I was recently talking about the myths about desire–a subject we’ll return to again and again–and two particularly dangerous ones occurred to me. Here they are, in order of insidiousness:
MYTH #1: True love is always highly erotic.
No, it’s not. Maybe in men’s magazines, or chick lit. More likely, true love has highly erotic moments. Like when you’re on vacation. Or just after you’ve had a fight, or just before you decide to try to have a baby, or when one of you comes back from a business trip. Most deeply loving, warm, satisfying relationships are semi-erotic or erratically erotic. But always? Never.
We’ve created a monster called the Perfect Couple. And there they are, this dazzling duo, living their intensely erotic lives, unable to keep their hands off each other, always fighting fairly, agreeing on how to spend their money and their time, having precisely the same ideas about childrearing. They love the same foods and have equal amounts of sexual passion, which arrives simultaneously and at frighteningly frequent intervals.
The only couple I ever knew who couldn’t keep their hands off each other after many years of being together happened to live in different countries. They were together about once a month. So yes, they were in a prolonged state of erotic starvation for each other.
Finding a lovely man or woman with whom to share your life neither guarantees constant heights of sexual ecstasy, nor simultaneous anything–even if he or she happens to be your sexual ideal. Desire isn’t about him, it resides in you. Sure, sexual craving can be enhanced or discouraged just as food cravings can, but the mechanism in our brain that controls true appetite–when and why and how often we get hungry for sex in the first place–is highly individual and idiosyncratic. Desire isn’t external: It’s not a leg length or a lipstick shade, and most of us instinctively know this, even as we buy killer Manolo stilettos and Laura Mercier lip gloss. Don’t we, as young girls, learn all about being desired–how thin or fat or tall or short a "desirable" woman is; how assertive or passive or experienced–from others’ point of view? Because we’re encouraged to look at ourselves, we learn astonishing little about our own wants and needs–particularly our sexual wants and needs–which requires focusing on our own point of view rather than others’. Many women tell me they have trouble separating what they feel they’re supposed do and say and feel in bed, and what they would really like–a reflection, I think, of our training to be desirable but not desiring.
Oh, and about turning our erotic volume way, way up? It’s usually Mr. Wrong, not Mr. Right, who does that. All those "Good-hearted woman in love with a two-timin’ man" songs keep getting sung because the paradigm of the saintly woman endlessly awaiting the affection of the ignominious guy, well, we learn THAT tune early.
The guy who comes to town twice a month, on alternate Tuesdays, who happens to be married. You once craved that guy bigtime. Or, the other gender, The gorgeous woman who has a boyfriend but keeps flirting with you and calling your office. You crave her. Both of these people are unavailable.
Desire can be perverse, perking up more at the illicit, the dangerous and the unattainable than the nice (a woman whose father left home at the age of five might, to this day, keep hoping finally to conquer that frustrating scenario by setting it up–endlessly attempting to seduce men who won’t stay.) Psychoanalysts will talk about split-object triangles and the Oedipal object to explain some of the reasons why we just adore those unavailable or unappreciative or just intolerable men, but regardless, it’s important to accept the vagaries of desire–to know that what we crave and what’s good for us don’t always jibe. And that to be a grownup and opt for the healthy choice sometimes means literally excavating desire out of its hiding place. Which brings me to Myth #2, another killer myth that resides uncomfortably in our psyches, which we’ll look at tomorrow.
–The Love Goddess
I found your comments on love myths extremely helpful. It makes me feel that my bad moods, and hers, don’t signal profound trouble, that it’s okay not to be “perfect,” that relationships are between human beings, not automotons out of TV commercials. Thanks for being so clear-sighted and hard-headed.Keep the comments coming!
Mr Williams, you’ve nailed it. It’s not only okay not to be perfect, it’s impossible TO be perfect. And what would any of us want with perfect partners, anyway? You know what I always say, the one who plays the “saint” role in a relationship does little else than make her partner feel endlessly, permanently guilty. And what do guilty people do? Run away from those who make them feel guilty! Their departure may not always be physical, but it surely will be emotional.
–The Love Goddess