by
Esther Perel
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So much of masculine identity is predicated on self-control and invulnerability. Yet I have also observed that these very restrictions lead many men to other venues of self-expression. In the absence of a more developed verbal narrative of the self, the body becomes a vital language, a conduit for emotional intimacy. While much has been written about the aggressive manifestations of male sexuality, it is not sufficiently appreciated that the erotic realm also offers men a restorative experience for their more tender side. The body is our original mother tongue, and for a lot of men it remains the only language for closeness that hasn’t been spoiled. Through sex, men can recapture the pure pleasure of connection without having to compress their hard-to-articulate needs into the prison of words.
The adherents of talk intimacy (often, though not always, women) have a hard time recognizing these other languages for closeness, hence they feel cheated when their partners are reluctant to confide in them. “Why won’t you talk to me?” they plead. “You should be able to tell me anything. Don’t you trust me? I want to be your best friend.” In this setup, the pressure is always on the non-talker to change, rather than on the talker to be more versatile. This situation minimizes the importance of nonverbal communication: doing nice things for each other, making attentive gestures, or sharing projects in a spirit of collaboration. A priceless smile or a well-timed wink expresses complicity and attunement, especially when words are unavailable.
honestly, fair. this is how i feel about skate-handing lol
We are indeed a nation that prides itself on efficiency. But here’s the catch: eroticism is inefficient. It loves to squander time and resources. As Adam Phillips wryly notes, “In our erotic life work does not work . . . trying is always trying too hard. Eroticism is an imaginative act, and you can’t measure it. We glorify efficiency and fail to recognize that the erotic space is a radiant interlude in which we luxuriate, indifferent to demands of productivity; pleasure is the only goal. Octavio Paz writes, “The moment of merging is a crack in time, a balm against the wounds inflicted by the minutes and hours of time. A moment totally eternal as it is ephemeral.” It is a leap into a world beyond.
This leap entails a loss of control that we’re taught from a very young age to guard against. We are socialized to tame our primal side: our unruly impulses, our sexual urges, and our rapacious appetites. Social order is built on this restraint, and lack thereof threatens to create chaos. Because loss of control is almost exclusively seen in a negative light, we don’t even entertain the idea that surrender can be emotionally or spiritually enlightening. But experiencing a temporary suspension of our discernible self is often liberating and expansive. I have seen many people stumble when they can’t simply take the problem of eros and fix it. They are left feeling bewildered and frightened by their slackened command. I help them learn how to relinquish control intentionally, as a means of personal growth and self-discovery.
i like the paz quote
What Stephanie fails to see is that behind Warren’s nagging insistence is a yearning to be intimate with his wife. For him, sex is a prelude to intimacy, a pathway to emotional vulnerability. She responds to him as if he were one more needy child. She doesn’t realize that this is not just for him but for her, too. Like a lot of women, once she’s in the caretaking mode she has a hard time switching it off. She’s so mentally organized in terms of what she does for everyone else that she is unable to recognize when something is offered to her.
What Warren finds intolerable is that his approach is having the opposite effect of what he intends. He is desperate for a flicker of desire from Stephanie, but he wants it just to be there, sudden and whole, the way it is for him. I explain to him that expecting our partner to be in the mood just because we are is a setup for disappointment. We take lack of desire as a personal rejection, and forget that one of the great elixirs of passion is anticipation. You can’t force desire, but you can create an atmosphere where desire might unfurl. You can listen, invite, tease, kiss. You can tempt, compliment, romance, and seduce. All these tactics help to compose an erotic substratum from which your partner can more easily be lifted.
Act II: Enter Ray. In his own words, Ray is a meat-and-potatoes man. He’s the happy product of successful male socialization: independent, self-reliant, and able to handle his own problems. He was not like the guys Joni usually dated—struggling, self-absorbed, emotionally undependable, alcoholic artists who weaseled out of relationships by saying things like, “Let’s not try to define this; can’t we just see where it goes?” and “It’s because I like you that I can’t be with you.” Ray, on the other hand, made it clear that he was interested. He called when he said he would, was never late, and put a lot of thought into planning their dates. “He actually paid attention to what I said. He asked me questions about myself and remembered the answers. I was used to a scene where you can have sex with someone for six months and never even broach the subject of what that might mean or where it might be going. Ray didn’t play that game. He liked me and wasn’t afraid to say so.”
Ray’s openness, his consistency, and his emotional generosity brought Joni a sense of peace and security she had never known in a romantic relationship. She found his ability to intuit her needs positively enchanting, and the fact that he seemed to have so few needs of his own was also a plus.
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I have, in my slightly perkier moments in the wake of my and Jen’s break-up, let myself believe that chatting women up might be fun; that, with age, I might have got better at it. For some reason, this assumption gets stronger with every break-up, despite not having done it for the years I’ve been in a relationship, and despite never being very good at it in the first place. And then I’m thrown into the world of flirting and I realize that sitting on the sofa with the same woman watching box sets has not made me more courageous and charismatic. In fact, it has done possibly the exact opposite. How could I have let myself believe, even for a second, that single thirty-something life would be an endless buffet of opportunities, when I know it is, at best, small plates.
lol
‘This is too hard,’ she says, waving her hands in a way that suggests she’s given up. ‘We can’t talk without hurting each other. It doesn’t work.’
‘We can agree on that,’ I say. ‘Goodbye, Jen.’ I walk away and, after a few paces, turn back. ‘I can’t even look at the sea any more because it reminds me of you.’
‘If you can’t look at the sea that’s YOUR FAULT, ANDY,’ she shouts. Passers-by look at her, surprised to see someone so well-put-together bellowing something so demented in the middle of the day. ‘Not mine. YOURS. YOU need to go fix your relationship with the sea, NOT ME.’ She turns and walks away.
‘YOU’VE RUINED THE SEA,’ I shout before I turn and walk the other way.
She always was melodramatic.
I soon realized that inevitability of every relationship: the things which initially draw you to each other become the exact things that irritate you the most. I’d loved Andy’s nonconformity, which became irritation at the lack of structure in his life. He’d loved my independence, which became an annoyance at my remoteness. In the early days, he explained away my lateness with my free-spiritedness. After a while he thought it was selfishness. I used to love that he wanted to make everyone laugh because I thought it was a sign of his generosity. At some point I saw it for what it really was – neediness. I realized he saw every social interaction as a miniature gig and therefore an opportunity for acceptance or rejection. His mood was so dependent on how he felt these conversational performances went and I hated being wise to it.
Andy gave my mum a pair of karaoke mics for her birthday.
He knows she’s never done karaoke in her life and in fact the most modern song she’s ever sung is Handel’s ‘Messiah’ in the church choir. And as I saw her open the gift, trying to think of something polite to say, I thought about how Andy always does whatever Andy wants to do. I thought back on all the presents I’d bought for his mum over the years and how much time I’d put into each of them – how I’d listened every time she said she liked a piece of jewellery I wore or mentioned a book she wanted to read and mentally noted it for her birthday and Christmas. Andy kept laughing to me afterwards about how baffled my mum had looked when she opened the present. And I realized he’d chosen not to be thoughtful but to be funny instead. To no one but himself.
I challenged a political view of Andy’s, which led to an argument, and he said: ‘I would love you no matter what your opinions were.’
And I know he was telling the truth. He would have loved me unquestioningly and stubbornly forever. And I don’t know if I want to be loved like that.
The next day, as we stood in front of the Venus de Milo in the Louvre, I looked over his shoulder and saw that he was googling himself.
Specifically, he was googling ‘Did Ask or Task air in France?’
I know why he was doing it: it was because he was feeling sore about the conversation with his agent and he needed reassurance that he wasn’t wasting his life, that his work had had some impact on the world. He wanted to know if there was even the tiniest possibility that as he walked around the cobbled streets of Paris, a French person might spot him and say, ‘Isn’t that Andy Dawson? From that unknown subtitled English game show that only ran for eight episodes?’, despite the fact he’d never been recognized in his home country. He needed to have hope that this could happen, more than he needed to take in the beauty and history of the famous ancient Greek sculpture that was right in front of him. More than he needed to hold the hand of the woman he was in love with, who was standing right next to him.