When raising the possibility of finding wisdom in desire, the conversation is easily derailed in two directions. Either people protest that there can be no such wisdom—for our desire for sex is wayward, fickle, and fleeting, conflicted and plural; or they begin to discuss good and bad desires, aiming for some normative statement about what kinds of persons, places, and acts we should want.
On either of these sidetracks, desire is treated as a thing to master rather than as a movement that is making us. “It” is something “I” must control, sometimes in the name of love. These attitudes to desire represent the mind over body patterns of sensation and response we have perfected in so many areas of our lives.
Yet, as we have seen, desire is us. It is who we are in a given moment. It is an impulse to move that is expressing to us in this moment what we have created, and who and what we have the potential to be. And when we perceive desire in this way, we realize too that it is because desire is fickle, plural, and conflicted that it is ultimately so useful and important and wise.
For our desires are sensitive. They are intimately keyed to what is going on around us and inside of us. They register shifts in the wind before our minds have a chance to remember or reflect upon those shifts. They root themselves in our awareness until we pay attention. In these ways, our desires are like barometers of the soul, sensing changes in pressure, registering important information about the health and well being of our relational selves.
In this capacity, desire for sex is and must be constantly shifting and changing in order to represent the multiple plies of our capacity for touch. For every surface of sensation—whether emotional, intellectual, spiritual, or physical—can and wants and needs to register the pleasure of touch. It is how we live.
*
I think you are getting the point by now. A desire for sex is not just for “sex.” There is no such “thing.” A desire for sex is a desire for a relationship within which a certain kind of pleasure is possible. Such pleasure, in turn, is a matter of (what I am calling) a life-enabling touch. Yet again, the pleasure-inducing power of that touch is as much a matter of what we are willing and able to feel as it is how we are touched, as much a matter of what we are willing and able to give, as it is about what we receive.
To say it another way, as with so many things in our lives, the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. The more surfaces of our sensory selves we are willing to admit into our experience of desire, the more we are able to open in ourselves with another, the more pleasure we are able to give and receive, the more we grow in love.
Which brings us to the crux of the matter. More than anything else, it is our yuck feelings that harbor the wisdom that guides us to live in love.
Yuck feelings?
Well, how do we know what we desire? We feel the lack of something we don’t have. Sometimes we can perceive that lack as a delighted anticipation of what is to come, but many other times, especially within relationships, we feel our desire to be with another person as a sense of disappointment or frustration, irritation or intolerance. We want more—more than we are feeling, more than we are getting, more than we are giving—and it doesn’t feel good to want more. It feels like we are not getting enough. We may think that what we want—or don’t want—is “sex.” We pull away from the pain, turn in on ourselves, look for satisfaction elsewhere than in our primary relationship, and wonder why our desire wanders and wanes.
It is the same mind over body dynamic we saw in relation to our desire for food. When we learn to think and feel and act as if we were minds over bodies, we learn to respond more readily to stimuli that circulate outside of us than to the ongoing sensations registered in our own sensory selves. We traffic in images of desire and satisfaction mediated to us through the many media to which we are willingly exposed. Our sense of the “sex” we desire telescopes to a single orifice. With food, we lose the capacity to follow the arc of our own pleasure to a sense of enough; with sex, we lose the capacity to ask for what we need to be able to give and receive a life enabling touch.
We can’t ask—because we don’t know what we want, because we don’t want to want, because we don’t want our partners to say no, because we don’t want to risk not getting the pleasure we want. And so we don’t.
*
The challenge involved then in finding the wisdom in our desire is different than one might think. It is no more about acting out our desires than it is about controlling them. It is rather about acknowledging that we are them, they are us, and then creating a space inside of ourselves where we can feel their pull—in all their conflicted, contested, convoluted mess—as calling us to be present to ourselves and each other. It is about learning to sense and respond to our own desires, in whatever form they appear, as guiding us deeper into relationship with our partners.
Next Week: The bulldozer and the butterfly. Or, why desire always wants more.
Reflection: Think about the yuck feelings that arise in your primary relationship. What do you do when they arise? How do you interpret them? Respond to them? What do you do with them? How do your strategies of responding affect your desire? Are you creating places of silence in your relationship? What if you realized that feelings of disappointment and frustration are actually signs that your relationship is working—signs of your faith in the potential of the relationship to grow?
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
A Life-enabling Touch
There has been so much to think about this week. There was that story about a Buddhist couple, male monk and female teacher, who made a vow never to stray farther than 15 feet from one another, sharing a home, a life, a bed, while remaining celibate.
Another article told of a Purity Ball in Colorado Springs where fathers brought their daughters as dates. In a break between dances, each father read aloud a covenant “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.”
Two different religious traditions—with representatives of each lamenting the state of partner relationships in our culture, and finding solutions by blaming sex. In both stories, the strategy to better intimacy is pure mind over body: “we,” as higher minds, must learn to control our physical desire so that we can attain a “higher purpose.”
What is it about sex?
A glance through some of the Christian literature on abstinence lays out scientific, moral, and religious reasons for postponing sex until marriage. We must protect ourselves from: sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, impoverished relationships, and broken hearts. We must prove to our partner and our selves our ability to resist temptation and control our physical desire. We should save ourselves to give to the life partner we hope one day to have. We do it (or not) for God. For the Buddhists, this form of spiritual discipline offers a path to achieving freedom from attachment to their wills, their desires, their anger, and hence their suffering.
What do we learn from these cases? We learn that an unruly desire for sex is the cause of our psychological and social ills, our failed relationships and our unhappy selves. It is what we must learn to guard ourselves against.
While these two examples may seem extreme, the attitudes towards sex they represent are not. For there is no sense here that our desire might have anything to teach us--except how to control it. There is no sense that there might be wisdom in our desire, guiding us in how to love. And this view is all too common--even among those who urge a free and casual hook up play.
*
The verdict among scientists is stronger every day: touch is an essential, enabling dimension of human life. It has been known for a while that infants born prematurely fare far better with a pair of arms to hold them. New measuring techniques in neuroscience are now enabling researchers to document the effects of sensual touch on the brain—on how it develops, how it learns, how it responds to stress. (See the Blakeslees recent book.)
The results have been clear. Not only is sensual touch on par with good nutrition as necessary for “normal, healthy brain development” (184); it remains significant in adults as a predictor of the brain’s ability to endure pain, respond to stress, learn new tasks, and bond with other human beings. Experiments have demonstrated that the more “viscerally aware” a person is, the “more emotionally attuned” (181). The greater our sensory awareness of the movement of our own bodies, the more able we will be to move with others, to empathize and to connect.
As the Blakselees put it: “Sensations from your skin and body… are your mind’s true foundation” (12). Based on the touch that we give and that we receive, we form “body maps” in our brain that guide us as we sense and respond, perceive and reason, or choose to love.
Further, it is clear that the chemical coordinates of the touch that enable us to grow strong, think clearly, and relate empathically with our fellow humans are the same as those triggered by sex—orgasm in particular. The same hormones and neurotransmitters are present in similar brain regions when we hug, hold, nurture, nurse, or arouse. It is a difference of degree.
*
So what is it? Is the touch of a sexual encounter a wayward sin or an enabling grace? Is our desire a threat to our long term health and happiness in relationship? Or does our desire provide the enabling condition of those relationships in the first place?
The questions mislead. They presume, once again, that “desire for sex” is a thing in us that we must figure out how to manage, for better or for worse. The fact is that our desire can be one or the other. The implication: it isn’t either. It can become one or the other, and it does so as we learn, as we touch, as we move, as we create and become patterns of sensation and response.
In this sense, our desire for sex represents a potential for giving and receiving a life enabling touch. As a potential it is one that we can learn to unfold in ourselves, or not.
Still, we won’t figure out what that potential is if we sense and respond to our desires as if they were physical urges to manage. What makes us think that, after proving our love by not having sex, we can flip a switch and suddenly prove our love by having sex? Or what makes us think that, after engaging in casual sex, we can simply flip a switch and make life long passionate love? Both cases assume that love--free from and unbiased by sexual desire--will guarantee that the sex--which simply is--is good. Mind over body.
If our desire for sex is a desire for a life enabling touch, then neither delaying our desires nor indulging our every whim will help us learn what those desires have to teach us about love.
Rather, we need to figure out how to find, trust, and move with the wisdom in our desire. It is a wisdom that is providing us with the motivation and direction we need in order to learn how to give and receive a life enabling touch.
Next week: Finding that wisdom.
Another article told of a Purity Ball in Colorado Springs where fathers brought their daughters as dates. In a break between dances, each father read aloud a covenant “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.”
Two different religious traditions—with representatives of each lamenting the state of partner relationships in our culture, and finding solutions by blaming sex. In both stories, the strategy to better intimacy is pure mind over body: “we,” as higher minds, must learn to control our physical desire so that we can attain a “higher purpose.”
What is it about sex?
A glance through some of the Christian literature on abstinence lays out scientific, moral, and religious reasons for postponing sex until marriage. We must protect ourselves from: sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, impoverished relationships, and broken hearts. We must prove to our partner and our selves our ability to resist temptation and control our physical desire. We should save ourselves to give to the life partner we hope one day to have. We do it (or not) for God. For the Buddhists, this form of spiritual discipline offers a path to achieving freedom from attachment to their wills, their desires, their anger, and hence their suffering.
What do we learn from these cases? We learn that an unruly desire for sex is the cause of our psychological and social ills, our failed relationships and our unhappy selves. It is what we must learn to guard ourselves against.
While these two examples may seem extreme, the attitudes towards sex they represent are not. For there is no sense here that our desire might have anything to teach us--except how to control it. There is no sense that there might be wisdom in our desire, guiding us in how to love. And this view is all too common--even among those who urge a free and casual hook up play.
*
The verdict among scientists is stronger every day: touch is an essential, enabling dimension of human life. It has been known for a while that infants born prematurely fare far better with a pair of arms to hold them. New measuring techniques in neuroscience are now enabling researchers to document the effects of sensual touch on the brain—on how it develops, how it learns, how it responds to stress. (See the Blakeslees recent book.)
The results have been clear. Not only is sensual touch on par with good nutrition as necessary for “normal, healthy brain development” (184); it remains significant in adults as a predictor of the brain’s ability to endure pain, respond to stress, learn new tasks, and bond with other human beings. Experiments have demonstrated that the more “viscerally aware” a person is, the “more emotionally attuned” (181). The greater our sensory awareness of the movement of our own bodies, the more able we will be to move with others, to empathize and to connect.
As the Blakselees put it: “Sensations from your skin and body… are your mind’s true foundation” (12). Based on the touch that we give and that we receive, we form “body maps” in our brain that guide us as we sense and respond, perceive and reason, or choose to love.
Further, it is clear that the chemical coordinates of the touch that enable us to grow strong, think clearly, and relate empathically with our fellow humans are the same as those triggered by sex—orgasm in particular. The same hormones and neurotransmitters are present in similar brain regions when we hug, hold, nurture, nurse, or arouse. It is a difference of degree.
*
So what is it? Is the touch of a sexual encounter a wayward sin or an enabling grace? Is our desire a threat to our long term health and happiness in relationship? Or does our desire provide the enabling condition of those relationships in the first place?
The questions mislead. They presume, once again, that “desire for sex” is a thing in us that we must figure out how to manage, for better or for worse. The fact is that our desire can be one or the other. The implication: it isn’t either. It can become one or the other, and it does so as we learn, as we touch, as we move, as we create and become patterns of sensation and response.
In this sense, our desire for sex represents a potential for giving and receiving a life enabling touch. As a potential it is one that we can learn to unfold in ourselves, or not.
Still, we won’t figure out what that potential is if we sense and respond to our desires as if they were physical urges to manage. What makes us think that, after proving our love by not having sex, we can flip a switch and suddenly prove our love by having sex? Or what makes us think that, after engaging in casual sex, we can simply flip a switch and make life long passionate love? Both cases assume that love--free from and unbiased by sexual desire--will guarantee that the sex--which simply is--is good. Mind over body.
If our desire for sex is a desire for a life enabling touch, then neither delaying our desires nor indulging our every whim will help us learn what those desires have to teach us about love.
Rather, we need to figure out how to find, trust, and move with the wisdom in our desire. It is a wisdom that is providing us with the motivation and direction we need in order to learn how to give and receive a life enabling touch.
Next week: Finding that wisdom.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
It's Not That Easy
Having great sex is not easy.
Despite the lore we ingest along with our soap operas and cinematic fairy tales, our pop music and spy mystery thrillers, great sex is not easy.
And one of the greatest obstacles to it is the expectation that it can and should be.
*
If you want to know what you are thinking when you are not thinking--especially when it comes to desire--look again at the ads you casually skim on your way to a story.
Take this week’s Time Magazine (May 19, 2008). The ad is for Shredded Wheat with Strawberries. A bed fills the frame. On the far side, a man is sleeping, head on a pillow, a touch of grey at his temple, turned toward the viewer. In the foreground, also on the bed, kneeling and facing the man, is a beautiful brunette. Her bright red lipstick matches the silky night shirt that is slipping from her exposed shoulder, revealing a white slip. She is looking over that bare skin to engage the viewer, smiling broadly, teeth gleaming. In the closer hand, she holds a bowl of cereal whose white rim nearly touches the swell of her white breast.
The caption reads: What satisfies a hungry woman?
The answer, of course, is a bowl of cereal! Those chunky squares of wheat studded with passion packed berries! We all laugh. Why?
The ad plays on our insecurities. The two seem to be partners—they are turned towards each other, both in bed, though tell-tale ring fingers are hidden. He is obviously spent—though whether he fell asleep before or after is unclear. It doesn’t look like her side of the bed has been disturbed. Those sheets are snugly tucked. She is obviously (still) hungry. She wants more. (It could be an ad for Viagra—but then it wouldn’t be funny.)
What does she do? Eat! Rather than go looking for another man, she goes looking for a box of cereal. She relies on food to fill the gap between her desire for sex and the reality of her situation. And the food is just as good. With words like luscious and tantalizing, a second side bar ad for the product, later in the magazine, promises "Outrageous Satisfaction."
The message reassures: if you are (still) hungry, that’s OK! So is this desirable woman! You are like her! So pour a bowl and enjoy it... all by yourself!
The implication: satisfaction is the goal. The goal is elusive. We want it, always more of it, and what we can’t get we from sex we can get from food.
*
If that weren’t enough, there is another ad in the magazine, this time for a new “DiGiorno Pizza for One.” Here, the pizza takes up the foreground, with another lovely brunette close behind. We see her face from forehead to chin. A wave of hair cloaks her left eye—the one closest to us—and part of her closed smile. Her lips barely clear the pizza. Her uncovered eye twinkles invitingly.
The vocabulary in the text echoes the ad for Shredded Wheat. The pizza is similarly luscious and tantalizing. The line here: “Who wouldn’t want it all for themselves?”
Promises follow. It is made “for just one person: you.” It is “ready in less than five minutes.” And best yet, “It’s so good you’ll want to be alone!”
Satisfaction. It is mine not yours. It is for me and not for you. It is best when quick and easy, and all for me. And again, if this beautiful young starlet, who could snag any partner she chooses, prefers to be alone with her pizza, then it’s OK for you too. It only takes five minutes! It is what I desire. Or is she what I desire?
When you bend to listen, the subtext of these and many similar ads screams: it's not so easy! if you want a bottomless market, sell it as a substitute for sex.
*
The dominant ideal in our culture is one of passionate life long love. For most people, it is why they commit to a relationship. It is what commitment is supposed to provide. It is what sex can be. Romance. Intimacy. Pleasure. Companionship. Sex plus love = bliss.
As suggested last week, however, this ideal is decidedly elusive. It slips from the grasp of the most dedicated pairs, or mellows with time into a picture of collegial friendship.
We blame desire. It is fickle and untrustworthy. It is ephemeral and inconstant. It wants to stray. We focus our attentions elsewhere—our jobs, our kids, our social networks. Or we find ways to the satisfaction we seek through virtual, vicarious, impersonal means—movies, songs, books, websites, or bowls of Shredded Wheat. It’s easy. We feast on stories of stars who marry and split; on tales of religious and political leaders whose practicing strays far from their preaching. At least some one is getting it.
We blame desire. Why? Because we know how. Because doing so confirms what we want to believe is true about ourselves: that we are minds operating in and over bodies. That we can get the pleasure we seek.
For if we really are mind over body selves, then great sex should simply be a matter of bodily mechanics—push this lever, pull this switch, bingo! Perfect function every time. Or it should be a matter of the right frame of mind—love will make it good. Forever.
But we are not minds living in and over bodies. We are bodies whose movement is making us who we are. We are bodies whose desires carry within them wisdom—a wisdom guiding us to unfold our potential for becoming who we are and for giving what we have to give. And we are bodies that do not and will not thrive without touch.
Sex is not an end. Our desire for it is a means. The wisdom in our desire is guiding us to create the conditions necessary for our ongoing health and well being. And we can learn to discern this wisdom, creating relationships in which we are free to give and receive a life-enabling touch.
Next Week: life enabling touch
Despite the lore we ingest along with our soap operas and cinematic fairy tales, our pop music and spy mystery thrillers, great sex is not easy.
And one of the greatest obstacles to it is the expectation that it can and should be.
*
If you want to know what you are thinking when you are not thinking--especially when it comes to desire--look again at the ads you casually skim on your way to a story.
Take this week’s Time Magazine (May 19, 2008). The ad is for Shredded Wheat with Strawberries. A bed fills the frame. On the far side, a man is sleeping, head on a pillow, a touch of grey at his temple, turned toward the viewer. In the foreground, also on the bed, kneeling and facing the man, is a beautiful brunette. Her bright red lipstick matches the silky night shirt that is slipping from her exposed shoulder, revealing a white slip. She is looking over that bare skin to engage the viewer, smiling broadly, teeth gleaming. In the closer hand, she holds a bowl of cereal whose white rim nearly touches the swell of her white breast.
The caption reads: What satisfies a hungry woman?
The answer, of course, is a bowl of cereal! Those chunky squares of wheat studded with passion packed berries! We all laugh. Why?
The ad plays on our insecurities. The two seem to be partners—they are turned towards each other, both in bed, though tell-tale ring fingers are hidden. He is obviously spent—though whether he fell asleep before or after is unclear. It doesn’t look like her side of the bed has been disturbed. Those sheets are snugly tucked. She is obviously (still) hungry. She wants more. (It could be an ad for Viagra—but then it wouldn’t be funny.)
What does she do? Eat! Rather than go looking for another man, she goes looking for a box of cereal. She relies on food to fill the gap between her desire for sex and the reality of her situation. And the food is just as good. With words like luscious and tantalizing, a second side bar ad for the product, later in the magazine, promises "Outrageous Satisfaction."
The message reassures: if you are (still) hungry, that’s OK! So is this desirable woman! You are like her! So pour a bowl and enjoy it... all by yourself!
The implication: satisfaction is the goal. The goal is elusive. We want it, always more of it, and what we can’t get we from sex we can get from food.
*
If that weren’t enough, there is another ad in the magazine, this time for a new “DiGiorno Pizza for One.” Here, the pizza takes up the foreground, with another lovely brunette close behind. We see her face from forehead to chin. A wave of hair cloaks her left eye—the one closest to us—and part of her closed smile. Her lips barely clear the pizza. Her uncovered eye twinkles invitingly.
The vocabulary in the text echoes the ad for Shredded Wheat. The pizza is similarly luscious and tantalizing. The line here: “Who wouldn’t want it all for themselves?”
Promises follow. It is made “for just one person: you.” It is “ready in less than five minutes.” And best yet, “It’s so good you’ll want to be alone!”
Satisfaction. It is mine not yours. It is for me and not for you. It is best when quick and easy, and all for me. And again, if this beautiful young starlet, who could snag any partner she chooses, prefers to be alone with her pizza, then it’s OK for you too. It only takes five minutes! It is what I desire. Or is she what I desire?
When you bend to listen, the subtext of these and many similar ads screams: it's not so easy! if you want a bottomless market, sell it as a substitute for sex.
*
The dominant ideal in our culture is one of passionate life long love. For most people, it is why they commit to a relationship. It is what commitment is supposed to provide. It is what sex can be. Romance. Intimacy. Pleasure. Companionship. Sex plus love = bliss.
As suggested last week, however, this ideal is decidedly elusive. It slips from the grasp of the most dedicated pairs, or mellows with time into a picture of collegial friendship.
We blame desire. It is fickle and untrustworthy. It is ephemeral and inconstant. It wants to stray. We focus our attentions elsewhere—our jobs, our kids, our social networks. Or we find ways to the satisfaction we seek through virtual, vicarious, impersonal means—movies, songs, books, websites, or bowls of Shredded Wheat. It’s easy. We feast on stories of stars who marry and split; on tales of religious and political leaders whose practicing strays far from their preaching. At least some one is getting it.
We blame desire. Why? Because we know how. Because doing so confirms what we want to believe is true about ourselves: that we are minds operating in and over bodies. That we can get the pleasure we seek.
For if we really are mind over body selves, then great sex should simply be a matter of bodily mechanics—push this lever, pull this switch, bingo! Perfect function every time. Or it should be a matter of the right frame of mind—love will make it good. Forever.
But we are not minds living in and over bodies. We are bodies whose movement is making us who we are. We are bodies whose desires carry within them wisdom—a wisdom guiding us to unfold our potential for becoming who we are and for giving what we have to give. And we are bodies that do not and will not thrive without touch.
Sex is not an end. Our desire for it is a means. The wisdom in our desire is guiding us to create the conditions necessary for our ongoing health and well being. And we can learn to discern this wisdom, creating relationships in which we are free to give and receive a life-enabling touch.
Next Week: life enabling touch
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Doing It for Love
Bugs do it. Birds do it. Flowers do it. Marine mammals do it. Humans do it too. We think that our desire for it is “natural”—as primal and non-negotiable an instinct as our desire for food. We want it, always more of it, the quicker and easier the better. We think, too, that we are different from animals: we have control over our desire for sex. We do it for love.
This picture of desire confronts us everywhere. We are bombarded 24/7 by images of the sexually satisfied creatures we are told we should be. Movies, pop songs, television shows, internet sites, and advertisements for everything from fragrances to food sell us on this desire. If we tire of vicarious means and want it straight up, service industries offer it to us without the trappings of relationship.
As a culture we are as obsessed with when, why, and how our bodies should have sex as we are about what, when, why, and how our bodies should eat. When it comes to sex, as is true for food, we can’t stop talking about it, regulating it, studying it, pursuing it, or purchasing it. And sometimes, the food and the sex are nearly interchangeable. The sex is delicious; the food orgasmic, and we want more.
Yet, this apparent abundance, as with the surfeit of food, hides a shadow side: what we are buying is not satisfying. More is not better. Parallel to the obesity epidemic runs a crisis in our long-term partnerships. Among couples who marry with dreams of life long passionate love, nearly half end up filing for divorce. Even so, this ideal lives on, ever stronger, among persons who have legal access to marriage as well as those who don’t.
Images of sexual pleasure so prevalent in our culture prove seductive because fulfillment in actual relationships is difficult to achieve. We don’t know where to begin.
We can’t stop eating, and we can’t stop trying to lose weight. We can’t stop committing to partners, and we can’t stop trying to get out of it once we do. Our waistlines expand; our passion withers. Our ideals of health and of life long love go unrealized.
What are we to do?
*
Desires for food and sex are entwined. On the one hand, patterns of dissatisfaction tend to reinforce one another: unhappy in our relationships, we override our sense of enough, eating more or less or differently than we need. Or, unhappy with our bodies, we hold back from a partner, preferring not to open ourselves beyond a certain comfort zone.
On the other hand, however, movement towards well being in one realm can also carry over into the other in ways that can reinforce our emergent health. When we begin to shift our experience in one realm, we can imagine a similar opening up of possibilities for thinking, feeling, and acting. Just as we can learn to appreciate our desire for food as a desire for an experience of being nourished, we can learn to appreciate our desire for sex as a desire to give and receive a life-enabling touch.
Along the way, as in the case with our desire for food, we must unpack a tangle of reality-making myths and call upon the cycle of breaths to help cultivate the sensory awareness that allows us to discern and move with the wisdom in our desire.
*
I lean into the cushioned chair. It slides beneath me, rocking back and forth. I settle on a point of comfort, lap loaded with a carton of popcorn. As the lights dim, my head tilts, lifting my eyes to a large white rectangle.
My breath releases. I have been anticipating this moment. I paid for it. I am ready to feel the thrill and ache with the pain; to laugh and shiver, yearn and cry. Still, there are sure to be some surprises. I hope.
Luminous images flip before my eyes. Faces turn to me and with passionate sincerity reveal themselves. I identify with them. I am them. What they sense, desire, and fear, I sense, desire, and fear. Their struggles are mine, their triumphs too.
What do I see? A story in three parts.
Part 1. Two people meet. Desire sparks. They fall in love at once, even if they don’t admit it to themselves or each other.
Part 2. Obstacles intervene. One partner is engaged or married; uptight or indifferent; a member of a rival clan, class, ethnic group, or religion. The two are separated by war, geographical distance, age, or by the ethics governing an unequal power relationship between prostitute and client, student and teacher, patient and therapist, or player and coach. As lovers struggle against the obstacles, their desire for each other grows.
Part 3. One of two outcomes occurs. A. Comedy: Lovers overcome obstacles. They get married and/or have sex. Love lives on. B. Tragedy: Lovers fail to overcome obstacles. One or both of them dies. Love lives on.
There are variants of course. One partner tells the story, or the other. Obstacles pose different kinds of challenges. The story may dominate a film, or play as a subtext. Nevertheless, if I am moved by the movie at all, I emerge having absorbed a message that film after song after TV episode repeats: sex is a, if not the, peak experience of human life, and it is so when it is the consummate expression of love between partners.
Sex plus love equals ecstatic bliss. Such sex is so good that it is worth fighting for against all intervening obstacles. Even marriage.
The lights come on again. I bump down into my chair, an empty box of popcorn in my hands. I walk out of the theater slowly, a glaze in my eye, a rush in my heart, feelings spent. I blink like a bird, madly adjusting to the light.
Again and again we bend ourselves to this arc of passion as it sparks, flames, consumes, and is consummated. Why? What are we learning about our desire for sex? What are we learning about the possibility of life long passionate partnerships? Will it work? Will we get the satisfaction we seek?
*
Next week: Sex versus Love
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