Analyse a story or script, and you can break down the narrative into parts: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, conflict, climax, falling action, and resolution. Sex is much the same. Yet whether it’s a story or intercourse, we often focus our attention on the parts that bring us to climax and orgasm – the Big-O, where most of the tension lives. Magazines give advice on how to make partners orgasm or how to be better at foreplay, but we rarely talk about the part that comes afterward. It’s a shame because that falling action is, according to recent studies, where the majority of relationship satisfaction comes from.
You’ve probably heard the term ‘afterglow’, defined as the aura of satisfaction and closeness that comes after sex. It’s the feeling that makes two sweaty people want to snuggle rather than rush off to shower. Now, Amy Muise, a psychologist at York University in Canada, reports that it’s the seemingly boring pillow talk, and not so much ‘spicing things up’, that helps love last.