If you’re reading this on the day it comes out, Valentine’s Day is this Saturday and my Valentine wish for all of you is more pleasure digestion.
A forewarning that today’s post gets a little spicy.
Pleasure digestion is officially defined as the process by which the nervous system, the body and the psyche metabolize pleasurable experiences, allowing pleasure to be felt, and built on over time. My friends and I colloquially refer to pleasure digestion as texting with your partner or date about an event, particularly sexual in nature, after it’s happened. Used in a sentence: “He sent such good pleasure digestion today, I’m dying.”
So much of my experience of pleasure is in the remembrance, the rehashing, the nostalgia, the photo reviewing, the re-imagining, the re-visioning it in my mind, as if I’m watching someone else’s story. It has a cinematic quality that rolls seamlessly from the remembering into the anticipation and the imagining of the next encounter.
I’ve always known that I like that kind of written, shared recap of an event (sexual or platonic) but I hadn’t heard the official term Pleasure Digestion, until a friend who attended ISTA, shared not only the term, but that this is something you could specially request as part of aftercare; the type of support and connection you want to receive from your partner after a sexual interaction. Where were the discussions about aftercare and pleasure digestion in our sorely lacking sexual education??
In full disclosure, there have been times when I’ve been fully in the midst of a sensual experience and wondered to myself what they will disclose to me about it the next day? How did they experience it? What are the parts that replay for them on repeat? The recounting *might* even be more pleasurable than the actual event. Going through that doorway into their interiority and hearing what stood out to them, when they were the most turned on, what they want more of, what they look forward to, what they think about; I mean truly is there anything better? The subsequent text exchange after a sexual interaction is a tiny glimpse into that otherwise walled off interior world that we never have full access to.
At a party recently, I found myself in a conversation about one of my favorite questions right now: why do straight women love Heated Rivalry, an intensely erotic gay romance, so much? My hypothesis is that women in particular want to feel that our partner is consumed by the idea of us, that we eclipse all other waking thoughts. And in Heated Rivalry, we watch as month-after-month, year-after year, Ilya and Shane’s yearning for each other not only doesn’t dissipate, it intensifies. The show expertly captures the tension of the anticipation, the texting, the planning, the domination of our partner’s attention. It’s the common thread in all of the love stories that have taken hold of the cultural zeitgeist (Twilight, 50 Shades, ACOTR): one or both partner’s insatiable, all consuming need for the other. Heated Rivalry is the penultimate example of pleasure digestion; we see each man imagining and texting about the previous encounter, recycling it into anticipation that makes the next moment even more charged.
My particular affinity for pleasure digestion made even more sense when I got my Erotic Blueprint. Similar to Gary Chapman’s 5 love languages, somatic sexologist Jaiya developed the 5 erotic blueprints from decades of working 1-on-1 with clients. She was featured in Sex, Love & Goop on Netflix and over 2 million people have taken her erotic blueprint quiz (as an aside - 2 million people taking a $17 quiz is an incredibly expansive example of passive income).
Just as the 5 love languages map out how you like to give and receive love (verbal affirmation, physical touch, time spent together, gifts, and acts of service), the 5 erotic blueprints (energetic, sexual, sensual, kinky and shapeshifter) map out how you like to be turned on and your superpowers in arousing a partner. After completing the quiz, you receive a 29 page report that includes how you best interact with the 5 blueprints, what increases your arousal and what eliminates it; an education most of us are sorely lacking in understanding our own mechanisms for desire.
My erotic blueprint type is Energetic and so, to no surprise, this is one way you ‘feed’ the arousal of an Energetic:
“Energetics are turned on by space, anticipation, tease, yearning and longing. You love feeling the full presence of others.”
Yup.
Jaiya notes that: The majority of people are starving in their Erotic Blueprint and therefore they feel they are broken or even suspect they do not have desire at all. The truth is that they simply are not putting the right kind of fuel into the fire.
And so this Valentine’s Day, I hope you request the kind of pleasure digestion you want to receive and whether you’re single or partnered, I hope you explore what kind of fuel you need for your individual erotic fire.
In Case You Missed It
I answered a reader submitted question about setting a boundary with situationships.
I wrote predictions for dating and relationships in 2026
We are moving into the Year of the Fire Horse
I wrote about leaving a good relationship at 39 to hold out for great, on the Plus One Substack.
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yum!