The Fundamentals of Sex

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Making love is typically more enduring, profound, and emotionally intimate than just having sex.

When sex involved love, people keep thinking about their partner for a long time.

Sexual afterglow may be less intense than orgasm but plays a larger role in long-term satisfaction.

Patience is not passive waiting but active engagement despite delay or difficulty.

“Patience is not simply the ability to wait—it's how we behave while we're waiting.”—author Joyce Meyer

“Last night I had sex with my husband, but he did not actually touch me—he just penetrated me. I was so sad I could cry.”—Married woman

The expressions making love and having sex are often used interchangeably. However, although making love typically involves sex, not every sexual encounter can be described as making love. Compared with merely having sex, making love is usually longer, more patient, enduring, profound, and more emotionally intimate. The differences between the two can be grouped into three broad categories:

Profound romantic activities

Below, I briefly discuss these categories while examining in greater detail the roles of patience and sexual afterglow in distinguishing between making love and just having sex.

1. Temporal Richness: Patience and Impatience

“Patience is not sitting and waiting; it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full.”—Rumi

“It’s now or never, be mine tonight, tomorrow will be too late.”—Elvis Presley

A central difference between making love and merely having sex concerns their temporal structure, which is clearly reflected in the issue of romantic patience. A patient heart, which values time in both the present and the future, is essential in making love. An impatient heart, which focuses mainly on the immediate moment, is more characteristic of just having sex.

Making love involves a balance between patience and impatience, whereas casual sex often relies primarily on impatience.

The additional time involved in making love is........

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