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