- Sexual Transformation
- 6 mins
Sex is natural; making love is an art.
My journey of awakening continues to deepen my connection with myself and with the present moment. I experience periods of gratitude for this life. For this opportunity to be present for love and joy and ecstasy and pleasure.
Being present for love - fully present and deeply connected to oneself and to another is a sacred meditation.
It can be a ritual for healing, for building energy, and for restoring energy. Love is a heart-felt energetic exchange. It doesn't need to become a specific sexual experience. When you allow for an erotic dance of loving energy, you get to live in the flow of the present moment, and the pleasure that you are both experiencing and circulating.
The difference between having sex and making love is your attachment to the outcome.
How vested are you in what happens next?
If you're expecting a specific sequence of events, such as erection, penetration, and ejaculation, then you're having sex. Sex almost always implies intercourse and penetration.
When did the word sex come to mean fucking? (penis-vagina fucking)
For many people, the basic sexual script often follows a narrow path leading to some form of penetration. Folks are so focused on the act of penetration, they lose sight of what is present between them. Overly focusing on the outcome will rob you of the pleasurable sensations right now.
Meanwhile, making love is an experience of connection, intimacy, and pleasure, with no expectation of a specific outcome. You can make love without having sexual intercourse anytime. And when you have sex while making love, it's something magnificent to behold.
What are the qualities of extraordinary erotic intimacy, and what are the elements that help bring it about?
These are some of the questions Drs. Peggy Kleinplatz and A. Dana Menard started asking when they conducted the largest, in-depth interview study of its kind with people having extraordinary sex. In Magnificent Sex, Peggy Kleinplatz and her colleagues interviewed individuals who consistently described their sexual experiences as deeply meaningful and extraordinary. Their research found that magnificent sex is not about technique or performance — it is about relational and psychological qualities.
One reason this book stood out to me, as an anthropologist and sexologist, is that the research employed descriptive phenomenology, a discovery-oriented approach designed to generate detailed accounts of experiences that have not been systematically examined or documented. Through this lens, researchers seek to understand the depth and complexity of a phenomenon by exploring it from the diverse subjective realities and lived experiences of participants.
After conducting extensive, in-depth interviews with people who described their sex lives as truly amazing, certain themes began to shine through again and again. The shared stories, the overlapping feelings, and the repeated conditions made it possible to distill their experiences into eight core elements—the major components of what they came to call magnificent sex.
1. Being Fully Present
Magnificent sex requires complete embodied attention. Participants described a state of immersion — where distractions fall away, and awareness is rooted in sensation, emotion, and connection in the present moment.
2. Feeling Deeply Connected
Extraordinary sexual experiences are grounded in emotional attunement. Partners feel profoundly bonded, safe, and “with” each other — not just physically, but psychologically and energetically.
3. Deep Sexual and Erotic Intimacy
Beyond emotional closeness, magnificent sex includes a felt erotic charge. There is a dynamic interplay between desire, longing, play, and responsiveness that creates aliveness and polarity.
4. Extraordinary Communication and Deep Empathy
Participants reported a capacity to read one another with nuance. This includes both verbal and nonverbal communication — the ability to express needs, respond to subtle cues, and remain deeply empathic.
5. Authenticity and Transparency
Magnificent sex flourishes where partners feel free to be real. There is no performance, no pretense — only genuine expression of desire, limits, pleasure, and emotion.
6. Vulnerability and Surrender
Letting go — of control, of image, of outcome — emerged as central. Participants described moments of emotional nakedness and erotic surrender that allowed for profound intimacy.
7. Exploration, Risk-Taking, and Play
Magnificent sex is not rigid. It includes curiosity, creativity, and willingness to take interpersonal risks. Partners feel safe enough to explore, experiment, and have fun.
8. Transcendence and Transformation
At its peak, magnificent sex can feel expansive or even spiritual. Participants described altered states, a sense of unity, healing, growth, or personal transformation that extended beyond the physical act.
The vast majority of extraordinary lovers interviewed said that intercourse/penetration was irrelevant, inconsequential, or unnecessary for exceptional loving. Kleinplatz’s findings challenge the cultural fixation on performance metrics (frequency, orgasm, technique). Instead, magnificent sex is rooted in emotional maturity, relational safety, embodied presence, and courage.
It's less about doing and more about being.
Why does this matter? Great lovers are made. Anyone can learn to slow down and get curious. Breathe together. Feel one another's heartbeat. Raise erotic energy and generate pleasure, for pleasure's sake.
The difference between having sex and making love is profoundly influenced by our relationship with time and presence. Making love requires slowing down enough to truly inhabit each moment, each sensation, each exchange of energy.
Pause is always good when making love. A single pause where we take an inhale and release an exhale can create space for deeper connection. We notice our hands, their temperature, and the feeling of touching and being touched.
We can get really quiet and listen for the hum. Feel into the vibration of the energy between you. We feel sensations and allow ourselves to be carried down and through them. Eventually, we come to where the energy is neutral yet bright, alive, and electric. Sometimes we feel a sinking sensation, as if an internal light has been turned on.
In contrast, having sex without this quality of presence keeps us on the surface of the experience. We're having a physical experience without an emotional or spiritual one. We focus on pleasure and default to the sequence, which has us rushing towards climax without experiencing the depths available along the way. The distinction between sex and making love becomes clear when we understand how essential time and presence are to the deeper experience.
Making love involves a depth of non-verbal communication that creates an almost telepathic connection. Partners become attuned to each other's subtle shifts in energy, breathing, and movement. They feel one another's pleasure.
In making love, we practice active and deliberate connection, in large and small ways. We relinquish withholding our time, expression, affection, enthusiasm, and truth. We sink and surrender to the expansion of loving energy between us.
Physical sex without these rituals of attention can still be pleasurable, yet can miss the depth that making love offers. The distinction becomes clear when we recognize how these gestures and rituals enhance not just the experience itself but the connection between partners.
The fulfillment available in making love extends far beyond physical release. While having sex can certainly provide pleasure and release tension, making love offers a more comprehensive satisfaction that encompasses body, mind, heart, and spirit. Couples can experience simultaneous rolls of pleasure and full-body, energetic orgasms.
When making love, we are made into love. We exist in a world from which all life issues. We feel our connection to source and to all that is. We merge with our partner and with the collective consciousness. It is not anything we could experience intellectually or conceptually. It's not of the brain. It's of the heart. We see with a different set of eyes, capable of perceiving love itself rather than just its external manifestations.
The difference between having sex and making love becomes most apparent in the aftermath. After making love, we often feel more energized than depleted, more connected than separate, more present than distant. This state of fulfillment ripples through all aspects of our lives.
Making love is a therapeutic experience and part of Heroic Self-Care.
Curious to learn more?
Download my Couples Guide to Intimacy to discover easy and effective practices you can share with your partner to build intimacy, connection, and pleasure.
