More Than Just Touch: Understanding the Difference Between Self-Intimacy and Self-Pleasure
By Sherraine Miller, MA, ATR-P
The Scenario: An Evening Alone
Picture the perfect Friday night after a long, emotionally draining week. This night? It’s a night for yourself. There is no work, no texts or calls coming in, no communication, no expectations. To start the evening, you draw yourself a warm bath, adding a few drops of your favorite oils—such as lavender or eucalyptus. Once settled inside, you let the steam wrap around you like a soft embrace, slowly sinking into the water, closing your eyes, and taking deep breaths. Now you’re here, present, and fully with yourself.
Post bath, you wrap yourself in your favorite, softest and silkiest robe. You head toward the bed with a book you’ve been dying to read. You have a warm cup of tea ready by your nightstand, waiting to be sipped while you disappear into the pages of your book, while the soothing flavors linger on your tongue. You even notice how the softness of your sheets feel against your skin.
The night continues to unfold, and a familiar feeling stirs in your body—a craving for a different kind of connection. So, you find yourself letting your hands roam, exploring your own touch, responding to your own desires. You take your time, savoring every sensation, every reaction. You aren’t rushing to an end goal—you’re simply enjoying yourself.
Self-Intimacy or Self-Pleasure?
You’ll find that both self-intimacy and self-pleasure were at play in the Friday night imagery. However, they are serving different roles. Maybe you’re wondering now, what's the difference?
Intimacy is about having a deep sense of closeness, connection, and vulnerability that is often shared between individuals. In her book, Use Your Mouth, sexologist Shamyra Howard identifies seven types of intimacy: emotional, physical, intellectual, spiritual, financial, social, and sexual. Each form of intimacy offers unique paths to deeper connections, so they require unique approaches to nurture them. Engaging in intimacy with others involves trust, openness and a mutual understanding. Whereas pleasure is about the experience of enjoyment, gratification, or satisfaction. Pleasure can be physical in nature, emotional, or psychological. It can come from sensory experiences (e.g., sound, taste, touch), personal achievements, or emotional connections.
Intimacy and pleasure are frequently used as euphemisms for sex. However, sexual intimacy and sexual pleasure are just one of many types. As a whole, intimacy is a state of being, whereas pleasure is an experience. Intimacy tends to be cultivated overtime, shaping the relationships we have with ourselves and others. Intimacy can run deep and be ongoing, while pleasure is often more momentary and sensory.
Self-Intimacy
Self-intimacy happens with the self, through a process of deeply knowing, accepting, and connecting with oneself. Self-reflection, self-compassion, and being honest about your own emotions, needs, and desires, is how you can be intimate with yourself. In action, self-intimacy can look like journaling, self-care, meditation, or having personalized rituals that nurture the self, body, and create awareness and understanding.
Think back to the imagery of the perfect Friday night. Self-intimacy is rooted throughout the ritual of running a warm bath, taking deep breaths, and being present with yourself. The tea, the book, the way you decide to listen and respond to your body’s needs are all intimate. A night like that encourages you to nurture, honor, and deeply connect with yourself on more than just a physical level, but also emotionally and mentally.
Self-Pleasure
Self-pleasure is in the moment where desire calls, and you answer. Self-pleasure refers to acts of personal enjoyment and gratification that bring joy, relaxation, or comfort. Often, pleasure is associated as only sexual in nature, but it also includes non-sexual forms of enjoyment like eating your favorite foods, doing something creative, taking a relaxing bath, or practicing mindful movement.
For Friday night, self-pleasure was rooted in the exploration of your own body, the way you touch yourself with intention, the way you allow yourself to experience pleasure when the desire for connection calls. Even in that moment, the self-pleasure isn’t just about finishing or an orgasm. That night, it is about discovering what feels good, releasing built up tensions from the week, and embracing sensuality through the senses.
The Foundation
Here’s the truth: self-intimacy creates the foundation for self-pleasure. Pleasure becomes more than just a physical release when you are deeply connected to yourself. That connection is an act of self-love. Sometimes self-pleasure is deduced down to quick escapes from stress or used as a means to an end. Yet, when we root our self-pleasure in self-intimacy, we can transform it into something that serves us better by being more intentional, offering more healing, and more fulfillment. Just think, “If I am intimate with myself, then I can experience pleasure.”
How to Cultivate Both
Deepen Self-Intimacy
Spend some time for yourself and with yourself outside of sexual contexts—journaling, dancing, meditating, or simply resting.
Learn to understand and recognize your needs and desires and reduce judgment.
Engage in touch that isn’t just sexual—massage your shoulders, run your fingers through your hair, place a hand over your heart.
Talk to yourself with kindness. You are in the longest most committed relationship with yourself.
Embrace Self-Pleasure with Intention
Make a mindset shift—self-pleasure is a way to connect with yourself not just a release.
Embrace creating context—pleasure is dependent on creating your own context to provide an experience, where pleasure follows.
Slow things down. Take your time exploring what feels good, rather than rushing to an end goal or climax.
Incorporate all your senses—soft fabrics, sensual scents, warm candlelight, music that makes you feel.
Allow yourself to feel deserving of pleasure without shame or guilt.
Even though intimacy and pleasure with and for the self are not the same, they are deeply intertwined. Slowing things down, being intentional, and honoring the self intimately—emotionally, mentally, and physically—creates space for a richer, deeper pleasurable experiences. Whether you’re listening to music that lets you feel something, running yourself a warm bath with popcorn and a good show, or letting your hands explore your own curves and temperature—know that each moment you spend present with yourself is an act of love.
How are you practicing intimacy with yourself today?