In "Sans Rendez-vous", the sexologist and psychoanalyst Catherine Blanc answers the question of Rachid, who wishes to have a definition of foreplay.

But the answer is less simple than it seems, and the specialist must first deconstruct the notion.

>> We often put the foreplay under the label "what happens before penetration".

This is particularly the case of Rachid, an auditor, who would like to have a clear and precise definition.

But the thing is more complex than it seems.

In "Sans Rendez-vous", the sexologist and psychoanalyst Catherine Blanc deconstructs this notion of foreplay to better understand what it really is. 

Rachid's question

Could you tell us good faith for all the foreplay is?

Does this apply to everything before penetration?

>> Find all sexo questions in replay and podcast here

Catherine Blanc's response

The foreplay does not refer to what happens before the penetration, but before the sexuality.

In Rachid's question, we perceive that his definition of sexuality boils down to penetration.

In this case yes, the foreplay is all that happens before the penetration and everything that will allow the quality of the latter.

But the moment you touch, lick or suck on the other's penis, you are already in sexuality.

We must not deny what happens upstream of penetration and sexuality.

A kiss, is this the beginning of the preliminaries?

Yes quite.

Likewise, holding the hand of his half can be a preliminary.

It all depends on the intention behind the gesture, and the circumstances.

If you have the feeling that holding your husband's hand is dragging him to prison, you don't.

But if both take the measure of this hand which holds theirs, it can be very sensual and therefore become a preliminary.

In the case of a kiss, we can even consider that we are already in sexuality, that we are preparing the penetration of the body, that we are sliding towards an eroticization, towards the fact of stripping etc.

Are sexting suddenly part of the foreplay?

Yes of course, since we are getting excited.

Suddenly, the preliminaries do not depend so much on the gesture as on the context.

Are we using the right word to define them?

"Preliminaries" is what is before what we decide.

It includes a lot of things.

So to know what a preliminary is, one must ask what the act in question is the preliminary.