Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.

—Gaston Bachelard

A HOST OF INSTITUTIONS LOOK out for our best interest. Religion, government, medicine, education, the media, and pop culture all labor tirelessly to define and regulate the parameters of our sexual well-being. The incentives and prohibitions surrounding the voluptuousness of the body are the mother’s milk of society. Much of what we learn about sex comes from the street, the movies, television, and school. But before any of these reach us, our family gets to us first. We are members of a society, but we’re also the children of our parents. (This includes grandparents, stepparents, guardians, foster parents, and anyone else who is entrusted with our early well-being.) No history has a more lasting effect on our adult loves than the one we write with our primary caregivers.

The Archaeology of Desire

The psychology of our desire often lies buried in the details of our childhood, and digging through the early history of our lives uncovers its archaeology. We can trace back to where we learned to love and how. Did we learn to experience pleasure or not, to trust others or not, to receive or be denied? Were our parents monitoring our needs or were we expected to monitor theirs? Did we turn to them for protection, or did we flee them to protect ourselves? Were we rejected? Humiliated? Abandoned? Were we held? Rocked? Soothed? Did we learn not to expect too much, to hide when we are upset, to make eye contact? In our family, we sense when it’s OK to thrive and when others might be hurt by our zest. We learn how to feel about our body, our gender, and our sexuality. And we learn a multitude of other lessons about who and how to be: to open up or to shut down, to sing or to whisper, to cry or to hide our tears, to dare or to be afraid.

All these experiences shape our beliefs about ourselves and our expectations for others. They are part of the dowry each man and woman brings to adult love. Part of this emotional scorecard is obvious and manifest, but much of it is unspoken, concealed even from ourselves.

Our sexual preferences arise from the thrills, challenges, and conflicts of our early life. How these bear on our threshold for closeness and pleasure is the object of our excavation. What turns you on and what turns you off? What draws you in? What leaves you cold? Why? How much closeness can you stand to feel? Can you tolerate pleasure with the one you love?

When Steven’s father abandoned his mother, she picked up the pieces, devoted herself to caring for her children, and swore she would never let anyone hurt her like that again. An ER nurse, today she owns her home and has put three kids through college. Steven is filled with admiration and respect for his mother, and has spent much of his life guarding against becoming what he calls, “that asshole.” Six years into his marriage to Rita, he finds himself avoiding her démarches and ducking her accusations about his sexual passivity. Behind his excuses, Steven is baffled by his lack of interest—and by his unreliable erections.

The more he loves and respects his wife, the harder it is for him to fuck her. In Steven’s mind, emotional security requires a constant monitoring of any selfish or aggressive inclinations. This belief, which grew out of his love for his mother, has become part of his sexuality. The more he loves Rita and the more he depends on her, the greater his need for caution and the more inhibited he is sexually. He doesn’t know how to experience the open range of lust in the context of emotional care. His unconscious is loyal to the past.

For Dylan, a retail manager in his twenties, emotional security feels altogether impossible, with or without sexual excitement. His mother, who died when he was twelve, was the emotional linchpin of their family. When his eyes filled with tears at her funeral, his father said to him, “I hope you’re not going to fall apart on me.” In order to stay close to his father he had to excise his entire emotional life. He explains, “All feelings were a sign of weakness in our house.” The minute Dylan has feelings for someone he lashes out at himself with self-loathing, hoping to control his unbearable vulnerability. His solution? Twice a week he goes to the clubs to pick up men he will never know and who—more important—will never know him. In anonymous sex there are no feelings, and Dylan is protected from repeating the humiliations of his childhood. At the same time he gets to experience the delicious thrill of being wanted, being chosen by many at once.

One aspect of the erotic blueprint that illustrates the irrationality of our desire is that what excites us most often arises from our childhood hurts and frustrations. The sex therapist Jack Morin explains that the erotic imagination is ingenious in undoing, transforming, and redressing the traumas of the past. In other words, the experiences that caused us the most pain in childhood sometimes become the greatest sources of pleasure and excitement later on.

Let’s take a look at Melinda. Her father is a philanderer. And while she empathizes with her mother’s despair, she also doesn’t want to be like her mother: broken, miserable, bereft. Instead she has become the seductress, the opposite of the abandoned wife. Melinda sets out to best men at their own game. Desire is stoked by unavailability in Melinda’s mind, and once she’s seduced a man he is instantly less attractive. In order to reconfirm her own power she must set her sights on the next man, and the next, and the next. If there is no obstacle to clear, she has no way to gauge her value. Almost nothing is more exciting than conquering a powerful, aloof man; but the ultimate thrill is in dumping him—sure proof that she has avenged the past. In heartlessly dismissing these men, Melinda seeks to confirm that, unlike her mother, she is strong and independent, the one calling the shots, making the choices, picking up or discarding lovers as suits her fancy. Of course, by ruthlessly purging vulnerability from her life, she perversely ends up just as lonely and unloved as her mother.

The central agent of eroticism is the human imagination, but for many people the project of sexual self-discovery is hampered by parental messages that induce fear, guilt, and mistrust. Something that is meant to protect children often turns out to be a source of much anxiety in adult sexual love. Lena grew up with a roster of what is and is not acceptable for a worthy woman to dream about, act on, and get off on. The eldest daughter in a conservative, devoutly religious household, Lena learned that decent women hewed to strict standards of womanly behavior, were never aggressive or pushy, and always put the needs of others before their own. Like her mother (and centuries of women before her) Lena has derived her self-esteem and validation from being a giver and not a taker. By making herself indispensable, she has hoped to counteract the vagaries of love. But Lena’s niceness is precisely what turns her husband off. Her coy lovemaking and her lack of sexual assertiveness inhibit him.

In recent months Lena has started to wonder what her marriage would be like if she were less accommodating. She is experimenting with the idea that she might be liked for who she is, not only for what she gives. Together we have been deconstructing the anxiety, guilt, and self-abnegation that are the legacy of the nice girl. Lena would love to become bold enough not only to know what she likes but to be able to ask for it. Buying lingerie at Victoria’s Secret with her husband may not sound like much, but for Lena it was as uplifting as a Wonderbra.

The internal tensions that crackle in the sexuality of Steven, Dylan, Melinda, and Lena are a result of childhood conflicts. The details of our erotic proclivities and apprehensions are refined throughout our lives but often originate in our childhood experiences, both good and not so good. Sometimes it takes a bit of psychological sleuthing to make sense of all this, but very little in one’s erotic imagination is happenstance.

Me in the Context of We

Our physical and emotional dependence on our parents surpasses that of any other living species, in both magnitude and duration. It is so complete—and our need to feel safe is so profound—that we will do anything not to lose them. We will suppress our wishes and push our aggression underground. We will take the blame for abuse, submit to control, become self-reliant, and otherwise renounce our needs. In short, we’ll apply a wide range of self-preservation tactics, all aimed at maintaining our primary bond.

Things get tricky when you consider that one of our greatest needs, developmentally speaking, is autonomy. From the moment we can crawl, we navigate the treacherous paths of separation in an attempt to balance our fundamental urge for connection with the urge to experience our own agency. We need our parents to take care of us, but we also need them to give us enough space to establish our freedom. We want them to hold us and we want them to let us go.

Throughout our lives we grapple with this interplay between dependence and independence. How artfully we reconcile these needs as adults depends greatly on how our parents reacted to the stubborn duality in our little selves. It’s important to point out that our parents’ behavior, what they actually do, is only one part of the situation. Another part is our interpretation of their actions. Each child brings an individual resilience to the lottery of life. What might feel good to one will feel overwhelming to another. Some of us may wish our parents had been more involved, while others may cringe at memories of their parents’ scrutiny and intrusion. Every family has its preferred responses to expressions of dependency and autonomy—when they are rewarded and when they are thwarted. In the give-and-take with our parents we determine how much freedom we can safely experience, and how much our connections will require the subjugation of our needs. In the end we fashion a system of beliefs, fears, and expectations—some conscious, many unconscious—about how relationships work. We wrap these up in a tidy package and hand it to our beloved. It is a fair trade.

Not coincidentally, this entire emotional history plays itself out in the physicality of sex. The body is the purest, most primal tool we have for communicating. As Roland Barthes wrote, “What language conceals is said through my body. My body is a stubborn child; my language is a very civilized adult.” The body is our mother tongue—our mediator with the world long before we speak our first words. From the moment we come into being, love flows from adult to child sensuously—and I dare say erotically as well.

Bodily sensations dominate our first awareness of our environment and our earliest interactions with our caregivers. The body is a memory bank for the sensual pleasures of the skin. How often do I hear men and women in my office implore each other, “Can you just hold me?” The soothing powers of a hug hold at forty no less than at five. The body is also a storage facility for the distress and the frustration we have endured, and the pain we have suffered. Cleverly, our bodies remember what our minds may have chosen to forget, both light and dark. Perhaps this is why our deepest fears and most persistent longings emerge in intimate sex: the immensity of our neediness, the fear of desertion, the terror of being engulfed, the yearning for omnipotence.

Erotic intimacy is an act of generosity and self-centeredness, of giving and taking. We need to be able to enter the body or the erotic space of another, without the terror that we will be swallowed and lose ourselves. At the same time we need to be able to enter inside ourselves, to surrender to self-absorption while in the other’s presence, believing that the other will still be there when we return, that he or she won’t feel rejected by our momentary absence. We need to be able to connect without the terror of obliteration, and we need to be able to experience our separateness without the terror of abandonment.

The Selfishness of Intimate Pleasures

I have always been interested in the people who are able to achieve balance between self and other on an emotional level but who repeatedly fail to achieve it physically. The threat of merging in the physical act of sex, and the ensuing loss of self, is so intense for these people that they defend against it either by shutting down sexually or by taking their desire elsewhere. The psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin writes, “The child’s struggle for autonomy takes place within the realm of the body and its pleasures.” It is no different for the adult.

The first time James walked into my office, he sat down and said, “Stella and I have a very good marriage, but sex has always been a problem.” James feels sexually inhibited with Stella, and their erotic misfit fills him with tension. Whatever initial excitement he may feel when Stella approaches him invariably turns into a preoccupation with his own performance. Will I stay hard? Will I come too soon? Will Stella have an orgasm? Sex becomes a race to the finish line—can he get there before he loses his erection? His ability to enjoy himself is massively curtailed by this narrow focus. He can’t be playful, can’t try out new things, because anything that strays from the routine might jeopardize his capacity to perform. These anxieties always have a ripple effect, and James’s inhibitions have also stifled Stella. She senses his absence, laments his lack of attention, and has complained about it bitterly over the years.

“Tell me about your mother,” I ask James.

“My mother? You don’t waste a minute, do you? A few years ago I went to see a therapist, and she also wanted me to talk about my mother. It didn’t change a thing. My wife is nothing like my mother.”

“In due diligence I always go back to the source. I promise I won’t tell you that you married your mother. But the first place we learn about love and relationships is in our original family. None of the others—friends, flings, teachers, lovers—can carry this kind of emotional resonance. So, tell me about your mother.”

What emerges in our conversations is that James was keenly attuned to his mother’s moods, and she was often lonely and sad. She didn’t like noise, didn’t like messes, and got agitated when he and his sister were too boisterous. She was a good mother, but very tightly wound. “I always found it difficult to handle the specifications of her needs. She needed seventy-two things lined up to be OK.” James’s mother relied on him for support, company, and conversation. (She referred to his father as simply the Paycheck.) “When I was older and wanted to do things with my friends, I knew she was disappointed. She’d say, ‘Have a good time’ in a way that made it very hard for me to have a good time.” James grew up torn between his desire not to displease his mother and his need to lead his own life. “Getting a scholarship to Stanford, clear across the country, was the best thing that could have happened to me. She couldn’t deny me that opportunity. I left, but I took a lot of guilt with me.”

The first time James set eyes on Stella, she was a vision. “Everything about her was graceful, vibrant, colorful. Here was a woman who was not afraid to stand out. She was all light.” Stella was the antithesis of James’s mother, and for the first time he was able to love a woman and not feel burdened with responsibility and guilt. In fact, Stella regularly rejected his attempts to be overly accommodating, explaining that they made her feel smothered. He laughs when he recounts how anxious he used to feel when he wanted to do something that didn’t include her—he was always afraid of disappointing her. He had a way of asking, “Do you mind?” that drove her crazy. Finally she snapped, “Look, I’m not your mother. You don’t have to ask my permission.” Stella has taught James, largely through example, that you can be close to someone—intimate, caring, secure—without feeling sacrificed in the process. In asserting her independence, Stella has communicated over and over that she’s not fragile, and that her well-being does not depend exclusively on him. The price of love does not have to be personal obliteration.

In many ways, James and Stella have an enviable marriage. They enjoy each other. He still makes her laugh out loud, and she is the fiercest but most trusted critic of his graphic design work and, as he would add, “everything else, too.” Stella, clear about where she stands, says, “Even when I hate his guts I’ve never been bored. The day I’m bored I’m out of here.” In the thirty-one years they’ve been together they’ve raised four children, renovated two houses, suffered the loss of all four of their parents, survived Stella’s breast cancer, and toasted the birth of their first grandchild. This is the bright side of their story.

But in the middle of this pastoral landscape is the minefield of sex, where their worst arguments occur. She wants it; he doesn’t. She wants to talk about it; he doesn’t. She gets angry. He gets defensive. They clash, then wait for the dust to settle. This situation is chronic and relentless, and recently it got a lot worse.

For years, Stella has resented being the custodian of their sex life. “I’m the one who thinks about it, who wants it, who makes it happen, and who complains when it doesn’t. If I left it up to James, our erotic life would be a desert.” Privately James admits that he initiates only when he’s reasonably sure she won’t be receptive; that way, he appears to keep up his end of the bargain. Stella hates being the one who “does it all,” but she doesn’t dare stop, for fear that there will be nothing, an unbearable void. Better to assume his lack of interest than to confirm it.

Since Stella entered menopause her sex drive has plummeted, and her worst fears have, in fact, been confirmed. James’s lack of sexual initiative, once cloaked by her eagerness, is now glaring. She feels frantic at the prospect of sexual deadness that looms before her. “We’re like roommates. This time I really need him to make the effort, and he won’t.” I point out to Stella that even though it may look as if he won’t, what’s more likely is that he doesn’t know how. The disruption brought about by menopause challenges a pattern that has been fixed since early in their relationship. They will soon discover that it also opens up new possibilities.

James is quick to focus on performance issues to justify his lack of desire. He foresees sexual failure, and his anxiety makes this prophecy self-fulfilling. He feels diminished and unmanly each time he fails, and his fear of impotence makes him want to stop even before he starts. The unintended irony in all this is that James becomes so obsessed with doing it right, staying hard for Stella, that he loses sight of her entirely. So while he thinks he’s focusing completely on her, she feels as if he’s somewhere else altogether. This has been a point of contention between them. I remark to James that holding the lens squarely on the physical act of sex—sex as a performance—is a decidedly unerotic approach. It is too narrow an angle. To me, it seems that James is overwhelmed by the whole prospect of being sexual with his wife: claiming desire, eroticizing her, feeling free to express the bawdiness of his lust with her.

When I ask James if he ever experiences anxiety-free sex, he answers, “Only when I masturbate.” This is important, since it confirms for me that he has no organic difficulty and that, genitally speaking, he can perform just fine. In solitary sex James can attend to himself without the pressure of another’s demands. The women who populate his fantasy life are lascivious, sexually alluring, and in no way vulnerable. He need not fear that his selfishness might hurt them, and he can delight in his excitement guilt-free. This is a freedom he never reaches with his wife, and that realization leads us to the cause of his erotic block.

James doesn’t know how to enjoy himself sexually in the presence of the woman he loves. Unable to reconcile pleasing himself and pleasing Stella at the same time, he ends up pleasing neither. Even though emotionally and intellectually he is able to maintain a strong sense of himself with his wife—he hates her taste in music, refuses to wear Italian suits, and defied her by voting Republican one year—this self-possession breaks down in the sexual encounter. He fears that if he surrenders to his own concupiscence and forgets Stella, even for a moment, she will be unforgivably hurt.

Though James is not aware of this, his erotic blueprint is riddled with marks left by his relationship with his unhappy mother. When it comes to sex with Stella, he is right back to the setup he had in his childhood: he has to make an impossible choice between attending to himself and securing closeness. The guilt he felt as a child about being selfish has been transformed into sexual inhibition. Perhaps this is why James experiences his wife’s desire as a demand rather than an invitation, it is an obligation, not a seduction. Eroticism has shifted into the realm of duty, and is weighted down with pressure, guilt, and worry—all proven antiaphrodisiacs.

Rekindling Desire

James and Stella are stumped. Their sex problem has been chalked up to lousy chemistry, and they think it is as permanent and irreversible as an amputated leg. For years James has been stuck in a narrative of helplessness that goes something like this: “Our problem has to be coming from somewhere; it has to be somebody’s fault, and if it’s not my fault, then whose fault is it? Must be Stella’s. Let’s blame her.” Reinterpreting James’s lack of desire, I locate it firmly in the reverberations of his childhood. He begins to have some compassion for himself. At the same time, I challenge him to take responsibility for it in the present. Together, we disentangle self-blame and responsibility, and map out courses of action. This brings him big relief. For Stella, this new line of attribution is a small step toward restoring her sense of self-esteem.

I work with James to establish a comfortable sense of sexual separateness, making sure to clarify that separateness does not mean indifference. Instead of fixating constantly on Stella, I ask him to do the unthinkable and hold on to himself. With this in mind, I suggest a few things. “First, leave the bedroom. Too many bad associations. Curse the bed—it has failure written all over it. It operates as a sensory deprivation tank. Find other surfaces in the house. Then, I’d like you to masturbate next to Stella, to experience the possibility of pleasing yourself in her presence. Take note of the tension and the guilt. Be mindful of them, rather than trying to avoid them.”

I chose masturbation for several reasons. First, it is the one area of James’s sexuality where he can let go freely. Second, it invites him to be totally self-centered, and relieves him of the responsibility of pleasing his wife. Third, it will—I hope—confirm for him that attending to himself doesn’t have to hurt her. Being watched will support his ability to indulge his erotic individuality guilt-free. Finally, it will turn his performance anxiety on its head. The act of masturbating in her presence is itself a grand performance, with Stella as the sole spectator. For the first time he can consider that she may actually enjoy taking in his enjoyment. Letting her watch him roam freely in his own erotic territory is itself an intimate gift.

Each of these layers helps to create a reality that is entirely different from the one he felt with his mother. After all, we don’t masturbate in front of our parents, but we can with our lovers.

Of course, when I made this suggestion I considered Stella’s plight as well. When James touches her tentatively, waiting for her to give him the go-ahead, she is filled with resentment. As it turns out, James’s cautious regard is a turn-off. His deference leaves her feeling burdened; his dogged focus leaves her aching. Earlier in our conversation, James made a point of telling me that Stella had a temper. “While that may be so,” I confirmed, “if you had made love to her more often you would have a wife with a very different temper, because the frustration that people can experience when the body is not touched, stroked, held, and pleasured drives people up a wall. What you then get is arousal transformed into rage.”

I tell Stella what I’ve told many people who are cherished spouses but famished lovers: “You know he loves you; you’ve never doubted that; and that’s why you’ve stayed all these years. What hurts so much is that you’ve never felt wanted by him. You feel that it’s all on you to make it happen, and indeed it is. You’ve forfeited sensual complicity for emotional security. It’s a cruel bargain.” Like a glacier suddenly melting, tears roll down Stella’s face. They speak volumes about the longing and rejection she’s lived with for so long. It’s virtually impossible not to take such repeated denial personally, to see it as proof that one is undesirable, and to slip into self-doubt.

To James I say, “Love and desire are not the same. Cozy is not the same as sexy. Your wife knows you love her. What she wants is to feel desired by you. She wants to know your hunger, to taste the delicate flavors of your craving, and to see it as a match for her own. Your inability to let go, to surrender to your own hedonistic designs, is infuriating to her. Your passivity is irritating, and your considerateness is the opposite of her fantasy of unrestrained rapture. Your lustiness would be an open endorsement for her own ardor. It’s hard to let go with someone who doesn’t.”

The masturbation experiment was only a partial success—it went so-so, as these things sometimes do, but there was no dramatic transformation. James’s self-consciousness got the better of him. He had always marshaled masturbation as a private pleasure, and he had no desire to share it. But what happened a few days later was a real turning point. James and Stella had a row. She was upset, convinced that things would never change. His first impulse was to hold her, but he was afraid it wasn’t what she wanted. She seemed so angry with him. But he pushed through his awkwardness and held her anyway. Though she wasn’t responsive at first, he maintained his embrace. In the past, James had always retreated, focusing solely on her cues for readiness. He was organized by her. This time, he made his own choice, laid claim to his own feelings, and was surprisingly aroused. He rubbed her back, and she began to calm down. She knew he was there, and that he could contain her. He could withstand her intensity. One intensity dominoed another, and this led to what they both recounted separately as “wonderful lovemaking.” Theirs wasn’t an ecstatic fulfillment; rather, they reveled in a quiet passion, the simple understanding of two bodies reunited after a long absence.

It takes two people to create a pattern, but only one to change it. James gleefully described himself in a later session as “bold and persistent,” and was amazed by how the feeling of being in charge literally charged him up. By taking control he was finally able to lose control. The sexual prison he and Stella had carefully constructed had begun to unlock. Freeing himself from his chronic reactive stance, even momentarily, filled him with hope and gave him a glimpse into the erotic possibilities that lay ahead. For the first time in years he found himself fantasizing about his wife—what they might do together, where they might do it. He reclaimed a part of himself that had been completely lost in anxiety.

It’s worth pointing out that in this encounter (and subsequent ones) James had no problem with coming too soon, or even with worrying that he might. When sex feels like an obligation it’s very efficacious to come fast—it brings a quick end to the discomfort. When lovers engage sexually as free agents, turning surrender into an act of self-assertion, there is no need to get it over with. Precipitating the grand finale isn’t so much the point as savoring the mutual trust and intimacy along the way.

Premature ejaculation is a misnomer. It is not a matter of timing; it has to do with lack of intent. It would be better described as “involuntary ejaculation.” Once James was in charge of his desire, he was in charge of his ejaculation as well.

In an interesting twist to the saga, James also told me that each time he and Stella have made love since beginning therapy it has been after an argument. “I’m a little bothered by that,” he confessed. “I’d like for us to be able to make love without preceding it with whatever that is.”

“Anger and excitement have a complicated relationship,” I explain. “Physiologically, anger and arousal have a lot in common. Psychologically, too. In your case, I think the anger emboldens you. It relieves you of compliance, and leaves you feeling more entitled. Anger highlights separateness and is a counterpoint to dependence; this is why it can so powerfully stoke desire. It gives you the distance you need. As a habit it can be problematic, but there’s no denying that it’s a powerful stimulant.”

Over the years I’ve met more than a few people like James and Stella, couples whose otherwise colorful relationship teeters on the brink of sensual austerity. Together we investigate the emotional undercurrents of their erotic stagnation. We trace the origins of the blocks as well as the relational dynamics that keep them in place. They find it useful to begin this way, and are comforted to learn that understanding the past can help them change the present.

On the Importance of Being Ruthless

We commonly believe that the closer we feel to someone, the easier it will be to shed our inhibitions. But that’s only half the story. Intimacy does nurture desire, but sexual pleasure also demands separateness. Erotic excitement requires that we be able to step out of the intimate bond for a moment, turn toward ourselves, and focus on our own mounting sensations. We need to be able to be momentarily selfish in order to be erotically connected.

Our ability to step away from our loved ones while trusting their steadfastness is forged in the security of our childhood bonds. The more we trust, the farther we are able to venture. When infants play peek a boo, the distance they can bear is only as far as the breadth of their fingers. What powers the game is the realization that, even when I don’t see you, you continue to exist. Older children play hide-and-seek, secure in the knowledge that someone will eventually come looking. The thrill of hiding is followed by the relief of being found. Erotic intimacy is an adult version of hide-and-seek. As when we were children, the stronger the connection the braver we are about stretching it. We know our beloved will be waiting for our return, will not punish our selfish pursuits, and in fact may even applaud them.

In his book Arousal, Michael Bader links the idea of selfishness to the concept of sexual ruthlessness, which he defines as “the quality of desire that enables a person to surrender to the full force of his or her own rhythms of pleasure and excitement without guilt, worry, or shame of any kind.” Bader’s explanation emphasizes the importance of differentiation—the capacity to hold on to oneself in the presence of another. Without that ability, we become like James, who can’t get out of Stella’s head long enough to experience his own fervor.

The rawness of our desire can feel mean, bestial, even unloving. Eros can feel predatory, a voracious grab. Whatever guilt we feel about taking—whatever shame we feel about our wantonness, our passion, our indecency—is intensified in the primitive vulnerability of sex. We bring to our intimate erotic encounters a lifetime of injunctions against selfishness in the context of love, the specifics of which are detailed in our erotic blueprint. In addition to the family legacy, we also carry a cultural legacy. We are socialized to control ourselves, to restrain our impulses, to tame the animal within. So as dutiful citizens and spouses we edit ourselves and mask our ravenous appetites and conceal our fleeting need to objectify the one we love.

For many people, the prohibitions against ruthlessness within the context of a loving relationship are just too great to allow for erotic abandon. The self-absorption inherent in sexual excitement obliterates the other in a way that collides with the ideal of intimacy. Such people find they can be safely lustful and intemperate only with people they don’t know as well, or care about as much. Recreational sex, pornography, and cybersex all share an element of distance, even anonymity, that avoids the burden of intimacy and makes sexual excitement possible. Clearly, these emotionally disengaged situations are more often found outside the home, where the need for differentiation is less intense. Being with an unavailable partner provides a protective limit—if you can’t get too close to a person, you need not fear entrapment or loss of self.

To my thinking, cultivating a sense of ruthlessness in our intimate relationships is an intriguing solution to the problems of desire. While it may appear at first glance to be detached and even uncaring, it is in fact rooted in the love and security of our connection. It is a rare experience of trust to be able to let go completely without guilt or fretfulness, knowing that our relationship is vast enough to withstand the whole of us. We reach a unique intimacy in the erotic encounter. It transcends the civility of the emotional connection and accommodates our unruly impulses and primal appetites. The flint of rubbing bodies gives off a heat not easily achieved through tamer expressions of love. Paradoxically, ruthlessness is a way to achieve closeness. Erotic intimacy invites us into a state of unboundedness where we experience a sweet freedom. We get a temporary break from ourselves—the legacies of our childhood, the habits of our relationship, and the constraints of our respective cultures.

Loving another without losing ourselves is the central dilemma of intimacy. Our ability to negotiate the dual needs for connection and autonomy stems from what we learned as children, and often takes a lifetime of practice. It affects not only how we love but also how we make love. Erotic intimacy holds the double promise of finding oneself and losing oneself. It is an experience of merging and of total self-absorption, of mutuality and selfishness. To be inside another and inside ourselves at the same time is a double stance that borders on the mystical. The momentary oneness we feel with our beloved grows out of our ability to acknowledge our indissoluble separateness. In order to be one, you must first be two.