ABSTRACT
Early childhood experiences become the relational templates in the brain and nervous system for self-confidence or insecurity, comfort or unease in social interactions, beliefs and expectations about intimate love. Sexual development starts in infancy and early childhood, and parents’ reactions to a child’s sexual interest become a part of attachment history. Attachment style and adult sexual style are interrelated. Secure individuals are most likely to enjoy sexual pleasure in a loving relationship. Insecure-anxious people are more likely to engage in sex to safeguard a relationship than for sexual pleasure. Avoidant individuals tend to have lower sex drives, have brief affairs, and have sex out of obligation. Hot loving sex requires full body-mind presence. Insecure individuals tend to be distracted by thoughts during sex and less present empathically with the partner. Becoming attuned to the partner involves sense awareness. Different attachment styles correlate with different styles of sensory processing. Sensory communications affect body-to-body intimacy through the five senses in how partners touch, make eye contact, their tone of voice, body language, taste, and smell. Internal senses conditioned to the external senses contribute to emotional reactivity and make up the sixth sense of intuition. These include interoception, neuroception, and gut feelings arising in the enteric nervous system. The author adds a seventh sense of “erotoception,” pointing out that genitals are not just organs of reproduction but also sensory organs no less than the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin, and gut. She postulates a spiritual, eighth sense.
