The Intimacy Manuals No-one Gave You
Two books. One for men, one for women. Both about the same thing: the small, deliberate gestures that build closeness before you ever get near a bedroom.
BOOK 1 – FOR MEN
The Art of Non-Sexual Foreplay
100 gestures and 11 tips on how to make them land. How to make her feel seen, cherished, and close without it always being a preamble to something else.
BOOK 2 – FOR WOMEN
The Art of Non-Sexual Foreplay 2
75 gestures and 11 tips. The connection men secretly crave but rarely ask for, and how to give it in ways that actually reach him. Trust me, he wants this, but doesn’t know how to ask for it.
WHAT NOBODY TAUGHT US
We spent years learning basic skills at school. Nobody taught us this.
We know the periodic table. We know the biology of a frog. Somehow “how to make the person you love feel truly desired without it always being a lead-up to sex” never made it onto the curriculum.
So we pieced it together. From films where couples go from arguing to ripping each other’s clothes off with nothing in between. From awkward conversations with parents who mumbled something and changed the subject. From friends who were equally in the dark.
The result, for most of us, is a version of intimacy that skips straight to the destination and misses most of the journey. Touch becomes transactional. Tenderness becomes a signal for something else. The quiet language of closeness, the kind that makes someone feel truly seen, safe, and wanted, goes largely unspoken.
These two books are about that language. The one nobody gave us a manual for.
“Think of these gestures as compound interest for your relationship. Each small deposit might seem insignificant in the moment, but over time, they build a wealth of intimacy that pays dividends in every aspect of your connection.”
WHAT NON-SEXUAL FOREPLAY IS
Intimacy doesn’t start in the bedroom. It starts the moment she feels like the most important person in your world. Or he does.
When most people hear the word foreplay, they think of one specific thing. But the couples who actually feel close are not doing more of that. They are doing a hundred smaller things, consistently, in the ordinary moments of an ordinary day. A hand on the small of her back. His arm around her in a crowd. The text that arrives in the middle of the afternoon for no particular reason. The moment of eye contact that lasts a beat longer than it needs to.
These are not grand gestures. They do not require planning or money or a special occasion. They require attention. Presence. The willingness to notice the person in front of you and let them know you have.
The most erogenous zone in a relationship is the space between casual touch and sexual expectation. That is the territory these two books are written about.
Sensuality has become one of the great lost arts of modern relationships. Somewhere along the way it got confused with sexuality, as if the only point of touch or tenderness is to rush toward something more. These books are about slowing that down. The gestures that build connection over time, in the way that compound interest builds wealth: quietly, consistently, and with results that turn out to be larger than you expected.
BOOK 1
FOR MEN – HOW TO MAKE HER FEEL SEEN
100 gestures. Some so small you’ve probably never thought of them as intimacy at all.
Book 1 is written for men and is directed at the women in their lives. It covers 100 specific gestures across the full range of closeness: from the everyday (the remembered detail, the unexpected cup of tea, the text at the right moment) through to the quietly sensual, which is to say touch that is warm and deliberate without being sexual.
Every gesture gets its own chapter. What it is, why it lands, and how to do it in a way that feels genuine rather than performative. Because a well-placed touch done with no actual presence behind it is worse than no touch at all.
A SENSE OF WHATS IN HERE
The gestures that require nothing except paying attention: noticing when she’s changed her hair, sitting close enough that your knees touch, remembering the small thing she mentioned last week.
The gestures that take thirty seconds but land for hours: the note slipped into her bag, the text that arrives mid-afternoon, the compliment that is about her mind rather than her appearance.
The gestures of quiet physical closeness that are not about where they lead, but about how she feels right now: her hand in yours, your arm around her, the slow dance in the kitchen for no reason.
Before the 100 gestures, the book opens with 11 tips on execution. Timing. Eye contact. The pause before a gesture that tells her it was intentional. The difference between touching her and actually being with her in that moment.
The Art of Non-Sexual Foreplay | $7 ebook or paperback on Amazon
BOOK 2
FOR WOMEN – THE CONNECTION MEN SECRETLY CRAVE
Men need this too. Most have just stopped asking for it.
Book 2 is written for women and is about men’s emotional and sensual needs. The ones that are real, that are consistent, and that most men have learned to go without because no one told them it was acceptable to want them.
Here is what the book says plainly: men crave touch, appreciation, and genuine connection just as much as women do. Most have been conditioned not to say so. For the men who say they don’t need these things, the book offers this observation: chances are they’ve simply adapted to the absence, having never experienced what consistent, genuine appreciation actually feels like.
The 75 gestures in this book are not the same as the ones in the first book. They are specific to how men receive closeness. The book also includes a dedicated section on why men often find it difficult to receive appreciation even when they want it, and what to do when that comes up.
A SENSE OF WHATS IN HERE
Gestures of attention that land with men specifically: asking about something he’s working on with actual interest, remembering the detail he mentioned last week, telling him specifically what you admire about him rather than something general.
Gestures of physical closeness that men rarely ask for but almost always want: the hand at the back of his neck, the head on his shoulder, the hug that arrives when he wasn’t expecting one.
Gestures that communicate desire directed at him: not obligation, not habit, but the specific kind of attention that makes him feel seen and wanted by you.
The book opens with 11 tips on how to make these gestures reach him. Same principles as Book 1, applied to a different emotional landscape.
The Art of Non-Sexual Foreplay 2 | $7 ebook or paperback on Amazon
A NOTE FROM NOLAN
I wrote these because I needed them and didn’t have them.
I am not writing from a position of having got this right. I’ve been married and divorced. I’ve been the man who didn’t notice, who was too distracted, too in his own head. I’ve also been the man who learned, later than he’d have liked, what small gestures actually mean to the person receiving them.
I wrote Book 1 for men because I believe most men actually want to get this right and simply don’t know how. Not because they’re selfish or uninterested. Because nobody showed them. The films didn’t teach them. Their dads mostly didn’t teach them. They learned by trial and error, and a lot of the error was costly in ways they didn’t fully understand at the time.
The women of the world have been patient with us. These books are an attempt to give the men who want to do better something practical to work with, and to give the women who love those men the language to reach them.
I wrote Book 2 because the more men I spoke with, the clearer it became that they are walking around wanting exactly the same things women want, and not saying so. The gestures in that book are not complicated. They are simply specific to how men actually receive closeness, which is different, and which most generic relationship advice doesn’t acknowledge.
GET THE BOOKS!
Start where the connection actually starts.
Pick up one or both. $7 each as an ebook, or order the paperback on Amazon. Read them, try a handful of the gestures, and see what shifts in the ordinary moments of an ordinary week.
BOOK 1 – FOR MEN
BOOK 2 – FOR WOMEN
The version of you in five years is forming right now in the choices you make next — what are they hoping you do now?