Can This Love Affair Be Saved?

I'm always concerned about some of the ways dating gets sabotaged--not by the guy or woman, but by ideas that live in our hearts and minds. Earlier I discussed one myth, the one that says all love should be erotic all the time. Here's another:

Myth #2: If passion wanes, it cannot be revived.

Not true. You can't will desire, nor magically feel like making love just because he or she does. But you definitely can tease desire out from under, IF you become seriously interested in where it went--that is, in what emotions are covering it.

Naturally, you'd look at whether you're angry at the man or woman you're sleeping with, or feeling hurt or abandoned. These feelings can muffle sexual stirrings, since one of the finest mechanisms of defense against getting more hurt is not to let him in closer, and one of the savviest ways to have your anger without actually expressing it is to "punish" your partner by simply making closeness impossible. (To wit: When Jennie's twin brother died suddenly and left her devastated, her boyfriend got impatient with her for grieving longer than he expected. "Aren't you over it yet?" he asked irritably, and she--still mourning and further alienated now by her mate's seeming refusal empathize, found it impossible to sleep with him again until her grief subsided and her rage at him was expressed.)

Sometimes you have to search deep inside not just your psyche but the culture, to find reasons for your numbness. Many young women have told me, for instance, that the moment they got married, they began to feel a subtle but often surprisingly abrupt diminution of pleasure. Now why would a sexy, smart, savvy, new wife no longer feel sexy the moment she has a ring on her finger? Evolutionary biologists might argue that she's got her mate now; she no longer has to win him. Psychiatrists might counter by saying she's retreated because her mate feels too much like family--the forbidden father or brother-- than a lover. I think there's another possibility: that she feels the taboo against being deeply sexual in the role of wife--a role that conjures up goodness more than it does steamy sex. (We'll be returning to this, as we will the subject of Desire, often!) Once inside the hallowed halls of matrimony, with all the respectability and maturity and social approval that welcomes you there --well, being hot in bed can suddenly seem to some once-wild lovers inappropriate or unseemly or even frivolous.

Sex, after all, is adult play. And marriage, we learn, is the very opposite of play--it's a very serious business. Some of the most playful--read: sexual--couples find that the minute they have a ring on their fingers they feel swamped with such heavily weighted ideals of what they're supposed to be, now that they're in the world of socially sanctioned sex, that they lose their erotic edge. Lofty notions of "settling down" and "responsibility" and "family" can have such a sobering effect on on a couple that they begin to feel "immature" and "silly" and even guilty having the very good sex that may have been what made them want to get married in the first place!

Whatever you find that's interfering with erotic delight, discuss it with your partner. Just say it. "You know, since we've moved in together, I've felt strangely distant, sexually. Could it be because we feel more like siblings than like lovers?" (Or, "I feel as if I'm looking at us the way the neighbors do; I've fallen into a role to look good to them! I think it's drained me of my libido, all that pressure! Does that sound possible?) Ask her outright: "Is there a way we can, together, fight off these images that haunt me (or us)?" Let her help. Maybe she feels like a boring roommate. Maybe he grew up with three sisters, and suddenly feels thrown back in that gawky, adolescent place. Maybe she's tired. Certainly whatever you feel, he feels part of. Maybe you both need more patience atop that precarious seesaw called desire.

But don't fight desire issues alone. You developed them as a couple, and you'll solve them most deftly by delving in deep, together.

                                                        --      The Love Goddess                                                   

Comments

[One Who Watches]

I've been married to my husband for 24 years and with him for 30. For the last 12 years I have been actively involved in caregiving for my late father and mother, who lived with us from about the time my father was diagnosed with terminal heart disease.

The caregiving ended earlier this summer, and I'd hoped that my sexual desire for my husband would re-surface from beneath the seemingly impenetrable exhaustion I had experiened for so many years. (Round the clock caregiving can really take it out of you.)

But ... it hasn't yet. I still don't feel any desire for sex, or even really affection, even though I am more rested and beginning to recover from the grief I felt at the loss of my mother in June.

I appreciate all that you wrote, and I will think about my feelings, as you suggested.

Many thanks.

[the love goddess]

To One Who Watches,
In my world, grief is given a lot of time--eons, in fact--and no one, not even the most demanding of the gods, expects desire to return until the overwhelming sadness and debilitating exhaustion of caregiving wane somewhat. You mortals are tough on those who are grieving, expecting them to pop back up in, what, a year? Two? Not possible! A broken leg may heal that fast, maybe, but not a broken heart. You've just given every ounce to nurturance, you can't give what isn't there.
Give yourself time. I won't outline the stages of grief to you, as you surely know them (the anger you say you're feeling is always part of mourning), but they're not orderly and they're not predictable and they take...here I go again...time; more time than humans give it. So do one thing for me: Don't think about love. Be kind but authentic. When the pressure is off you, really off you, then, when you least expect it, a glimmering of want, of need, of desire will appear once more.
--The Love Goddess

[One Who Watches]

Whew! Thank you, LoveGoddess. Now a related question. My spouse is entirely understanding, and never places any pressure on me for sex, but what is the best way for me to be considerate of and fair to him?

OWW

[the love goddess]

Dear OWW,
By being as considerate of his desire as you want him to be of yours. Granted, you're under severe stress, and "desire" may not be the applicable word for what you're feeling. But if you have told him that you feel somewhat deadened by grief, and he understands, then perhaps the only way to be authentic is to use other loving ways besides sex to communicate your consideration. Words are nice--"I wwant to thank you for undertanding what I'm going through....I'm not sure another man would be so generous." If he knows you know he's waiting patiently for you, and that you appreciate him for his patience, he will be less likely to press you. And if you go out of your way to do other things--besides sex--that make him happy (and those are things I can't specify because I don't know him), he'll see that it's not him you're rejecting; that you're trying to come back to life.
Also, tell him you love him! Sometimes words are magical....and saying them even when they don't spring up spontaneously is a far cry, in terms of inauthenticity, from trying to feel sexual.
TLG