As a marriage and family therapist, I have taught pre-marriage workshops with my wife for over twenty years. The biggest challenge is always what to do about the topic of sexual intimacy. For a while couples we invited to submit questions anonymously. We stopped because all the questions invariably boiled down to two:
1. How do you deal with differences in sexual appetite?
2. How do you keep sex hot?
It’s the second question that was most perplexing. I mean, these young people were only a year, maybe two, into their relationship, and those who were sexually active (not all chose to be) were already coping with boredom in the bedroom.
Our approach involved trying to help the couple be more playful and less serious about sex. But I confess that I’ve always tackled this issue on the assumption that the couple is simply not sufficiently connected. Good sex is an organic expression of loving intimacy. Deepen your connection, strengthen your emotional bond, listen more carefully, etc. Well, possibly. These are all certainly important dimensions of a healthy relationship.
But according to Esther Perel, in Mating In Captivity, most of the conventional
therapeutic wisdom around sustaining hot sex over time has got it wrong. What turned us on originally was precisely what we didn’t know about this other person. S/he was a mysterious stranger, full of exotic and erotic possibility. It was this otherness that created desire. Think about it. We desire what we don’t have. Once we have it, desire, ahem, droops. We habituate. “Eroticism thrives on the space between self and other”.
Perel’s point is that it doesn’t take long to confuse love with merging. In order to feel safe and secure with our partner, a couple anxiously fills up the all the in-between space. We know what happens to a fire when you don’t leave space between the logs for air to circulate. Effectively, we domesticate the wildness out of our partners, and ourselves, the very wildness that made us burn with desire in the beginning. And tragically, we foster the illusion that they now belong to us. Isn’t this what marriage is all about—the security of deep belonging?
Actually, it’s only half of what marriage (committed relationship) is about. When it becomes what it’s all about, you can kiss (politely, of course) hot sex good-bye. We do not desire what we already possess. Which brings up the question, how did we start believing that we possessed our partner? There is a wild mystery about every single creature on the face of the planet, but in our egoic drive for absolute security and safety, we domesticate the wild beauty. After all, all that wildness might cause our beloved to stray, right? The sad irony is that it’s just the opposite—it’s the over-domestication of our intimates, the making-it-safe-for-us, that underlies so much sexual straying. What people look for in our “affairs” is precisely the arousal that comes from the adventure of discovery.
The evolutionary impulse is an urge toward an increase in three fundamental dynamics, and only one of them is communion. The other two are differentiation and subjectivity (interiority). If we only have communion with our mate, the relationship becomes a gooey, undifferentiated mass. And yet, where do couples get support for increasing differentiation and interiority? There are endless therapeutic models out there to help us listen more carefully, get emotionally more bonded, express our vulnerability. But where are the experts who are telling us to take separate holidays now and then, get the hell out of each other’s orbits and rhythms, move out for a while, take a complete day to rediscover who you are when you have only your own instincts and intuitions to follow?
The poet, Rilke, knew that the secret to keeping the flame of desire burning for each other was differentiation. He yearned to see his partner “whole against the sky”. Can you think of times when you experienced this, when you were caught off guard by the sexy babe walking into the room, and then suddenly realized “Holy shit, that’s my wife!”? For a brief moment, you saw her, not as an extension of yourself, but in her wholeness, in the fullness of her primal nature—and that, believe me, you have not actually domesticated. She doesn’t actually belong to you, or you to her. You are free, as is she. Free to either choose into the relationship, day by day, or not.
The exiting starts emotionally and psychologically—representing an unconsciousness need for differentiation, (but which is typically treated by marriage therapists as a failure of communion). It takes years before this internal exiting manifests as a physical withdrawal. The fantasy of absolute security smothers the fire, and it is, in any case, an illusion. Feel that? Bit scary, huh? We need to deal with our own fear in order to liberate the untamed beauty of our partner.
Incidentally, this suppression of differentiation occurs in the life of communities as well. I’ve seen many of my clergy colleagues relinquish their distinctive, unique self, while serving congregations. The congregation exerts subtle and not so subtle pressure to make-us-feel-safe by adhering to our preferred image of a holy man or woman. The minister starts to lead a double-life, never showing up in his profane, quirky, and erotic radiance in the pulpit, but reserving that for non-church gatherings. It all gets quite boring, naturally, and exit fantasies flourish.
I watched a film a couple weeks back, Rust and Bones. The protagonists are a nomadic 
boxer and a woman who had her legs chewed off by an orca whale. Trust the French to be able to bring off such a tasteful treatment of some pretty explicit, hot sex between this unlikely couple. I found his character compelling, possibly because he lived so close to his wildness. He fights in an illegal circuit, for example, mostly because he enjoys fighting. He fucks with a willing partner when he feels like it, with or without legs. But he’s also capable of surprising tenderness and compassion, in bed, as well as in his life. There’s a vulnerability about him that comes to full flower by the end of the film. Interestingly, he ends up transmuting the energy of his street fighter by training with a national boxing team—still wild, but within chosen, disciplined boundaries. Perhaps this suggests a template for successful couplehood.
“Reconciling the domestic and the erotic is a delicate balancing act. It requires knowing your partner while recognizing his persistent mystery; creating security while remaining open to the unknown; cultivating intimacy that respects privacy. Desire resists confinement, and commitment mustn’t swallow freedom whole.”
I do believe you nailed it on writing this article. This is beautifully ,brilliantly written, in that it crystallizes the murky
ideas, dealing with relationships and intimacy.As a man who experienced the demise of a 26 year marriage, I can see how this subject/theme also factored into the equation of my marriage ending. Thanks for bringing up a subject that i feel is unnecessarily avoided .Perhaps because of the reasons you previously mentioned,or maybe because the solutions were unclear. or in that many therapist solutions only increased the couples feeling of estrangement and disolussionment… bring back the wild.Long live wildness..
Thanks Stan,
Appreciate you sharing so personally. Yeah, and like I said to Don above, it’s not just the wildness of the animal instinct, it’s the wild passion of the soul to live large.
Best line:
“Can you think of times when you experienced this, when you were caught off guard by the sexy babe walking into the room, and then suddenly realized “Holy shit, that’s my wife!”?”
In mainstream North America we’re still pretty “reserved” about intimacy and sexuality – I blame the Puritans! Freud would still have lots to work with…
From an evolutionary point of view I guess we have to figure out not how to “tame” our passion(s) but to, ahem, “ride” them.
I’m just starting to read Bertrand Russell’s “History of Western Philosophy” and he notes early on that passion and reason are both necessary. I guess the trick is to get them both working in sync or at least not in opposition!
All true, Don. Ride ‘em cowboy! Yeah, you know, it’s the passion of the soul that is critical to ground ourselves in, in a way that transcends yet includes, our carnality. Perel doesn’t really talk about this much.
Beautiful Bruce!
Curious on your thoughts about Alain de Boton’s ideas (http://www.alternet.org/philosophy-sex). He says some very provocative (!) stuff, like: “the overcoming of loneliness is sexy.” Which answers the question of why it cools off over time. The gap between us closes as we develop communion, making the distance we travel to meet (sexually) lower and lower, which means less heat. Similar to the points in your piece, slightly different take. Much more good stuff in the link.
Also: as a mid-40s man who got engaged recently, I’d be curious to see data about couples who meet after 40. My experience has been that each of us is on a trajectory of growth and individuation, not necessarily towards the other, but towards our own authentic omega point. In my 20s, we were looking to find ways to grow *together*, which is a very different trajectory. So, do couples who meet later in life experience the communion-vs-differentiation issue differently?
Thanks Jeff,
I look forward to checking out the link. I like his stuff generally. I think what is really sexy is the transformation of mutual loneliness into two solitudes, bordering, protecting, and saluting each other (Rilke)
Congrats on your engagement, Jeff. I think it’s key to a dynamic relationship what you describe: each of you owning a trajectory of growth toward an Omega Pt. reflecting unique paths. The presence of the healthy “third” is precisely (imo) this shared commitment to unique developmental trajectories, which then are brought to bear on the hard-won individuality of the couple. (One plus one, plus this developmental path of each individual=authentic intimacy that is born of passionate engagement with an evolutionary urge to transcend self/relationship/existing life conditions. The thing is, as you know, this merging thing is uber-seductive. It’s just so much easier as a default position as opposed to be grounded in the deep nourishment that our respective souls are longing for… It’s the work of soul centration.
And what of the notion of male insecurity that seems to need the ‘taming of the shrew’, the wild woman, that leads to ‘shrinking into a wife’ (‘Playboy of the Western World’ – Singh)?
Is this the next evolutionary step – having adequate self worth so that the relationship does not devolve into constant competition with the underlying male need to win? To divest ourselves of stereotypes and to have the promised freedom of the children of G-D? i often wonder why men choose strong women and set about destroying them – perhaps a type of trophy wife thing that one needs to control?
Sounds like a solid soul agenda to me Hilary. I do think that there is a pervasive sense of insufficiency in many men, that both genders enter into a dance around. I have to say though that I think that the particular dynamic that I’m describing in this post crosses gender lines, and in fact, the “urge to merge” expresses itself in either/both genders in unique ways. I really like your comment about the promised freedom of the children of G_d. Thanks for this.
Great post. Rings true for my relationship. Needed outside help us un-fuse. They gave us permission to be uniquely different from one another again, accept it, look at it, embrace it and discuss where our boundaries were on living with that difference, and then, well, it felt like we psychologically re-married. Crappy difficult process, lovely result. When I rediscovered myself as separate from my partner, when I returned consciously to the marriage, I didn’t go back to a pre-marriage old self but a deeper, richer self than I’d known before. And it was this self that longed to express itself passionately.
Thanks for sharing from your own experience Jill.
Bruce, thanks for this post! So true.
Here’s a link to the best thing I’ve ever written about love over time…
“Living and Loving Panfaithfully:
Creating a Life Full of Integrity, Passion, and Sustainable Loving Relationships”
http://www.thegreatstory.org/panfaithful.pdf
If you’re led to read it, I’d love to know that you think. Feel free to call or skype me whenever it works for you.
Co-evolutionary love and blessings,
~ Michael
Thanks Michael,
I did read it. And to all you readers out there, follow his links. Michael, I sent you a separate email, telling you that I think you need to expand it into a book.
Hi Bruce, your post prompted me to write “a response” and post it on my web-site. (annesimmonds.ce) It is a based on Naomi Wolf’s book “Vagina, A new Biography.” It think her book is very important and I highly recommend it. I’d love to hear what you think about the book if you manage to read it.
Thanks Anne,
I’ve written a response to your great post.