Stepping Off The Intimacy Escalator
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Dear Listener,
As I write this, I’m remembering a night of expansive intimacy with a lover, our two bodies sprawled on the floor, hands tracing constellations across skin, hours of kissing intermixed with laughter, and breath syncing in that sacred rhythm of being with one another.
We never had “sex.”
We never “finished.”
No penetration.
No climax.
No peak.
And yet I left that night feeling so incredibly full, so alive in my body, so connected to the pulse of shared pleasure. Honestly, that night felt more sexual than some experiences of even having penetrative sex.
And still, even in the afterglow of that beauty, a small voice inside whispered:
“Should we have gone further?”
That voice, the one shaped by cultural scripts and conditioned expectations, nudged me with the familiar suggestion that we hadn’t done enough, that “real” intimacy required escalation.
It’s so deeply embedded in the media we consume, in the sex education we never received, in the religion that moralized our bodies, in the porn that shaped our expectations, and in the rom coms that told us how love should unfold. This script doesn’t just shape how we think about sex, it tells us what counts, what matters, what’s real, and what makes us lovable. It gives us a narrow definition of intimacy and expects us to perform within those lines.
I know this script intimately. As a survivor of sexual assault and the grooming of purity culture, I was taught that my body was not mine:
That sex was something I was expected to give.
That my pleasure was less important.
That his orgasm was the goal
(because heteronormative sex is the only "real" sex).
That saying no was selfish.
That painful sex was normal.
That needing lube meant I was broken.
That asking for a break meant something was wrong with me.
That penetration and orgasm was the pinnacle.
These are the internalized echoes of what I now call the Intimacy Escalator, that invisible, deeply socialized structure that tells us how sexual connection is supposed to happen.
• It’s a linear path of assumed progression: touching should lead to kissing, kissing should lead to penetrative sex, sex should lead to orgasm, orgasm should mean connection, and connection should always move toward more.
• It is the heteronormative expectation that the only "real" sex is penetrative sex. Anything else is just "foreplay."
• It is the expectation that sex should flow "naturally" without any discussion of consent, check-ins along the way, or pauses.
• It is the expectation that you should want to kiss anyone you'd be willing to use a toy on.
• It is the expectation that you should have spontaneous rather than responsive desire.
• It is the expectation that you should always crave sex with your lover and that frequency is better than quality.
• It is the expectation of following socially approved scripts rather than exploring your unique pleasure.
This mirrors what Amy Gahran describes as the “Relationship Escalator,” the cultural expectation that significant relationships must follow a prescribed path: dating, exclusivity, cohabitation, marriage, kids, growing old together.
I wrote about this in my research on Relationship Anarchy, where I explored how deeply this escalator shapes not just our partnerships but also our very definitions of love and success.
You can read my published dissertation here if you're curious:
But a similar script exists for sex too. There is also an intimacy escalator.
Unconsciously riding the escalator, many of us move through sex not in deep presence with what’s alive in the moment but rather in performance, ticking boxes that were handed to us by systems that care more about control than connection.
Who wrote these rules?
Who benefits from them?
Because let’s be honest:
There are people I want to kiss and nothing more.
There are people I’d happily use a toy on but have no interest in kissing.
There are weeks where I don’t want to have sex at all.
There are times where I feel ecstasy without any penetration.
There are times when orgasm feels like liberation and times when it feels like pressure.
And it has taken years of unlearning…years of listening inward to honor those truths in real time, without shame, without apology, without making my body wrong for what it wants (or doesn’t). Unlearning systems of oppression takes active work, reflection, and community.
So, what do we find when we actively choose to deconstruct the intimacy escalator?
Play.
Not performance.
Not productivity.
Not the pressure to get somewhere.
Just play.
The kind of play that invites you to be fully in the present moment, to savor what is rather than grasping toward what should be. The kind of play that delights in pause, in exploration, in soft laughter between kisses.
Because when we step off the intimacy escalator, we find space to wander.
We find space to enjoy all that is possible: touch without a goal, sex without a script, desire without demand. We get to feel again.
The Intimacy Escalator has no space for:
• Long hugs that don’t go anywhere
• Platonic cuddling that is deeply erotic
• Penetrative sex that doesn’t involve orgasm
• Sex that doesn’t involve penetration
• People you want to kiss but never fuck
• People you want to fuck but never kiss
• Sex that doesn’t lead to bonding
• Bonding that doesn’t lead to sex
So what do we do with the Intimacy Escalator?
We name it.
We step off it.
We dismantle it.
We begin to co-create a new erotic paradigm…one rooted in attunement over achievement, presence over performance, curiosity over expectation.
We co-create a paradigm where we get to choose each step not because it’s the “next” thing on a predetermined map, but because it’s what feels most alive in our bodies, in our relationships, in that sacred breath between yes and no.
And what a wild, wondrous journey it is to honor that desire in your soul.
I’m committed to that journey of pleasure liberation in my life, in my research, in my work with clients, and in the podcast. Each conversation is a space of deep deconstruction to untangle the scripts that have shaped our desires, our relationships, and our sexuality.
Together, we challenge the systems of oppression that live inside all of our assumptions to better honor our bodies, our truth, and our pleasure.
I hope you’re enjoying tuning in each week to dive deeper into these ideas. I hope these conversations are giving you permission to rewrite your story. I hope they are opening up more possibility in your body, in your relationships, in the way you touch and are touched.
I dream of a world where intimacy is not a performance, where sex is not a duty, where pleasure is not a race to the finish line, where play is sacred, and where freedom is found in presence.
And together, we are building that world... one conversation at a time.
What could you discover if you stepped off the intimacy escalator?
Sending All My Love,
Nicole
Nicole Thompson, M.A.
Clinical Psychology