seem to think of intimacy as an act that you do, that maybe you could get skilled in, and learn the best positions or things to do. But from what I can see and what you share here Nicole, intimacy is not that but a space where you drop it all, the guards, the agendas, the beliefs and just be with simplicity. Writing this I can see how we can all live this way every moment not just in bed or with a partner we hug.

347. ‘when I make choices that are truly caring, loving and supportive of my body, I can feel my tenderness and delicateness again.’ It is so lovely to realise that it is all there, just waiting for us to feel it.

348. “when I make choices that are truly caring, loving and supportive of my body, I can feel my tenderness and delicateness again.”…amen to that sister. After so many years of living hard to start to feel my tenderness and delicateness – that exists within us all – is one of the most exquisite things on earth.

349. The openness and harmony felt from these words just melt my whole body when I read them, “Making love allows me to be me”

350. When we go into a form of protection to stop ourselves from getting hurt, then we automatically cut out on feeling our own fragility and tenderness. This is a disconnection from ourselves and hence how can we truly be loving in any way if we are not connected to our own heart and warmth. And so to make love, to share love with another, to be with another, we first need to be there for ourselves, with ourselves and with warmth, care and tenderness.

351. Another reminder of the importance of being with oneself first, before being with another.
     As a society we are never asked to stop and reflect on just how we are with ourselves in the day. This is all very very natural, yet unfortunately not normal. The more we share our experiences of what it means to live in a quality that supports us and then others, the more people get an opportunity to see that it’s available to all.

352. Being tender with oneself after years of really being pretty hard on oneself takes a while to instill as a constant and I have not accomplished this yet but when I do allow this tenderness in, with, and for myself it feels truly awesome.

353. Thank you Nicole for sharing your experience and wisdom with us. Every time I re read your sharing there is something to learn about loving myself and others, that I am grateful for.

354. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body…” It seems we spend as much time as possible ignoring our bodies and disconnecting from them, so to truly reconnect is a self made gift that when shared with another is truly beautiful.

355. Being intimate with ourselves is like a dance with love, where every movement is purpose-full and full of joy and every cell in our body is singing.

356. Gorgeous and so confirming! As silly as it may sound, I have been pondering on whether intimacy is just lived with another. It somehow didn’t make sense that it has to be shared, and of course it doesn’t. Everything starts within, if we’re not love, if we’re not intimate, if we’re not honest with ourselves, how can we be these with other people?

357. We are so driven by ideals and beliefs within society to seek outside of us for everything we ever need and or want… which is so polar opposite to the truth we so desperately seek – that everything we could ever want or need is within us, waiting for us to reconnect to – our innate wisdom, our essence and our inner heart, it is all there within.

358. Making love as a way of living rather than what goes on under the sheets means that is not just about what goes on in bed. Its about how we are with each other all the time, how we speak and how we interact with each other when we are doing the dishes, cooking, cleaning and even when we are at work. The other part that I really really love, is that we can be making love with everyone and never get under the sheets with them! There doesn’t have to be any thing sexual to it, and we all benefit from it.

359. Reading your piece today is great timing Nicole, as I’ve been seeing again that each moment counts and there is no off switch, and so your experience with making love and sex makes sense. We cannot simply turn it on if we have not been living a loving quality with ourselves and by extension with others, something I am still in the process of learning and living – we are love and we always have a choice to live that love or not.

360. I have found the same Nicole – that I had been expecting true love from another when I was not cherishing and adoring myself first and that by making simple shifts on the ‘loving myself home front’ that the love coming back towards me from others magnified. I also get the sense that there are never ending depths to self-love and therefore unimagined levels of love yet to be received which is a very inspiring thought …

361. Every movement we make reflects how loving and intimate we are being with ourselves and therefore everyone we connect with. Making love is therefore simply a movement, an expression and sharing of what we are already living.

362. ‘Making love is more than what happens between the sheets: it’s a way of living, a touch, a gaze, and a gesture in every movement in me, and in another.’ – It opens up for a whole new reality when we begin to understand that if we are choosing to re-connect to the love that we naturally are, everything we do from there on is ‘making love’ – whether it is walking, talking, cooking, sleeping, anything. We are always making love, OR NOT – it’s a constant choice.

363. ‘Making love is more than what happens between the sheets: it’s a way of living, a touch, a gaze, and a gesture in every movement in me, and in another.’ Absolutely Nicole , making Love is in everything we do.

364. ‘I could feel the protection I had built up over the years to avoid getting hurt no longer allowed me to feel the depth of tenderness in myself, nor in another.’ – Sadly the protection that we are building to avoid getting hurt, only serves to keep everyone out, including ourselves.

365. When one is intimate with themselves, then it is possible to be intimate with others.

366. True love and intimacy has nothing to do with sex, it is about moving openly and unprotected.

367. ‘I begin to feel like me, then I know that the choices I am making are true, and it is the only way to live.’ – Isn´t it amazing how simple it is? Making choices that confirm who you are and you feel like being you – a simple formula for life.

368. “Have you ever stopped to consider if there is a difference between having sex and making love? That the way you live, the quality you choose to live in and from, govern whether you have sex or make love?”

     A great, GREAT question. A question that should be studied, pondered deeply on and discussed from a very young age by people who’ve chosen love and intimacy for themselves. Truly sexy and true intimacy are deeply gorgeous, delicate and honouring. It is indeed a joy to be with ourselves in this way. Imagine sharing this intimacy physically the whole day, including in bed and the art of physical making love. Such a blessing.

369. I love it Nicole how you make making love about allowing you to be you. There is no holding back or trying to be something that we are not, just a moment by moment opportunity to express all that we are and let others in.

370. I found that to bring the honoring I live every moment with myself into a relationship and into a meeting is really what we call love in practice. The love I express with every movement in my day is establishing and guaranteeing the quality I can than expand in a true encounter with another.

371. By developing intimacy with myself, I have come to feel that intimacy is a door way that allows me out and others in. It is only in the last couple of years that I have come to feel that because I lacked intimacy with myself, then there was no true sharing of myself with another because I hadn’t shared me with me first.

372. Moments of intimate connection can occur in seemingly unlikely places and when they do layers of protection are broken down and we get to see and feel the warmth and openness of another.

373. I’ve experienced that when I build love for myself in my own life my body becomes more gentle, I am able to be more tender, and my heart is more open. This is what I need to take with me into my day and with others or an intimate partner. I know in the past that when I have had sex without this tenderness my body changes and becomes hard or guarded, my heart closes and I feel separate from others. There is a stark difference.

374. “How could I truly love, make love to another, if I was not able to love and make love with myself first?” Before I met Serge Benhayon, this was not something that I had even considered. Yes, I understood that I had to take care of myself to a degree in order to take proper care of others, but to truly love myself was a whole different ball game. This is a level of care that goes way beyond anything I had experienced or put into practice, but having begun to really appreciate what it meant, and actually putting it into practice I am beginning to see and feel what an enormous difference it makes not only to myself but to all those I come into contact with.

375. I am realising that I can so easily allow myself to ‘drop’, particularly around family, which is very revealing. We often bear the deepest hurts from those closest to us, hence our trepidation and avoidance of ‘rocking the boat’ too much. However, this is just avoidance and not taking responsibility, holding myself in the love that I am and being honest allows for growth and change for myself and all those around me.

376. Thank you so much for writing your amazing blog, Nicole, and inspiring me to allow the space to surrender and take my level of intimacy with myself to a whole new level. Very much appreciated.

377. “… there is no fear of judgment, not performing or pleasing another or myself” and hence you have freed yourself from the biggest self made prisons there are. Awesome.

378. “I begin to feel like me, then I know that the choices I am making are true, and it is the only way to live.”
     The confirmation that one feels through being guided and responsive to our bodies is amazingly supportive and reaffirms Serge Benhayon’s wise words “that the body is the marker of all truth”.

379. Not until encountering Universal Medicine had I questioned making love being different from sex, they were synonymous. However, now having done so my life has changed in so many joyful ways, including sex. I highly recommend anyone who has not questioned the difference to do so.

380. ‘I realised during these healings that I had to begin to be tender and gentle with myself, drop the guard and let people in, if I was to truly feel intimate with myself, let alone anyone else.’ I had not fully appreciated this previously, that the steps to intimacy included being more gentle and tender with myself. Therefore anything that I do to avoid this or my sensitivity is actually also an avoidance of intimacy.

381. “How could I truly love, make love to another, if I was not able to love and make love with myself first?” It sounds like simple science, just like the fact you cannot care for another if you do not care for yourself. We all know this but really going there and living it is something that needs time and practice.

382. “…it’s about building a quality I choose to live”. This kind of sums up where I am at in my life at present. Day by day building the quality that I want to live through connection with my body, being open with myself and in relationships, which includes deepening my intimacy with others. As you rightly say Nicole, intimacy is not about sex, it is about a quality and depth of connection and is not restricted to a partner, we can be intimate with many people.

383. No matter how thin the veil of protection we cover ourselves with it will still stop us completely from expressing our essence to others.

384. When we deepen our intimacy with ourselves it is a natural progression to deepen our intimacy with another. Therefore in a partnership, the act of sex is an inferior brother to the depth of love making which comes as a natural extension of a nurtured intimacy that is already occurring between two people.

385. “Making love is not just what happens between the sheets, nor is it a quality that only occurs in one moment. Instead, it’s a quality that is lived in each and every moment of every day” Thank you for an awesome blog exposing what making love truly means.

386. Nicole having grown up thinking Intimacy was only between the sheets its quite a re-awakening to consider that intimacy is something that is there to be had with ourselves 24/7 and that it is our natural way to be. If we are not being intimate with ourselves that is the start of illness and disease. Whilst its not my consistent way of living at the moment it certainly reminds me what is possible.

387. If I choose protection I lose intimacy with myself and cannot share an intimacy with others. Intimacy can melt protection. When I walked through the park today I walked past an older lady who was from a different culture. Initially I felt she wanted to keep herself to herself and not engage and usually I would look away but today I was feeling very lovely and didn’t avert my gaze after the initial moments so a warmth crept over her face and we smiled. It was so lovely to meet her.

     1. What a sweet sharing Karin. And a great example therefore how our ‘holding back’ does automatically inspiring others to do so as well and we end up separated and lonely. To bring a change into our ‘usual’ here is asking for true commitment to connection – to ourselves and so, to our all connection. This happens naturally. When we are connected with ourselves, we love to connect with others. As you said ‘today I was feeling very lovely and didn’t avert my gaze’.

388. “I became more aware that I was missing the intimacy and connection I so desperately longed for from another, within myself” – how true Nicole and also that so often, the very one thing that we miss in our own lives is exactly what we look for in another/partner to make up for us or feel complete, and thus begins the contract or exchange from such a neediness. Close that need through self-provision, and the relationship is a lot more healthy, enjoyable and true!

389. For me I am coming to understand the meaning of making love without it being sexual or relying on having a partner – that I can choose to move and live in a way that creates love in my day.

390. It’s a big ask to expect someone else to deliver us the love we are not willing to give ourselves.

391. ‘the protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts’ realising this requires a whole different way of seeing life, that our tenderness and sensitivity are our greatest strengths.

392. Taking deep care and honouring of ourselves and our bodies is the key to developing intimacy with ourselves and is so supportive to being all we are and feeling cherished by our very own love and gentleness.
     The contentment and beauty this allows is deeply rewarding to everyone around us is very inspiring and allows true intimacy to be felt by all. What a different and amazing way to live .

393. I have found that making love in the moments in my day comes from feeling the depth of love within me and it is then this love that impulses the body to move in a certain way, therefore it is a communication between what is felt within and whether these feelings are honestly and absolutely expressed with the physical body. Each and every moment this is an amazing awareness of relationship, no matter what is expressed and how it is expressed, there is deep appreciation of this amazingness that goes on with my every breath.
     There does not need to be anything sexual in making love, indeed that is an exposing of how making love is not the same as having sex, the quality and depth between them are very different. Making love is not the means to an end, in fact, it is forever ongoing and deepening.

394. I have only made love a couple of times in my life but during those times there was a deep surrender to my partner that was very natural and very confirming of how we each held the other in the moment. Not with any need, but with absolute respect and true love. The times that this was not present, there was a neediness that crept in and sex was the result. So if I reflect back, it was how I/they was with myself/themselves before that, that ended up in us having sex. I feel the end result or the orgasm can be a disguise or pleasurable solution that stops us from really feeling what is behind the sex and why we chose to have sex as opposed to taking the time to support our own building of intimacy with ourselves to then share it with our partners.

395. What you have written is huge: “What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.” If we just get this, we will realise that we can not truly blame any one for any thing ever again.

     1. Golnaz imagine for a moment a world where absolutely everybody’s needs get met by themselves. This is a way of life that we have all lived before and one that we are returning to, all be it, rather slowly!

396. Nicole, what you are sharing here feels ground breaking for me, ‘Making love allows me to be me. I do not have to hold anything back, there is no fear of judgment, not performing or pleasing another or myself’, I can feel how with sex there seems to be this pressure to perform, to be a certain way and that there is much self criticism and self judgment, I love what you are sharing about making love, this feels so different and so lovely to simply be ourselves.

397. Nicole you have delivered another gorgeous reminder, to build the relationship and intimacy for ourselves first, which leaves no needing to be fulfilled, adored and distracted by another. We are then open to a relationship based on the qualities we embody and equally by the love we hold for ourselves. Be Love first and then you can make true Love🤗

398. This is so inspiring to read, I can very much relate to the hurt that protection creates. It is crazy that we choose this over the love that can be shared. But it is the truth of what we live sometimes, it needs time to let go of this protection. And in turn truly nurture ourselves, from the deepest love that we all have inside.

399. It is through the development of intimacy in our own bodies that we get to understand the way to truly deepen our relationships with others, and that sex is just sex and nothing more to it and when we are intimate with another is an opportunity to sharing all of us not holding back our movements that reflect the love that we are.

400. “But when I make choices that are truly caring, loving and supportive of my body, I can feel my tenderness and delicateness again.” – I too have experienced this where my body feels more tender and delicate as a result of being this way in how I’m moving. The quality I’m moving in is feeding me back more of that quality.

401. Only allowing myself to feel the very loving, precious, tender, powerful, Divine man I am makes it possible to also connect to these qualities in others. And I’m so so ‘surprised’ how many very loving people there are. The point is that we don’t connect enough to that love and preciousness. We’re so busy to deny the actual fact that we do belong to a greater whole that a lot of energy goes towards this denial. And so we’re fighting ourselves by using vices to offset the love that we are. It’s a game that only we can stop ourselves. And of course will this take time, but stop it will – one day. How long is up to us, each and everyone on their own. When do (did) you start? For me it started around 25 and after nearly 15 years I can see how I’ve been sabotaging myself (and still do). Beautiful to be able to see so, incredible how we actually fool ourselves…

402. Yes, Nicole. The only true hurt to heal is the pain of being disconnected from ourselves, our essence and each other. Making love a part of everyday is the best practice for living a joyful life.

403. What becomes so very obvious when reading your words is that the more we take care of ourselves the more we settle for the love that we can feel inside and the less we need the other to give us this love and then being with each other is more a sharing of what we have than a needing to have something from the other.

404. Making love begins with me and my relationship with the depth of my essence that I hold. From this foundation, I can bring a tenderly loving and intimate way of loving to my partner, family, friends and (as I experienced yesterday) even to another health professional that I had just met. To me this is what truly defines if I am in fact in the Livingness of my own love, when I am beholding of another, for who they are and where they are and of course from where they innately come from (God’s love).

405. What this highlights is that it’s the small everydayness of loving gestures towards ourselves and others that builds love in our lives – days making love means having sex starts to change.

406. Understanding that sex is not the only way to be intimate in a relationship has changed how I am in my relationship. I am no longer expecting everything to be OK just as long as we make love, as I know that I can build this love in every movement. So the way we are with each other at each moment becomes an opportunity to allow more intimacy and this is huge.

407. The word intimacy is laced with countless pictures and ideals, possibly slightly different pictures for all of us, but still very far from the true meaning of intimacy – which is basically to allow ourselves to truly connect with ourselves, i.e. surrender to and accept where we are at at any given moment, and from there simply let people see who we really are, without the facade or the protective shield.

408. It is quite an amazing moment discovering the treasure within that has been so craft and art-fully hidden behind what ever decoy we can create. This maybe clever, but it isn’t loving.

409. This is so revealing Nicole. To have a truly intimate relationship with anyone, we need to first know how to be truly open and intimate with ourselves. This seems like a funny notion at first, but makes complete sense the more I develop deeper levels of intimacy with myself and within my relationships.

410. I feel intimacy when I am moving in my natural rhythm, feeling my inner beauty and stillness and connecting with my divinity.

411. Reading this made me realise that bringing to myself everything I crave from others develops intimacy.

412. ‘Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.’
     This is gorgeous and makes all those small caring choices we make through our days worth it.

413. I love this article and the conversation it has started. There is a world of difference between making love and having sex; our bodies know this and the more we bring it to our awareness the less we will accept sex as a grasp at intimacy.

414. In the past I have looked to sex to give me love and attention. But a single experience of sex would then leave me wanting more. And of course it would, as how can an experience bring us everything we need? If it is an amazing experience that’s great, but it will always be over! And then how does that leave us feeling? It often left me feeling empty, and it was disempowering in the way that I would then need something from someone else to make me feel good. What you present here is pure gold. It is the way out of the needy state that can rule an addictive behaviour. It is offering us so much more and a way to empower ourselves with true love.

415. Choosing to deepen the tenderness in myself, getting to know me deeply, preciously I then open myself up to the possibility of sharing this depth of quality with another. If I keep a superficial relationship with myself, that’s what every relationship outside of me will also reflect.

416. Taking deep care of our bodies is the first step to a greater intimacy with ourselves and each other. And perhaps the secret to having a great relationship with another person is actually deeply honouring our own bodies.

417. I am finding that developing this relationship with ourselves deepens and deepens and keeps on deepening as I continue to work on my rhythm with me. It changes the whole quality we bring to others without any trying to do anything. I am loving learning to be in love with myself.

418. Loved this blog Nicole, so much is yet to unfold for me to be truly loving in all I do!

419. Having sex is something in my experience which comes very much from the head, but whilst it might engender relief from tension or feeling alone momentarily, it leaves you feeling empty as there has been no real loving connection to yourself or your partner. Making love on the other hand I have found to be a celebration. A coming together of two people who are committed to a loving relationship with self first and then sharing that with the other – an entirely different experience!

420. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body …” It has taken me years to thaw out, I was so numb to what I was feeling. The more I focus on connecting to my body, the more I can appreciate the deep love in a tender touch and so the real learning is how to respectfully, tenderly embody this delicate appreciation my self and then express it unconditionally with everyone in my life.

421. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body.” Discovering this for myself has taken me to a whole new, deeper level of feeling and expressing love as I had so hardened myself to endeavour to fit an image of how I believed a man should behave and to protect myself from anticipated hurts that created a veil over me from feeling.

422. I have developed and opened myself to deeper levels of intimacy over the last years, but recently I recognized that I am hitting a limitation that shows as a holding or hardness in my body and an insecurity to allow people to see more of me, to share more of me. On one hand this is uncomfortable and irritating, definitely having a negative effect on my body and relationship with myself and others, on the other hand I like to hold on to the protection, the limitation as it is familiar, it is how I know myself. To deepen the level of intimacy means to let go of familiarity, habit, comfort, protection, pandering, withdrawal etc and being willing to step into the unknown. In truth it is not unknown, I very much feel and know what to expect, it is just the resistance to shed off the familiar old skin that promises to keep me safe but really is holding me back from being so much more loving.

423. The more aware I become of the protection I still hold in my body the more I understand how this affects the level of intimacy I am willing to go to. Learning to let go and surrender is something that is ongoing but I know how healing it is for my body and is an important step in the deepening of all my relationships.

424. Nicole, you differentiate between sex and making love with clarity and simplicity from the Intimacy you have built within yourself. From this connection, your qualities of delicateness, tenderness and grace are apparent in your blog.
     “it’s about building a quality I choose to live, making choices to nourish and nurture myself, to feel what my body needs to eat, to wear, the time I need to go to bed and how and when I need to exercise”.

425. Developing intimacy with myself is something I am still working on and will be for the rest pf my life. I feel this is something that deepens as we understand just what it means and how it feels to experience this. A beautiful example Nicole in what you have shared with us!

426. To reclaim the world intimacy and separate it from its association with sex is profound. Re-defining what it means for us and how it is lived opens the most precious of doors and allows us to be truly gentle, loving and tender with ourselves.

427. The intimacy one can bring into our relationship with ourselves is profound. I never realised that before quite recently, too busy trying to make everyone else happy. Problem is that if there is no self love as a foundation, then what was I taking out into those other relationships except my need for recognition, acceptance etc? And it builds from the simplest things, like the way we brush our teeth or put ourselves to bed at night. Any movement is an opportunity.

428. Tenderness and intimacy with one’s self as you have said Nicole is something we all had once. We allowed the world to change us and what these two words meant, to the point that they bared no resemblance to what we started with. It is a long road back to one’s self but a journey that is always worth it.

429. Sometimes patterns and behaviours are so instilled within us that letting them go doesn’t happen overnight and sometimes it may take an event or incident to really wake us up. But if we choose to learn from what has happened and deepen the love for ourselves we see that the incident was a gift sent to us from God.

430. My observation is that often I am governed by the things I have to do and then I cannot feel any intimacy. This produces frustration because it is not the natural way of being. To allow intimacy is a medicine which creates harmony in the body.

431. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body” – very true Nicole, and ‘another’s touch’ i immediately note whenever i handshake for work… i always used to note when the handshake was crushing, squeezing or forceful and what that felt like [horrible] , or if the handshake is not-there, weak, wet or limp…though nowadays i also feel the tenderness and warmth in handshakes too, how the palms and fingertips feel, and also in contact with my own too…Amazing how the quality of life lived can be felt through the simple touch of a brief handshake.

432. A beautiful redefining of the phrase – Someone show the people behind Oxford English Dictionary!

433. “What I craved so desperately from others were all the things I never gave to myself. Not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.” I too have come to realise that I have to be willing to connect to honouring and to developing this intimacy and love within myself, for nobody else can fulfil what I am not willing to give to myself.

434. Thanks Nicole. Developing intimacy with ourselves first, then allows us to be less affected by the world around us. I often find the thing that stops me doing more with my life is being influenced negatively by a bad experience, yet when we nurture ourselves and making loving gestures for ourselves it makes all the difference, as it is valuing what we offer and taking that commitment to ourselves into every relationship.

435. We have given up on so much that our heart truly craves for and have settled for the best we think we can get, and even start to champion it as our goal! This turns things it on its head. Reading about the difference between sex and making love, it is obvious that we have settled for a caricature version of the intimacy most of us truly crave. And to understand that it all starts with how we are with ourself and then extending it out to other people. That we are ourselves responsible for creating the intimacy we seek and perhaps have given up on. Wow!

436. I love this definition of what Love is Nicole – ‘not performing or pleasing another or myself’ – to be seeking this totally contradicts the beauty of what Love is. There is no need or want and we are left feeling our own vulnerability – as difficult as we may find this but just a realisation of what we have allowed in that, it is not the Love that we are designed to be.

437. If you had asked me about intimacy or building that with myself in the past, I probably would have thought very differently than today because I realise now that my understanding of words were quite far from the reality.
     I had this idea that intimacy had to be sexual and now see how wrong I was and how much I was missing in holding onto that belief.

438. Loving ourselves is the foundation of being able to truly love and to make love to another. For me this means that I’m having a (solid) foundation on which I am appreciatieve and accepting of myself, which means feeling at ease with myself. Being in love with me within my own body.

439. The love that we share with another can never be greater than the quality of love that we have lived with our selves.

440. Its a great sharing, allowing us to reflect on how intimate we are with ourselves, as it will allow us to reflect on our intimacy in making love or having sex. Being able to build love and intimacy is about truly surrendering and allowing.

441. Everything outside of us (especially school and the media) tell us that we are not enough. Yet this is the same place that we look for love and acceptance. What you share Nicole is beautiful – the love that we crave is inside of us, and we are worth self-love and self-care.

442. ‘when I make choices that are truly caring, loving and supportive of my body, I can feel my tenderness and delicateness again. I begin to feel like me, then I know that the choices I am making are true, and it is the only way to live’ – a beautiful and very practical marker of feeling what is true in the body.

443. “To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body” This really stands out for me Nicole. I agree that true intimacy and connection with another, can only be felt when we connect within ourselves first. Then what is there is there to be shared and can not be contained .

444. This blog is a droplet of gold. There is personally a lot to explore here .. I know after an esoteric session sometimes I am connected to my essence – I can feel it, however, I can also feel there is a protection ready for if I am attacked for this innate beauty I feel inside so innocent and pure if I can hold it. I usually cannot because I choose to indulge in the hurt. Honesty is my greatest support to myself to feel and know my feelings for what and who I am. It is all for the space I honestly allow myself to feel thus is the beauty of sensitivity.

445. I think it’s great how you say this Nicole – “Making love is more than what happens between the sheets: it’s a way of living, a touch, a gaze, and a gesture in every movement in me, and in another.” – And so it is something that is built throughout all expressions and not just ‘switched on’ in bed…

446. It’s funny how when we say “making love” we automatically go to thinking of sex and that level of intimacy in a relationship. But the making of love isn’t just and only to be seen in that way. Even when we say ‘love’ we have pictures of what that means and looks like. What if the way we use and see love needs to change or expand? What if we have driven love down a long and lonely road to make it look like it is just with one thing? We need to bring love back to the start, back to it’s origins and see what the true meaning of love it. As Nicole is saying love is much more than even an expression, you can live love and you can live that love in every moment with everything. Love is much grander than our current view and so to make love isn’t just with one person in a bedroom it’s much more.

447. ‘Making love is not just what happens between the sheets, nor or is it a quality that only occurs in one moment. Instead, it’s a quality that is lived in each and every moment of every day.’ It’s amazing to feel that the physical act of making love between two people is the culmination of choices and movements throughout the day made in the same quality.

448. “I had to begin to be tender and gentle with myself, drop the guard and let people in, if I was to truly feel intimate with myself, let alone anyone else.” This is a turn around in our understanding of what true intimacy is…that first it is with self before it is with another.

449. To know that ‘Making Love’ can be brought to my use of this keyboard as I type or the way I handle my cup of tea as I lift the cup to drink is another way of experiencing our true presence in all our movements – in all that we do. Making love vs having sex can be viewed as just another way of our interaction in the world. Are we truly present in our movements or doing many things at the same time without any consideration at all? Making love is the absolute expansion of being ‘IN’ the expression of ‘Divine Love’.

450. Thank you Nicole for sharing your wisdom and experience with us. Intimacy has been a word I have given names and ideals that were unreal.. such as being sex only, exclusive, only with your partner etc.. Since I came to the work of Universal Medicine I found my truth within and found out that this ‘image about intimacy that I held’ was not true.. And so I discover now within myself what it really is.

451. Reading this blog this morning after I had gone into reaction about something that just happened moments before was very exposing.

     Reading about tenderness, intimacy and delicacy when you are a bit annoyed, charged up and hardened by an event showed very clearly to me that going into reaction stop this feeling of intimacy and tenderness.

     It stops me being able to see the event clearly and read what is truly going on as I went into hurt/protection and hardened up. I can feel the reaction lessening and my body opening back up to gentleness and returning back to connection/intimacy with me.

     From here, I will be able to look to at the situation much more openly and with more understanding and possibly see my part in it as well 🙂

     Thank you – there are many benefits to making love with yourself!

452. Making love is making the day about being in it instead of just functioning.

453. For me, getting to know myself is a constant everyday check in, so the way I love myself needs to constantly change or I quickly fall behind my own 8 ball so to speak. For example, at the moment I can’t get up in the morning, I sleep through all my alarms I could easily blame day lights savings but if I was really taking care of myself, I would just adjust. So either my 9.00 bedtime is too late for me in daylights savings or the food or movements of the day are exhausting me. This kind of self responsibility is a great way to start loving yourself otherwise if you are already in a relationship you end up blaming your intimate partner for everything and believe you me, I have been there and its not love.

454. A gorgeous blog Nicole. It makes sense that we first need to be loving with ourselves before we can be loving with another.

455. Being intimate at home with ourselves and tender, changes how we are with others. I find I am unwilling to accept any form of lesser treatment, and by simply being myself, people respond to me with with tenderness and kindness.

456. ‘I am already complete from the day I have lived. Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.’ – Love this Nicole – love is not about what we can get from others, but what are we giving ourselves in our day to day living, the level of attention, care and appreciation of ourselves, that then sums up the way we feel about ourselves – which in turn determines whether we feel loved or not.

457. The deeper we go in our love and intimacy for ourselves, the less we seek it from others. Then when we do come together with another from feeling whole and complete within ourselves, then there is the foundation for true love, not built on need, but built on love which starts with self.

458. ‘To feel the tenderness in another’s touch was only possible when I began to connect to and feel my own body: how I was with myself, how I moved, spoke and lived moment to moment, feeling the tenderness in my own body, and then in and from another’s body.’ So true Nicole.

459. This is beautifully expressed Nicole how with making love you are allowed to just be. I always associated sex with performance, having to do something, please someone or myself, reach orgasm, making it a good experience, so you get a good score in the eyes of your partner and for yourself as well… I compared one sexual experience to another rating them to how good they were. Making love is a completely different approach bringing the same quality of love into the bed as we bring into anything else we do together.

460. To make love is to never put yourself in the way of being love with yourself and with all others.

461. I love how the definition of making love actually has nothing to do with sex. It’s refrshing and accessible for all from every walk in life.

462. There is a completely different experience to be shared with another, which you have described so beautifully here Nicole. Who would not want this deeper level of connection and intimacy, which starts by truly learning to love yourself and your body?

463. This is such an intimate blog Nicole. We are actually missing out on so much by limiting love making and intimacy to our performance in the bedroom. Life becomes all the more richer for love to be in every moment.

464. When we are open to letting love in, and letting our love out, it only needs a look to feel so completely loved.

465. ‘Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.’ This is gorgeous and the complete opposite to the images of a woman always pleasing others we grow up surrounded by.

466. Beautiful Nicole. We are love so it makes sense to nurture and hold precious the love that we are in all the little details of living, so that when we come together with our partner in that very practical practiced love of ourselves we cannot settle for anything less than this standard of love and tenderness and in this together we can go even deeper and this is called making love as it expands and expresses all the love that we are together.

467. We are the only ones who can love us in the way we want to be loved, and yet we spend decades – if not lifetimes – seeking and or demanding ‘love’ from outside of ourselves.

468. “Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.” So true Nicole… we can only share what we have experienced and know ourselves to be.

469. How exposing is this statement: “…the protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts: the hurt I felt of not being able to truly connect to another.” Our so-called guard or protection is such an illusion.

470. Building love and intimacy is a deep surrender to all that we are and it is a quality we can move in everyday. Absolutely Nicole, and how amazing is our life when we move through it in this way?

471. I am still working on making love in everything I do. I realise that the quality of my body at the end of my day will depend pretty much on how I have been living it.

472. Thank you Nicole. This helps me to see that the way I am between the sheets is actually a reflection of how I am in my life. If I find myself manipulating or trying to please another, feeling a lack of self worth or a fear of expressing myself in one area of my life it is safe to say these things will be playing out in every part of my life.

     1. So true Leonne, I have a similar understanding that I am working on, to bring more love into every aspect of my life.

473. I have recently noticed how carrying a protection around became my ‘normal’, it was always there and I didn’t connect to the fact it was there or how it was affecting me. Once I recognised it and let it go, the difference felt like I’d lost a stone in weight, I feel so much lighter. This protection was stopping the intimacy of truly letting me out and others in.

474. Nicole, I love this blog, what you are sharing really feels gorgeous, that we are already complete, that we do not need to prove anything, we were already everything from the day we were born. I can feel reading this blog how I still had not quite realised this, there is so much in society that tells us to learn, to better ourselves, to go on spiritual journeys, always looking outside of ourselves to gain something rather than to simply connect with ourselves, to the amazingness we already are.

     1. So true Rebecca, I also feel life is all about my choice to connect. The Joy I had the other day as I laughed to myself about the loveless game my spirit was playing to take me out of myself. So yes, I understand how connecting can be simple when all those silly games that my spirit plays have been clocked and discarded.

475. ‘I could feel the protection I had built up over the years to avoid getting hurt no longer allowed me to feel the depth of tenderness in myself, nor in another. Busy keeping everyone at a distance, I became more aware that I was missing the intimacy and connection I so desperately longed for from another, within myself’. Nicole I love how you capture exactly my own experience, and I can feel how I still hang onto some protection, not fully trusting people, (but actually I have to trust myself) something for me to continually observe and be aware of.

476. The essence of making love is known to us all but it is clear that in caring for ourselves and in what we allow in our relationships with others, this very much overrides this knowing. Society through the media, TV & publishing, relationships within the family we grew up in and in the relationships we observe around us continually draw us out and away from what is true and Humanity are basically settling for less. Serge Benhayon has presented on the love we are and also modeled in his own life a livingness that is possible and connected to what is a truth within us – something we all know and are. Thank you Nicole for the great reflection and beautiful expansion on the essence of what ‘Making Love’ truly is.

477. The layers of protection held in the body seem to be manyfold and intimacy with oneself, and thus with others, is the remedy to undo them. Although intimacy is not physical in the first place as it is a quality of presence, an openness to be seen and felt, it is the body that resonates strongly with it as it is naturally tuned towards intimacy.

478. So many of us have no choice as to whether we have sex or make love because we have already chosen to separate from our true selves a long time ago and with that one decision everything else was decided.

479. Demanding that the world fills us up from the outside is like shouting into the wind but instead of stopping shouting, we just keep shouting louder and louder.

     1. Absolutely, Alexis. Einstein’s quote sums it up very beautifully: ‘Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’.

480. “Making love is not just what happens between the sheets, nor or is it a quality that only occurs in one moment. Instead, it’s a quality that is lived in each and every moment of every day.” – This is spot on Nicole! Thank you for a wonderful reminder of what really gets the “juices flowing” (how tender we are through the day with ourselves).

481. Nicole 18 months ago whilst having an esoteric healing treatment, I brought up the fact that I wasn’t getting the intimacy that I craved in my relationships. The practitioner, very matter of factly said that all relationship problems were 50/50 and that I had as much problem being intimate as all those that I felt weren’t being intimate with me. That was a huge turning point for me as I then began to see that I had been keeping a moat around myself, which was keeping myself away from me and then as a result, keeping everybody else away from me. Since that moment I have been focused on filling my moat in and as a result I am getting closer to others.

     1. Being honest, transparent and accepting myself as to where I am at is helping me to surrender and in return my relationships are changing also. I too Alexis, am getting closer to others and taking steps to open up and let them in.

482. “Making love is not just what happens between the sheets, nor or is it a quality that only occurs in one moment. Instead, it’s a quality that is lived in each and every moment of every day. A quality and intimacy that supports me to feel, love and honour my body, always.” This Nicole takes away the idea that making love is confined to the bedroom and opens it up to the fact that it offers us so much more. We have reduced these two word from their true meaning of intimacy and as a way of living, and in this we have lost the power that the fullness that their true meaning brings.

     1. There is so much to learn when the true meaning of words is revealed. My understanding of how I now use the words ‘love’ and ‘intimacy’ has changed so much to be inclusive of everyone, so how could love or intimacy have any emotional attachments when used in a true sense!

483. Nicole your blog has reminded me that there is always more love to be felt from myself and my own care, and that it’s right there inside me for me to express and live in deeper ways everyday. It’s been automatic for me to bring it out in expression around others, yet I can make new steps to express and experience it just for myself.

484. I agree that it is impossible to love and cherish another person if we do not love and cherish ourselves.

485. Nicole one thing that I find quite astonishing is what you have shared here ‘I started to feel for myself an intimacy I already held within – but had never before felt or explored’. I agree with you that there is a level of intimacy and delicacy that we all inherently have within (men equal to women). When this is deeply considered then it really points to how far we have come from living from our innermost, as most of us move harshly, erratically and quickly from hard bodies that we are totally disconnected from. If we are disconnected from our bodies, then it therefore follows that we are also disconnected from our true nature.

486. When we are not tender and loving with ourselves we look outside of us for these qualities from another. When we build the love and tenderness with ourselves we naturally feel more love and tenderness towards and need for another to fill this whole is no longer there.

487. Intimacy is something which is not commonly understood in the way shared in this blog. Opening up to the true breadth and depth of intimacy and how it is something much more than just sex is wonderful expansion of our awareness in my experience – and well worth exploring.

488. Lovely sharing Nicole, thank you. When we build up walls of protection perhaps we need to look at how we are imprisoning ourselves and what is within our prison with us. If we seek to protect ourselves from being hurt, do we do so because we are hurt and hence end up protecting our hurts rather than healing them?

489. “I could feel the protection I had built up over the years to avoid getting hurt no longer allowed me to feel the depth of tenderness in myself, nor in another.” It’s beautiful to awaken to the magic of this tenderness, to feel once again that its safe to walk this divine tender quality and indeed observe the power of its grace.

490. Lack of tenderness and love in ones own life will understandably lead to wanting these qualities from another. How empowering is it then to love oneself enough to not need to look to anyone else. I’m still working on this, but can feel the potential of a different and amazing relationship with myself that is void of need.

491. I love reading the comments here because it confirms that we do all know the truth and that there is a way to live without the protection we see all around us. It is indeed our responsibility to live in deep unprotected love with ourselves so that others can see there is a way to be with yourself that is amazing.

492. When we do everything like making love… what kind of reflection are we showing the world?

493. “Making love is more than what happens between the sheets: it’s a way of living, a touch, a gaze, and a gesture in every movement in me, and in another.” How beautiful to acknowledge and appreciate that it is absolutely possible to make love with another, without getting naked and physical. It is as you say so much more than the physical act of sex, but a deep and true connection between two people that is confirmed in the tenderness and appreciation of each other through simple gestures and a loving gaze.

494. Thank you Nicole, a great expose. I can often be hard and harsh with myself, then need others. This doesn’t work, it also deeply hurts, why would we ever want to leave a place that’s so still and warm (ourselves). I am learning it also gives ourselves and others space and you actually feel much more deeply connected to yourself and people. And able to observe life.

     1. So true Gyl, love never encroaches on another, true love allows me to discover my own journey of return in my own time!

495. Nicole after reading your blog I got the real sense again to deepen my intimacy with myself and how I am in all I do etc. Taking a simple exercise like driving and feeling how very different that can be when I am connected, loving and honouring of myself vs when I am simple going from A to B.

     1. Beautifully said MA. Our relationships are as deep and lovely as we make them as they are all based on the relationship we have with ourselves and life.

496. It is so important to love ourselves first and foremost, because any love we crave from another is simply us being needy. What we truly need is our own innermost connection and from that deep point we are then connected intimately with everyone else.

497. I love what you have shared here, Nicole, that making love “is a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself”. It is a joy to share with another the beautiful quality we have chosen in our day – it’s like a little celebration each time. This is much more truly loving and honouring than having demands and expectations for another to meet our needs.

498. “… the protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts: the hurt I felt of not being able to truly connect to another.” And therein lies our biggest trap, the decision to build a shield to protect our selves from hurt only to realise that we have just incarcerated our selves in a self made prison. True protection lies in opening up, connecting to each other, allowing our vulnerability to be seen, respected and hence fully appreciate our honesty and beautiful fragility. It is what we are all craving to do because it is our innate purpose in life, to materialise Love via our every thought, action, movement and expression, to make Love a constant activity in our daily lives, to be physically celebrated with our gorgeous partners but energetically shared with all equally in our daily lives.

499. Identifying that there is so much more and different from ‘sex’ is so important. Realising and expressing love in the way that you share, Nicole, changes ones whole way of living, being and relating to others.

500. This is a beautiful sharing Nicole, and it reveals to me that intimacy and sex are two different lifestyles. When I am hard on myself and as such rejecting myself, busy pleasing others and functioning in the world I am more in the sexmodus, needing sex as relief, approval of being loved etc but when I allow myself the tenderness, fragility, vulnerability and listen to my body during my days I already make love with myself and as a consequence I am intimate with my partner as well.

501. It is crazy how the term “making love’ is often only thought about as getting it on when actually as you say Nicole it is whole lot more, making love should be in our every move – why box ‘making love’ to just a sexual act when in fact it it so much more.

502. “What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself” – this really stood out for me, as I can feel how it hurts to hold ourselves back, yet we think that we can give it to another as and when needed – this just doesn’t add up.

503. This blogs gives a complete re-definition of what ‘making love’ is, or actually is bringing back to us the real meaning of these words as we have bastardised it in such a way that it is completely the opposite to what it truly is and always has been. Making love is not to get something out of emptiness, but a sharing and celebration of that fullness and beauty within.

504. Love is a way of life, if we keep love for only certain times than what are we living the rest of the time?

505. Developing an intimate relationship with ourselves is what support us to develop an intimate relationship with others. It doesn’t seem to work if we leave ourselves out of the equation because the journey to true intimacy begins from us first, our relationship with ourselves expanding out.

506. It takes the pressure off needing to be something, to make an impression or be impressed when we simply allow ourselves out – appreciating and honouring the depth of Love that we each are.

507. I have always appreciated the difference between having sex and making love, or so I thought. However, as you have so beautifully shared, it starts with ‘making love with ourselves’, this is the missing link that it’s taken me many years to even be aware of. Something so obvious, yet it’s eluded me for most of my life.

508. It’s interesting how we can crave from another what we deny giving to ourselves … ‘Being intimate, living a quality, warmth and tenderness in another’s touch, a touch that I could so easily give to myself but instead chose to deny. Yet even when another tenderly holds us with love, we won’t feel the depth of their love if we have not established our own foundation of love for ourselves first.

509. Nicole you change the whole notion so many of us have or hold about ‘intimacy’ i.e. it being typically assigned to the sexual kind, so much so that saying the word itself can feel awkward because of this. You make intimacy or being intimate transparent, real and importantly natural … and irrespective of who you’re with in regards relationship. Intimacy is a quality that’s in a person and what they bring by way of their living their life with openness, and not something that’s only created between two people [in relationship].

510. ‘I could feel the protection I had built up over the years to avoid getting hurt no longer allowed me to feel the depth of tenderness in myself, nor in another.’ This is key Nicole in that being prepared to visit and explore the fact that it is our hurts and protection that keep us from making love, being love and offering love, is the only way out of the protective prison we have built and justified for ourselves!

511. A great blog Nicole to bring up the differences between sex and making love. The quality of intimacy and love we have first towards ourselves is what we would naturally bring to another, which then becomes a confirmation and celebration of love between two people.

512. This is deeply beautiful Nicole. It is so true and makes absolute sense that the quality of the relationship we hold with ourselves is what we live, and it this quality that we bring to and share with another. When we develop a loving relationship with ourselves, our Soul, we are moved by love through every moment, including our physical connection with another through making love, which is then a Soulful confirmation of the love we are and choose to live, together. So in effect we can make love in every moment if we choose to. This certainly raises the question of what relationship it is that we have with life; is it one of having sex or making love?

513. True intimacy and tenderness begin with self first and have nothing to do with sex, I couldn’t agree more. Should there then be an extension of that with another/others, it again has nothing to do with sex. Especially when it comes to the word ‘intimacy’, it must suit us to misinterpret it rather than feeling into what it truly means.

514. When we are not really close with ourselves, the closeness that we want from another is a need and a demand, it does not feel loving and calling it love is not true. So if our needs are not met by someone, we call these people unloving through our own hurts, but we have misinterpreted what is love to begin with. It is always our choice to feel our love or not, starting from being deeply caring to ourselves.

     1. I love what you have shared here Adele – this is so true that when we are disconnected from ourselves, it feels like the world is cold and uncaring, whilst when we connect with ourselves then we also get to feel the warmth that is undeniably there too in the world. In our disconnection we often seek the connection from the outside, erroneously so, but the true warmth must first come from within. Seek not with an empty cup, be with a full cup and bring that to share with another.

515. Thank you for the reminder Nicole. Recently I felt a bit vulnerable in opening more of myself and momentarily I want to protect myself. But I am now reminded that when I deeply care for myself in this situation and express myself that way in absolute love with myself, that is already the best “protection” which does not close me off to myself or anyone else, but rather it is very transparent.

     1. Yes, deeply caring for and expressing oneself in truth and openness is the best ‘protection’.

516. Trust is such a big issue for many of us, and yet we give our bodies away without really considering how we feel, or what has passed with that person, when we decide to have sex with someone. Some could have had an argument all day and yet still choose to have sex…I do not judge anyone, I have not always made the most caring decisions myself. I am however learning that it is vital to love, care and respect myself first, it is also critical to be aware of what we feel in terms of energy, rather than numbing or attempting to ignore it. Making Love continues as a way of being, sex is a physical preoccupation.

517. Thank you Nicole this is something we were talking about this evening and you have expressed this so well. with a lot of space for deeper understanding.

518. Powerful Nicole : Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.
     This makes absolutely sense! To everything in life.. How can we love one another if we have no connection with our-self? Interesting really, but absolute worth to ponder on.. Thank you Nicole for sharing.

519. Living this love all of the time brings such joy and flow into our lives. Our lives are no longer separate from the love that we are and this is felt in every moment. It is what supports us, the foundation of us.

520. Thanks Nicole, love what you’ve shared here about intimacy, tenderness and making love and how essential our relationship with ourself is to how we then relate with others..

521. “What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.”….. this is a gold line amongst many in your latest offering to us all Nicole. And for me this explains so much about why we seek and crave relationships from others because we are looking for the love that we are actually denying from ourselves. It is a great foundation to start from when you learn to bring it to yourself and then choose to share it with another.

522. Thank you for a beautifully written blog on a very important topic. I believe most of us can relate to this “What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.”

523. It is wonderful that someone is making some sense about the concept of making love. It is such a charged subject and no one wants to really talk about it.
     With support from Simple-Living Global and Universal Medicine I am melting the walls that I have put up to so call protect myself. This has allowed me to have a more real relationship with myself which is what I have been missing all along. Now I have a better chance of having a real relationship with another person.

524. How can we share that which we are not in relationship with ourselves, the tenderness, the intimacy the delicateness and the love…or truly be open to receiving that love from another. The quality of relationship we have with us is our first true relationship.

     1. The quality of relationship we have with us is our first true relationship. Yes it is Victoria and I can feel how much I have missed being true to myself, always afraid others will find me too much if I bring all that I am. Time to let this old belief go.

525. Building love and intimacy is a deep surrender to all that we are and it is a quality we can move in everyday. Simply gorgeous thank you Nicole.

526. An intimate sharing Nicole. Reading through the comments I see so many relate to what you say about the love and all the things you never gave to yourself, was what you had craved so desperately from others.This is so true. Being intimate and loving (not in a sexual way)in the way we live moment to moment with ourselves completely changes the way we relate to others; there is not the need or expectation that another fill what we have not connected to within ourselves.

527. Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself. When you are coming from your own self love base, there is absolutely no neediness from another because you feel complete within yourself and just enjoy sharing that with your partner. You can feel within your words Nicole, that neither of you would want to dishonour the other from that divine space by just having sex.

528. I love how you have explained this Nicole, and the more we love ourself, the more we can then share and celebrate that love with another.

529. If our cup is not full we are only asking another to fill it.

530. “I am already complete from the day I have lived.” When we live our life to the full by being with ourselves we have a sense of fulfilment, not from getting a job done but from being fully engaged with our whole being with what we are doing.

531. “What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself”. This was also what I did, Nicole. I used to be very needy, longing for intimacy and love but not realizing that I first needed to develop a loving and intimate relationship with myself. I also loved to support people to nurture themselves but I realise now that it was a substitute for the nurturing that I didn’t give myself and I saw the need for it reflected to me from others. What I was able to give them would then not have been as deeply nurturing as it is when I am deeply caring for myself.

532. When I am connected to my body I know how I need to move to remain in my delicateness, when I am disconnected I become loud and rough.

533. Hello Nicole and so very true, “What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself:” We so often push the world to give us something that in turn we are truly suppose to give ourselves first. We build the world in this way constantly having the view gazed outside in the hope of finding what we are looking for. More and more we are seeing that in fact everything is already here with us we have just walked away, the quality we live has supported that walk away. As you are saying about making love the key is not looking at the point but more look at the walk there, the way you lived to that point. Again the world is geared to only look at the point and then try and make it better. Yet here we have simple physics, that everything you are, in other words everything you live will be with you always at any point. So the true place to look for answers to questions at any point would be looking at how you have been until that point. If the world is called our stage then don’t keep stepping off it and then back on it and wondering why things aren’t working. Stay on stage and then the performance is assured. In other words stay with your body and how you are feeling and build trust in that. Then when you arrive at any point you will not be surprised or put off because you will already have everything, it is all with you, you have you.

534. This is a wonderful confirmation that when we feel like ‘us’ then we know the choices we make are true for us. When we have a feel of this the next choice is built on what supports us so our constant re-connecting with the essence of tenderness, gentleness and loveliness we innately are becomes our every day feeling. Then if something is jarring it becomes very obvious and saying no to this becomes simpler and clearer.

535. To come to a place where we know who we truly are, where the relationship with ourselves is one of deep intimacy, is a place from where we are then able to build a deep and intimate relationships with others. The days of endlessly seeking this intimacy outside of ourselves are replaced with days that are naturally filled with growing true and intimate connections with all those around us.

536. What has got in the way of me allowing love and making love instead of just having sex is, a myriad of beliefs and ideals of how a woman should be, what you should and shouldn’t do as a mother, ‘I can’t feel that about myself’ etc. There is so much out there about being ‘up your self’ if you love or hold yourself as precious… which can also be something that gets in the way of truly being open and loving with ourselves and others.

537. This blog is a beautiful sharing Nicole on making love. It is interesting that so many people crave and seek intimacy between the sheets. There may be a few moments of pleasure and perhaps perceived intimacy, but we are so often at the end of the tumble left feeling empty; that emptiness was already inside of us yet comes to the surface after the high of having sex. On the contrary, making love confirms the love that we are. It makes us no more, no less, but an expression with another of what we have already developed for ourselves.

538. Hi Nicole – I really related to this sharing; ‘What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.’ – I can say that in the past I used to be very giving to others; make them feel comfortable, adore and cherish them etc – and expect this in return – but the truth was I had never been this way with myself. It is a massive hole to fill if you try and get this from other people. And with that understanding I can now support myself in a way where I am enough and I take care of me so I do not put those expectations on another.

539. Reading the blog made me choose to deepen the connection with myself, drop my guard (a little more) and feel the preciousness and tenderness of what’s been written here as an inspiration for us all. There’s such grace, wisdom, honour and power in these words. Written from a knowing that life will forever reveal more and offer us evolution. Always from the foundation that we are love. And that nurturing and caring for ouselves is in fact the most natural thing to do. It is in fact a joy to do so. I’ve learnt for myself that it takes time to learn to listen to myself and to be willing to listen to myself, to my innervoice that is communicating clearly, yet never loudly. It isn’t imposing in any way, just there, offering me the choice to connect to it or not. The ultimate free will, the ultimate unconditional love.

540. For me making love is all about connection – as long as I am connected to my partner we are living in love and there is nothing more sexy than a man doing the washing up.

     1. ps: my husband does the washing up every evening and yes he is very sexy 😉

541. Everything stems from our inner relationship – how can I love another, be it in a relationship intimately, or a friendship, family etc, if I do not first love myself. And I am also learning that the way I have always approached relationships, making them individual and separate, doesn’t work either – it is by having loving relationships with many, and an openness to all that I can then bring that to each individual friendship, relationship etc.

542. What a beautiful blog, Nicole. It lays down a new foundation for what making love can truly be.

543. Without intimacy with myself I cannot really let in and accept intimacy from and or with another. It is a state and way of being that then becomes an expression not a doing. Intimacy always exposes the protection and withdrawnness one still holds onto, a chance to let go more of what does not belong to our true nature.

544. And I love the claiming back of the word intimacy… away from the sexual connotations to the quiet, respectful, open tenderness we share with ourselves and others.

545. I love the point you have made that making love is all the tender gestures and interactions in a day. The physical act of making love is then simply a confirmation of all of these.

546. ‘Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.’ Beautifully expressed Nicole. How can we possibly be making love to another if we don’t live in that quality for ourselves first – it simply won’t be configured in our bodies to share?

547. Beautiful, Nicole. This is my experience too and I am still unfolding myself. We can never start with loving another first as many of us have done in the past. I love the intimacy I have with myself and this is now so beautifully alive with my partner and family.

548. ‘Making love allows me to be me. I do not have to hold anything back, there is no fear of judgment, not performing or pleasing another or myself, I am already complete from the day I have lived.’ It is all about living our innate quality of divine love, how tender we are. Your blog is written in this quality, beautiful to feel Nicole and thank you for making the difference between making love and true intimacy versus having sex so clear.

549. I have come to understand that making love involves a level of intimacy that I had otherwise dismissed or ignored. For example learning to reconnect with my body one part at time. For example beginning to understand what exercises truly support my legs what is the best way to loofa them in the shower, what soap should I use, how and when to moisturise them, taking note when I walk, lift and sit,and stand. Understanding and appreciating how they support the whole of my body and how they carry me from activity to activity throughout the day. Paying attention to these details for every part of my body is a part of getting to know myself intimately.

550. “Making love is not just what happens between the sheets, nor is it a quality that only occurs in one moment” – when this was first presented to me, it made immediate sense but the fusion of sex and love has been so strong in my upbringing, it was a long time coming in application.

551. ‘When I make choices that are truly caring, loving and supportive of my body, I can feel my tenderness and delicateness again. I begin to feel like me, then I know that the choices I am making are true, and it is the only way to live.’ For so long I could not feel which choices were true and which were not as I had lost who I was somewhere along the way but the more I connect to the stillness and delicateness that is me, the more I can trust the choices I make, as the ones which are not true become more and more apparent.

552. Great sharing Nicole Serafin on how far you have allowed yourself to go in committing to the utmost care and respect of your body. It is so interesting to read how we are often sold that need to feel this level of intimacy from another that often leaves us searching for what is out there rather than stopping to feel that it all begins with the slightest changes to our every day living.

553. Loving ourselves first is something we are not brought up to do, and we can easily abuse our bodies by the way we work and by the food and drink we ingest. Another form of abuse we can indulge in is late nights – going to bed after our bodies have signalled they are ready for sleep, needing regeneration so that can be up early and alert, ready to be with us in another full day. The more intimate we become with our bodies, i.e. the more we allow ourselves to feel those subtle signals, the more easily we can take care of them.

554. This is one of the great gifts I have also become aware of since attending Serge Benhayon’s presentations –
     “I started to feel for myself an intimacy I already held within – but had never before felt or explored”.

555. A super-gorgeous and inspiring blog Nicole. A joy to read about the development of true intimacy with yourself.

556. This is something we need to learn young- to love ourselves deeply and not to enter into relationships seeking to be loved but to first love yourself and bring that quality to the relationship.

557. So true Nicole… the difference between making love and sex is vast and it wasn’t until I knew what love truly was, that I had any real sense of this. Prior to that I thought if my partner ‘loved me’ then we would be making love and sex was something that happened between relative strangers. Your blog exposes this for the falsity it is… thank you.

558. How could we possible reduce making love to the physical act? As expressed by many on this thread there is so much more.

559. A beautiful sharing, thankyou Nicole. How can we ‘make love’ with another if we are not first truly loving ourselves?

560. ‘the protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts: the hurt I felt of not being able to truly connect to another.’ I had to re-post this, we don’t really think things through when we put up a wall of protection do we?

561. Nicole, what you share her defines clearly the saying ‘you cannot love another unless you love your self first’.

562. This article delivers the all important message of developing a loving relationship with ourselves first, before being able to give or receive it from another.

563. This is a beautiful blog Nicole. Making love encapsulates far more than what society has narrowed it down to mean. Making love is something that nurtures and nourishes every human being, it is something we can live in our own lives in our relationship with ourselves and something we can deeply share with others. Making love can be expressed as you have shared through our touch, our movements, a gaze and so much more. The exploration of this opens so much up to be shared – thank you.

564. Beautiful to read, and inspiring to feel. Living intimacy with ourself is the only answer to all our cravings of love from another. Which will never fill the gap that is there.

565. When I was in my late teens/early twenties, a lot of my identity was tied up in how I saw myself sexually. So much of our society projects images and ideas about how we should be having sex and it really is a red herring. We invest so much energy, thought and time in being good in bed and all the while it’s preventing us from what we all truly want……connection.

566. “Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.” This is beautiful Nicole and redefines our intimate relationships, giving an insight into the potential that is available to all.

567. If it doesn’t exist in our relationship with ourselves first, then it can’t possibly exist in our relationship with another.

568. Nicole, you have shared so much that I can relate to. Making love, as you say, can not ever be separate from life and in some ways nor can having sex, in that being able to have sex, as a functional act of body parts, is, in itself, a reflection of the separation that a person is able to live from and this I know from my own body.

     1. I have experienced both (having sex and making love) and the difference is incredible. Settling for sex is one of the greatest injustices we do ourselves.

569. What I have learnt is that ‘making love’ is also not just a physical aspect of a relationship with a partner but instead a way of expressing that we can be through voice, eyes, touch, hugs … how we can be with everyone. To make all our interactions first and foremost about love, even telephone conversations when phoning up a company about something which is what I recently experienced. This was beautifull to read and feel ‘I started to feel for myself an intimacy I already held within – but had never before felt or explored’.

570. Its an interesting topic. There is nothing wrong with having sex per say, but all too often we use it as a marker of the ultimate form of intimacy. The question is – is this actually the truth? If you have little intimacy in your life in general, then yes, sex will bring you a form of physical intimacy that in itself will serve to make up for what your are lacking. But what if you do experience true intimacy in you life – with yourself, and with your partner – that is beyond the physical? What happens to sex? What happens when you no longer need sex to fulfil this unfulfilled part of yourself? Does the need for sex disappear entirely? That in itself is something that can only be discovered for oneself. Ultimately, I would say it is like this. If you make sex about sex only, then you will never understand true love, and if truth be known, you cannot know it. If, however, you make life about love, and making love in every moment, then sex can still be very much be part of that life.

571. This is very lovely Nicole..’Making love allows me to be me.’ It is me giving myself permission to cherish and connect to myself. It is quite bizarre that we look outwards to others to give us the very things we can give ourselves, and then blame them when they don’t. When I truly hold and love myself, I can bring that quality with me to everyone else I meet.

572. Intimacy is me allowing me to feel myself and get to know myself…as I open myself up in this discovery I let others in, as you say Nicole there is “a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.”

573. ‘Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself’, love what you are sharing here, Nicole. I realise how when I have felt ‘unloved’, it’s actually a reflection for me of how little I have loved myself.

574. ‘the protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts: the hurt I felt of not being able to truly connect to another.’ Thank you Nicole. You have shared so succinctly exactly how I have been feeling lately – makes perfect sense. I can feel the constriction of my protection and the devastating consequences this is having.

575. The story we’re told that you can only get intimacy from another person is one of the biggest lies we’re sold. It keeps us always looking outwards and searching for something but missing the greatest discovery of all – that intimacy starts with us when we begin to deeply care and nurture ourselves.

576. “Busy keeping everyone at a distance, I became more aware that I was missing the intimacy and connection I so desperately longed for from another, within myself.” We absolutely look for confirmation, intimacy and connection from others before even exploring the possibility of giving ourselves this first. When we deny supporting ourselves this way, we deny offering this truly to others.

577. Beautiful Nicole so inspirational and it melts my body reading it. You cover so much foundation with every aspect of our living way with true intimacy and connection with oneself first as the only loving way to live. Choosing this love for ourselves allows love to be everywhere and is what we are all about and who we are simply being ourselves. Thank you for the real reflection of making love.

578. Another beautiful reminder of the expression of our relationship and way of being with ourselves in what we do. I am loving this and although I have changed my choices so that my life is almost unrecognisable from the life I had several years ago, there is a depth and quality that we can bring in truly loving and making choices accordingly for ourselves. We can always go deeper and then express this outwardly.

579. Having sex is an act and making love is a way of being. I used to think the latter term was just a more polite way of saying the former. But in being love, in loving ourselves that is, we can simply be love – and thus make love in all that we do.

580. Nicole what a great sharing of the truth behind making love and the fact that as with everything in life its not just one moment but our stream of choices and way of being that is love or is not loving. This brings a whole new depth to what making love actually is.

581. Beautifully expressed Nicole and I love how you sum it up by saying ‘Making love allows me to be me.’ In giving myself permission to explore my relationship with me and start to make loving choices I have opened up a whole new world of possibilities and the more tenderly I treat myself the more I drop the layers of protection that have held me back from truly connecting with others and sharing the love that I have re-connected to within myself.

582. ‘What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself..’
     When this is actually realised, it is a huge revelation and super empowering. To know that the need can not only be fulfilled but totally soothed when we turn our gaze inward and give ourselves the honouring care, affection and attention we often crave from others. Another reflection of that fact that everything is within – a beautiful reminder.

583. Having sex feels to me like almost trying to ‘take’ something from the other to fulfil us because we desire and need it to so. Making love, is a celebration of the fullness we already are together and hence it is so much more than just the physical outcomes in bed.

584. I find intimacy starts with honesty and being absolutely open with myself and what it is I am feeling. Intimacy is a simply a feeling honoured and put into words in how you feel it. When delicateness and tenderness are not there I know I have dropped my feelings …

585. It truly is – it’s a beholding of oneself and then it’s easy to hold others in that same space.

586. “the protection I had built up to shield myself from the hurts was actually creating hurts”. Yes, yes, yes. I have felt this so much myself. It isn’t until I began to drop the protection that I began to feel the hurt that the protection was causing. It was amazing to feel what I had been denying myself.

587. True intimacy really does start with learning to be intimate with ourselves, and allowing that tenderness and loving quality that we have developed from within to shine through everything that we do. Every movement then becomes a reflection of that divine love and begins to pull equal qualities towards us, so we end up making love everyday, reagrdless of who we are with and what we are doing. As you so rightly say, it is not just kept for a physical act between the sheets with one person, but is something that we can share with everyone.

588. The way in which this is written, the feeling I get when I read it, the tenderness and intimacy with which you express…all of these absolute proof in me of the way you are living. Amazing to feel it so clearly and truly – thank you for that experience.

589. A gorgeous blog and very well claimed. Thank you for sharing your understanding.

590. ‘What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself’. Beautifully summed up the predicament most of humanity find themselves in. When I made the decision to put myself first in my life, was when I began to self-care and self- nurture, and now I love giving to myself and taking care of my own needs, so I am no longer ‘needy’ or insecure.

591. Making love is definitely far greater than what occurs in the physical act and for me it feels like the greatest preparation for truly making love with another. As I have built a quality within myself and how I treat and regard myself I would not accept any other form of touch from another if considering the actual act. But if I stand there from reaction and a stance of ‘don’t touch me until your tender’ even just righting that feels wrong because that is anything but tender. What I am learning is that making love is about sharing how I am with myself to another, so by this we make love in everyday life by sharing this quality as we go through the day. The actual act then would be a confirmation of what has been built in each body and together, I’ve yet to put that latter part into practice but reading this really confirmed that it’s ok to only accept a loving touch and that it comes from me first and when not hidden away can support another to build that same quality in themselves. Thank you Nicole.

592. Love to read this blog today, there is just so much to ponder on. There are many parts I could have wrote and completely relate to. Just the other day while I was walking, I observed my movements and immediately felt I need to allow myself to be more tender and gentle with myself not just in my walking, but in everything I do. On that moment there was a subtle gentleness in my movements.

593. I agree Nicole. It is so natural for us to connect with one another yet we do create hurts to prevent us from doing so. The hurts are not who I am yet it is surprising at times what I will create as excuses to not connect to myself and therefore to others eg. causing an argument because I feel hurt instead of acknowledging the hurt, knowing it is created and therefore not who I am and letting it go to come back to me and connect to the divine essence that is within me and in everyone and everything.

594. Nicole, this is absolutely beautiful, ‘Making love allows me to be me. I do not have to hold anything back, there is no fear of judgment, not performing or pleasing another or myself, I am already complete from the day I have lived’,reading this helps me make sense of the difference between sex and making love as sex seems to be very much about performing and pleasing another or myself.

595. Beautiful and beautifully expressed, Nicole. As you so rightly say, “What I had craved so desperately from others were all things I never gave to myself: not nurturing, cherishing, honouring, loving and adoring myself, but instead seeking, expecting and craving from another the love I denied for myself.” How can one possible love another when one is devoid of that connection to love within oneself?

596. What I hear you say here is that we cannot turn on our tenderness and making love side just for the making love time in bed, it can only be there because of having lived with this quality all day with ourselves and thus others we meet. It makes sense that it is this way because there is no on and off switch for being tender and loving; it is a livingness.

597. The first time I felt what true intimacy to one’s self, was during the end of an Esoteric Yoga group when feeling my body with my fingers as they came in contact with each other in the tenderness and love that was felt at that moment was exquisite. That moment of contact is what living with self-love should be at all times! I now have a marker of what making love is and anything less is not acceptable from self or others.

598. So often we’ll look to the outside, to another, to give us what we’re not willing to even give ourselves – basic care and love. When we start to give this to ourselves we’re so much less needy and can reflect this quality to all others. The quality of every relationship we have starts with us, first.

599. Have you ever stopped to consider if there is a difference between having sex and making love? What a great question Nicole, and from what you have described here in this blog there clearly is.

600. You have expressed so beautifully the world of difference between having sex and making love Nicole, sex feels like a taking and making love, a building.

601. Beautifully written Nicole and a subject that does require airing, as we are so fixated on sex being ‘it’ that we have largely forgotten about the art of ‘making love’ and that this art extends way, way beyond the bedroom. I used to associate it with a lot of emotional attachments too and saw ‘love’ as something the comes in from the outside, but after quite a few years of healing and study with Universal Medicine have come to realise that ‘making love’ is a constant internal activity that nurutres intimacy in the most ordinary activities. And the first place to start is with our selves, our quality of inner awareness and responsiveness to our bodily requirements, building a warmth within us that steadily and irresistibly extends outwards to include everyone and then at some point rolls over into our love making in the bedroom in the most tender, sweet and delicious way.

602. “Making love allows me to be me.” This is a very beautiful invitation to surrender to the beauty and grace that we are.

603. Making love is simply an extension of how we live each day. Beautiful. The way you have explained intimacy allows me to go deeper with my understanding of it and how I can make it an everyday part of the way I live.

604. Thank you Nicole, a beautiful invitation to be intimate with myself so that making love is “a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.”

605. This blog made me say wow once I had finished reading it. I will definitely read it again. You clearly describe how being intimate with ourselves must come first if there is to be true intimacy with another. What a delicious way to live. We often talk of being inspired by others, but how great to be inspired by ourselves – ‘The true depth, beauty and love of myself has been truly inspiring.’

606. Redeveloping the connection to ourselves does take work, it doesn’t just happen over night and can easily slip away if we choose old habits sparked by unresolved hurts, but it is well worth working for as the protection we build also stops us from truly knowing and feeling what Love really is.

607. I love this exploration of what it means to be loving and tender with oneself and how that then extends to our relationships with others.

608. Connection is deeply called for throughout humanity – whilst we seek it on the outside, we often fail to see that this begins always with us.

609. We as a society have so bastardized the true meaning of making love. However, it is not the true meaning of making love that has been bastardized but many other words as well. It is a way of avoiding the truth of life.

610. Wow Nicole. Thank you so much for sharing from your own experience. I always knew that sex was different to lovemaking but I thought that was more about how ‘nice’ people were with each other during the act. Your description of lovemaking is all encompassing and quite amazing.

611. True Nicole, we make intimacy about places on our body, areas we touch, but there is so much more to this feeling than just what is in sight. The more you experience intimacy, the more you can see it flows from connection that is there between us. Standing at the supermarket, folding the washing, eating lunch next to each other – all of these experiences can be beautifully delicate and precious if you both cherish and embrace the Love that is there.

612. Beautiful contribution – making love is first and foremost not what happens between the sheets but the connection we have with ourselves and as an extension of that, the way we conduct ourselves in everyday life and with everyone and everything.

613. Beautifully put Nicole. Making love is an expression of our innate divinity that is lived in and through our physical forms. Sex is what happens when two physical bodies meet without choosing to connect with and express from our body of love that is our Soul. And whilst such movements may appear to some as the same, they are in-truth worlds apart.

     1. Very true Liane, the physical movements may be the same but the quality is what distinguishes having sex from making love.

614. Making love comes from being in love. Being in love comes from choosing the energy of love in my body. That energy is naturally inviting, playful, warm and intimate. Making love is something we can do all day, everyday.

     1. Simple and beautifully said 🙂

615. It makes sense that to be truly intimate with another we must first deeply understand how to be intimate with ourselves through developing an ability to embrace ourselves lovingly in a way that is honouring, cherishing and adoring of who we are in a quality that reflects our precious nature…. This is a gorgeous foundation to have and one that will bless and inspire many.

     1. So true Samantha. My notions of being able to ‘get’ love from another have been exposed here.

616. It is a truly lovely feeling to love ourselves, to actually cherish our own qualities as much as we do that of others, and from this every relationships is enriched and the reward of that is there for everyone we come into contact with.

617. This is beautiful. When we make these changes in our day to day life, over time the whole impression we give out can change from forbidding to welcoming, making it much easier for others to relate to us.

618. Great post Nicole. Yes, i’ve found it really comes down to honouring oneself and learning to do this, not in any ingratiating way, but in a way of honouring the body in what it feels. The more the honouring, the deeper we get to know our body, and the more open or intimate we are with ourselves and with others too.

619. Wow Nicole, you have a way of expressing that crystallises the essence of the topic you are exploring. So simply presented, this sharing immediately gave me a deeper understanding of intimacy and supports me to appreciate and commit more fully to my relationship with intimacy. Thank you.

620. Thank you Nicole, ‘These are questions I never pondered on, never considering that there may be a difference between making love and having sex.’. Knowing the difference really supports us to make changes in our life to embrace ‘making love’ part of our day, like you shared, in our tender gaze, our gentle touch and the way we move and connect to ourselves and others in every moment.

621. ‘… I do not have to hold anything back, there is no fear of judgment, not performing or pleasing another or myself…’ What a beautifully inspirational way of living I too can learn to choose when I catch myself in self-judgement or protection.

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