My Year With Proust - Day 218

   "She was so clumsy with her hands when eating that one felt she must appear extremely awkward on the stage.  She recovered her dexterity only when making love, with that touching prescience of women who love the male so intensely that they immediately guess what will give most pleasure in that body which is yet so different from their own."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, p. 170

Here Proust is commenting on the "dexterity" of Robert's mistress Rachel/Zezette.  During the course of this Proust discussion we've talked quite a bit about how we are all combinations, both emotionally and sexually, of every one of our lovers.  That, in turn, brings up an interesting nature vs. nurture question, which has also popped up occasionally over the last several months.  Essentially, are some people just naturally better lovers than others?  Sure, you can be "taught" to be a better lover, and experience is everything (which is why you really shouldn't complain if your lover is experienced, because you're reaping the benefits of it).  But are some people just genetically/naturally/emotionally predisposed to being a better lover?  So much of this depends upon being madly in lover, certainly, because if you're crazy in love then you'll do anything to please the other person, and that desire and enthusiasm usually translates into the bedroom.  I suspect it's more complex than that, and in some ways the physical question here is a microcosm of the larger emotional issue in that so much of your proficiency as a lover, and both the emotional and physical sides of being a lover, is a reflection of being a good listener.  If you're paying attention your lover will tell you what they need, either consciously and logically or unconsciously and urgently.  That being said, there are certainly some people who never learn.  Over the years I've broken up with a couple women partially because they were really bad kissers.  Of course, I also stopped seeing a woman once because she confused Neil Young and Neil Diamond, so clearly you should take what I have to say with a grain of salt.