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 are questions I never pondered on, never considering that there may be a difference between making love and having sex.
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 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; feelings that were rarely felt, but when they were, they were cherished.
When I began my own journey back to a life of true vitality with the support of western and complementary medicine, and through Universal Medicine’s practitioners and presentations, I started to feel for myself an intimacy I already held within – but had never before felt or explored.
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 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.
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.
Developing intimacy with myself took time. It did not happen overnight, nor have I completely mastered the art, nor is it being done in a sexual way. Instead, 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.
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.
The true depth, beauty and love of myself has been truly inspiring, and with it has come a sense of freedom: a realisation that 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.
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 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.
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.
I now hold and love myself as the beautiful woman I am, and now with that quality I am able to know and can feel that there really is a difference between making love and having sex.
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. Making love with another is simply an extension of that: a sharing of the love that I have already lived with myself.
By Nicole Serafin, Woman, Self-employed Hairdresser, Wife and Mother, Tintenbar, NSW
Further Reading:
Is Making Love More Than Just Sex
‘To Make Love or Have Sex?’ – One Man’s Experience
Sex, Drugs… and Making Love
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
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?
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…
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
‘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.
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.
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.
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.
The love and intimacy begins with ourselves first… then the flow on effect to our relationships is greater love and transparency.
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.
And this way is always there when we choose to connect to our beingness- our inner-fire works.
Making love like all true relationships start with ourselves. This is nothing sexual but a deep intimacy, respect and connection with ourselves.
And that starts with how we are living with ourselves, what quality are we choosing to live in.
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.
Great point Andrew – the moment we harden or push, then we lose our connection to our essence and hence the intimacy is gone.
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.
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.
It is a beautiful invitation to deepen the love for ourselves first which will ripple around us.
Yes, as Nicole did, ‘I now hold and love myself as the beautiful woman I am’.
Intimacy is very much related with transparency, how open and loving can we be in every moment of the day.
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.
Building a foundation of care and love for ourselves enables us to then share this with another.
Intimacy, caring for and loving another is felt when we choose this way of living with ourselves.
Choosing to live with a quality, ‘A quality and intimacy that supports me to feel, love and honour my body, always.’
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.
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?’
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.
Beautifully said Nicole. Making love to another is an expansion of the way I make love to myself. I also see that love I receive, and I feel in a session from a practitioner is something I am also able to give to myself. I am a practitioner of myself as well.
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.
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.’
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.
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.
Intimacy is about allowing more of our true selves to be seen in full.
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.
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.
Letting go of judgement of ourselves is huge, it gives us ourselves the space we need to heal.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Learning to fully love ourselves, and from there opening our hearts to love another is a great learning to master.
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 ?
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.
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.
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.’
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.
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.
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.
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.