Where does “sex” start?

When I posed this question to a group of friends recently, answers ran the gamut. Some were profound: “Too often, in our culture, sex = fucking. A better approximation might be sex = living.”

Others had a slightly more limited perspective on the question: “In bed.” But we decided that the best answer of the night was “Sex starts anywhere at all.”

Unfortunately, most of us imagine sex with a beginning, middle, and end. We generally divide sex into foreplay, intercourse, orgasm (maybe), and “Okay, I want to go to  sleep now.”

I blame baseball. But that’s because I grew up with the old round-the-bases approach to sex. You know, first base, making out; second base, boob handling; third base, crotch contact; and finally, the home run, sexual intercourse. Thanks to this one metaphor, a whole generation of us learned that sex was all about “scoring” and that intercourse — usually combined with male orgasm — was the goal. Female orgasm rarely even entered the playing field.

But, like any sport, you play much better after a good warm-up. But most of us rush through the warm-up (or skip it altogether). When it comes to sex, the more time spent on warming up, the more satisfying it is when you get to the finish line.

Or, if you’re not a sports fan, perhaps you prefer a more artistic analogy. As a film producer friend of mine once put it, “The biggest mistake that people make with sex (as with films) is that they neglect the prep and post and focus solely on production.”

That’s not to say there isn’t something to be said for occasionally skipping the warm-up. Throwing your partner up against the hall table on your way out the door because you are simply overcome by how hot she looks all decked out for a night on the town certainly has its charm. And, when life gets in the way, and a long, leisurely lovemaking session is #73 on the to-do list, a quickie is sometimes better than nothing. But let’s face it: for a woman, it’s hard to come when you’re pinned to the hall table. For that, we need some prep time.

But let’s ditch the term “foreplay,” shall we? Foreplay makes it sound like something you have to get through before you get to the good stuff. Like the foreword of a book. Who reads the foreword? But there’s so much good stuff that needs to happen before you’re anywhere even near getting each other’s clothes off, trust me, you don’t want to be skimming.

The other thing I don’t like about the word foreplay is the way men react to it — it’s like calling a movie a “chick flick.” “Men don’t like foreplay,” our culture tells us again and again. “What’s the average man’s definition of foreplay? Unzipping his fly.” Ba-dum-bum. This stereotype is insulting and limiting to both men and women.

I don’t believe men don’t care about what transpires before intercourse. I also don’t believe women are more sexually complex and need more time to warm up, another cultural stereotype so often perpetuated. In fact, scientists from the McGill University Health Care Centre in Montreal, Canada used a method of thermal imaging to record temperature change in the genital area to determine the time necessary for men and women to become sexually aroused. Guess what? On average, men and women take the same amount of time to become sexually aroused — about 10 minutes. So there.

I say we just do away with the word foreplay altogether and instead think in terms of anticipation, arousal, buildup, and creating desire. And rather than think of these things as part of a preliminary step that will inevitably get you laid, keep them alive at all times in your relationship. That way, you won’t have to worry about fumbling around in the dark trying to find the I-wanna-have sex switch. The light will always be on.

Sadly, we live in a culture of instant gratification, and we’ve forgotten the pleasure of not being gratified all the time. But as a wise friend of mine once said, the beauty of anticipation is that it has more potential. Once you get off, it’s done. You can take anticipation and do something with it.

Creating anticipation will sexually electrify your relationship and, besides saving wear on tear on certain body parts when you do eventually get horizontal, sex will feel less like a grand slam and more like a sweet slide into home.

Next week: How to stimulate each other without even taking your clothes off.