Afterplay

What is afterplay?

Afterplay (Dutch: naspel) is everything you do together after sex: lying close, talking, caressing, kissing. Where foreplay works toward sex, afterplay keeps building the connection that comes after. It is an action, not a mood, and that is what sets afterplay apart from the afterglow it happens in.

What afterplay looks like in practice

Afterplay starts the moment sex is over and nobody gets up right away. A typical picture: two people who stay lying down, an arm that keeps resting, a conversation that comes slowly and about nothing in particular. That loose after-talk turns out to weigh more than it looks. In a diary study of a hundred and one couples, Amy Muise and colleagues found that a longer stretch of affection after sex went together with more sexual satisfaction, and through that with more satisfaction about the relationship. So it isn’t about a grand finish, it is about the minutes you take for it.

Where the idea comes from

As a term of its own, afterplay is young. The psychologists James Halpern and Mark Sherman put it on the map in 1979 with their book Afterplay: A Key to Intimacy, where they argued that the time after sex belongs to lovemaking just as much as the rest. Before that, nearly all the writing about sex was about the build-up toward it. The word afterplay was coined on purpose as a mirror of foreplay: if foreplay counts, why not afterplay.

Why afterplay matters

The pull of afterplay lies in the release: the performance is over, nothing more is required, and it is exactly in that openness that people come closer. What it gives is something different for each person. For someone who made themselves vulnerable during sex, afterplay is the confirmation that the surrender was safe. For the two of you together, it is the glue between one time and the next. A study of a hundred and seventy people by Susan Hughes and Daniel Kruger showed that cuddling and saying “I love you” after sex were rated as more important by both sexes than beforehand, while women started those bonding gestures more often. What afterplay does not do: it repairs no sex that was off, and it is no obligatory number. Lying close out of duty because it’s what you do, the other person reads without a miss.

How people go about it

The most common form is the simplest one: staying put, skin against skin, and letting the conversation come. Around that there are variations. Some look for quiet and want only touch, others want to talk and go over the evening. Others again have a small ritual: a shower together, a drink, a while longer on the couch. The difference between careful and careless afterplay is not in how long it lasts, but in whether the attention is really there. Fifteen minutes of honest attention does more than an hour with half an eye on your phone.

Afterplay is not aftercare

“Afterplay and aftercare are the same thing.” They look alike, but they have a different job. Afterplay is ordinary affection after sex. Aftercare is the targeted care after an intense or heavy session, often meant to catch a drop. All aftercare is a form of care afterward, but not every afterplay is aftercare.

“Afterplay is a women’s thing.” Women start it more often on average, but the need is not one-sided. In Halpern and Sherman’s book, both men and women wanted more afterplay than they got, and the Hughes and Kruger study found the value placed on cuddling and saying “I love you” in both sexes.

“Afterplay is just another word for afterglow.” Afterglow is the state you are in, afterplay is what you do. You can lie close (afterplay) while you sit in that calm glow, but one is the action and the other is the feeling.

What I notice

There is a moment right after sex where a lot of people roll apart and reach for their phones. I’m Victor, a gigolo, and I deliberately do the opposite: I stay. Women often tell me afterward that the lying close and the talking is what stayed with them most, more than the sex itself. It costs little, and it is the part people at home cut back on the fastest without realizing it.

More reading on afterplay

• Afterglow explains what happens in the body while you have afterplay, and why that feeling can carry on for days.
• Aftercare describes the heavier variant: targeted care after an intense session, with the risks that come with it.
• The study by Muise, Giang and Impett is for anyone who wants to see how the duration of affection after sex ties, in numbers, to satisfaction.

Where this fits on my site

If an evening where the afterplay matters as much as the rest appeals to you, that fits how I work. The page on intimate togetherness shows what such an unhurried evening looks like. Not sure if it suits you, just ask me first.

Sources

• Post Sex Affectionate Exchanges Promote Sexual and Relationship Satisfaction. Muise, Giang & Impett, Archives of Sexual Behavior 43(7), 1391-1402, 2014. Finds that a longer stretch of affection after sex ties to higher sexual satisfaction and, through that, to higher relationship satisfaction, in a diary study of a hundred and one couples.
• Sex Differences in Post-Coital Behaviors in Long- and Short-Term Mating. Hughes & Kruger, The Journal of Sex Research 48(5), 496-505, 2011. Finds that cuddling and saying “I love you” after sex were rated more important by both sexes than beforehand, and that women started those bonding gestures more often, among a hundred and seventy participants.
• Afterplay: A Key to Intimacy (book). James Halpern & Mark Sherman, Stein & Day, 1979. Introduces the term afterplay and makes the case that the time after sex belongs to lovemaking just as much as the build-up toward it.

Related terms

• Afterglow. The state after sex, while afterplay is what you concretely do in it.
• Aftercare. The targeted care after an intense session, heavier and more focused than ordinary afterplay.
• Aftercare (the scene word). The English loanword the scene uses for that care.
• Drop. The dip that afterplay or aftercare helps to catch.
• Sexual response cycle. The phase model whose rest at the end is the final stage.