Create space to rekindle desire in long-term relationships
My husband and I love each other but just don’t feel erotic passion for each other any more. We have been together for 19 years now. I don’t mind the lack of sex, but I do want to be held and touched. My husband says that I am being contrary – he calls me a tease but he doesn’t do any initiating either. Is this what we can expect for the rest of our lives together?
Even though we consider that we live in a modern world, this situation is one which is hardly ever talked about. Women may allude to it with throw away lines like ‘‘I don’t mind the fact that he hardly ever thinks about it now’’ but in my therapy room, it may be the first time that both women and men have talked openly about the loneliness that they feel, and their longing for touch – touch that conveys love and which, they hope (or fear) might rekindle desire.
Passion? Where would we be without it? Some have said the passing of passion is a sign of maturity. I am on the side of Esther Perel, New York’s internationally known sex therapist, who believes passion should be a lifelong pursuit.
She says that while there is great comfort in being loved, we also need to feel desired.
‘‘When I talk about the erotic I talk about what makes us feel vital, alive.’’
In her reported words, she believes that ‘‘sexuality is a language in which we talk about our deepest wishes, our most vulnerable feelings, our needs for connection, our fears, our longing. They all get expressed in the physicality of our body in ways that some of us cannot always express and experience through words.
‘‘I think, for men, the language of the body often remains the place where they can experience their needs for tenderness, connection and vulnerability. When a woman says ‘‘all he wants is sex’’ she doesn’t often get what he wants – he wants the same thing as [she does] – connection.’’
Everybody talks about desire being intermittent in women, it being interrupted by the busyness of having young children at home and/or working.
Then later in life, menopause often frees up women to the permission of desire. For men, some think desire is more linear – and the big taboo is lack of desire in men.
However, most sex therapists will agree that in our offices we see fairly equal numbers of both men and women with this concern.
For hundreds of years people married for security, duty, children. Romantic love never entered into it. When women no longer had to marry for financial security, they started wanting more from the relationship: romance, sexual fulfilment, emotional stability, friendship and family. ‘‘Desire over the long haul is something people never had to cultivate,’’ Perel reminds us.
Yet one person, she maintains, just cannot fill every need. A partner who is your best friend, confidante and lover often leads to a dying sex life. ‘‘Love is grounded in security and stability but desire is about mystery, unpredictability,’’ she says. ‘‘For you to desire someone you need a distance to cross.’’
Sexless lives are, curiously, often due to their being too close, too merged. ‘‘If you know everything about someone there is no mystery.’’
It’s about developing separateness, she advises – in friends, activities and work – that builds curiosity about the other and fuels desire.
She recounts the story of one couple who were incredibly affectionate and tactile with each other but hadn’t had sex in years. She said to them ‘‘OK, (from now) you can’t touch each other. There needed to be space so she would have to go after him.’’
Then there are couples who are bored, stuck. They wonder what’s left to say to each other. This is one of Perel’s favourite topics.
‘‘I always say, don’t think you know your partner, because you don’t. It’s a convenience to treat your partner as a fixed, known entity, with no surprises. I think that the partner doesn’t belong to you. They are a separate person who chooses every time to be with you, along with an option to renew.’’
Her answer to such a couple is to have them sign up for a private email account and asks that they write to each other daily.
‘‘Suddenly, they are not interacting as husband and wife but as man and woman. Now they have a place to talk about sexuality. And as they start to write about who they are, what they are thinking about, they rediscover each other. It’s virtual foreplay.’’
So can love and desire co-exist in a committed relationship? Yes, but not always at the same time, she says of the paradox. There are times when we are focused on the stable, predictable aspects and then there are times when we are freer.
It is unreasonable to expect one person to meet all your needs. Wanting your partner to be a friend, lover, emotional and financial supporter will put too much pressure and dependence on the relationship. It’s not too little emotional intimacy that kills passion, but often too much.