Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (30 page)

Sexual novelty is always introduced unilaterally. Couples fighting over
doing
something new are really fighting about
revealing
something new. If your Four Points of Balance are weak, you can’t create sexual novelty.

T
hus far we’ve seen why and how normal healthy people have sexual desire problems. These are universal problems that can lead to personal growth. (I’ll show you several more in this chapter.)

In
Part Three
, we’ll focus on how your life experiences influence your sexual desire. We’ve laid out the relationship context, the interrelatedness, in which our particular experiences play out. The combination of normal relationship processes, idiosyncratic personal experiences, and our response to them, shape our lives and our desire. We experience sexual desire problems against the background of our life, past and present. These experiences can make sexual desire problems more likely to happen, more complex to resolve, and more powerful and impactful on our lives.

How does this actually happen? It stems from the same thing that makes your sexuality special. What makes your desire different from all other species? What makes your sexual desire uniquely
human
? What
makes your sex more than barnyard rutting? The answer to all these questions is your capacity to bring meaning to sex, which is rooted in the evolution of the human brain. The meanings you bring to sex can greatly enhance or diminish your sexual relationship.

But how are those meanings determined? I don’t mean your sexual values or intellectualizations. I’m referring to how sex, desire, and intimacy are emotionally and physically wired in your brain. The themes that dominate your relationships and sex life are your sexual dynamics, what make you tick. This is largely learned. Experiences with other people greatly influence which meanings dominate your sexuality—for better or worse. To the degree you haven’t dealt with negative life experiences, you don’t know how they influence the meanings you bring to sex, and you can’t do anything about them.

In
Part Two
we saw how marriage is a people-growing process. In
Part Three
we’ll apply what we’ve learned to you and help you increase your capacity for desire.
Desire is a capacity you can develop
. It’s not simply a biological drive. But it’s not as simple as removing sexual hang-ups or increasing your libido. It’s about increasing your
capability
.

People are capable of much greater and more meaningful desire than you may realize. This is especially true as we grow older. Your capacity for desire typically increases as you age. Some couples solve desire problems later in life that they simply couldn’t handle when they were younger. In reality, aging and sexual potential are highly correlated.

This way of approaching desire might seem odd had we not seen how love relationships are people-growing processes. It should seem intuitive now that stronger Four Points of Balance (Solid Flexible Self, Quiet Mind–Calm Heart, Grounded Responding, Meaningful Endurance) increase your
capacity
for desire. It also changes the
nature
of your desire.

Increasing your sexual desire is not just about wanting sex. If that were the case, desire problems would be simpler.
Human sexual desire is about desiring your partner, and not just desiring sex, per se
.

You can desire your partner but not want sex. You can also desire sex but not desire your partner. That’s true for lots of people. It’s a common source of low desire in marriage. Sometimes your low desire reflects your partner’s undesirable characteristics. But you need to confront yourself: Does it reflect your own limited ability to care for and want another person?

Desire isn’t a biological drive that drags you into bed and takes you along for the ride. Human desire is more active. Think of desire as
wanting
.

Do you hunger for intimacy, love, and profound union? Do you crave sexual desire that borders on spiritual desire? If so, developing your Four Points of Balance will enable you to
want
more deeply. People who have difficulty quieting their mind, soothing their feelings, or handling hard times don’t
want
very well. Some find the discomfort of
wanting
so intolerable that they don’t let themselves want sex or their partner.

Desire is complicated. You can
want
from the best in you, or from the worst. You can
want
from what is good and solid in you, or what is weak, empty, and covetous. For some HDPs, it’s just their reflected sense of self seeking an emotional transfusion. Wanting from neediness is fairly automatic (if you let yourself want at all). Wanting from your solid flexible self takes personal development.

Helen and Tom were a couple in their thirties. When they first came to see me, they had lived together for several years but were not legally married. Both had been legally married once (to other people). Tom and Helen argued over frequency of sex, and whether or not to get married.

Tom was the LDP and Helen was the HDP. Sex was pretty good when they had it. They’d had sex four or five times a week when they first met. But after four years together, they were down to less than every other month. Tom said he wasn’t interested in sex because they were always fighting about getting married. Helen said sex dropped to its current
level less than a year into their relationship, when getting married wasn’t an issue.

Tom said he didn’t want to make another mistake, referring to his first marriage. He said his own parents were poor role models, who divorced when he was thirteen. Tom felt he needed to be sure he wanted to get married.

Helen understood Tom’s feelings, because she didn’t want to make another mistake either. But over the last year she kept asking Tom to decide what he wanted. Did he want to have sex? Did he want to get married? Helen loved Tom, but she was ready to move on, having spent three years on these issues with no end in sight.

Helen felt stuck because Tom couldn’t decide. He didn’t consider these questions when she didn’t push him. When she did, he complained. When Helen said she was losing hope, Tom said she was giving up their relationship prematurely. Why wouldn’t she give him a little more time? Tom said he knew what he
didn’t
want: He didn’t want to have sex, he didn’t want to get married and divorce again, and he didn’t want to give Helen up.

Desire has a compelling quality: It’s a tremendous motivation. Our desires mobilize us. Desire propels you to alleviate your deprivations. It can make you move mountains to get something you truly want.

But wanting takes energy. It takes effort to get what you want. And there’s no guarantee that your wants will be fulfilled. You have to want
first
, before you know how things turn out. In this way sex is no different from marriage, parenthood, or your career. Wanting creates the space in which our highest aspirations come into being.

One poignant part of wanting—the part people strive to avoid—involves deprivation. Desire is the feeling that accompanies an unsatisfied state. Wanting, itself, creates a state of deprivation. Wanting puts you in the condition of being without. In an earlier usage,
to want
means
to be lacking
.

Wanting
entails wishing, craving, and yearning for someone or
something.
Wanting
is about longing, and longing is painful. Longing is persistent desire for something or someone continually unattainable or distant. When you
want
your partner and
want
sex, you’ve got powerful sexual motivation. But that means you must have the strength to
want
.

Wanting
differentiates your desire from the sexual desire of other species. It elevates your sexual desire beyond a hormonal rush or reproductive drive.
¹²⁸
Besides lust, infatuation, and attachment needs, humans have the capacity to cherish another person. This means acting in the best interest of another, even at our own expense, because we want the best for them. Earlier I said your desires don’t necessarily arise out of the best in you. So don’t confuse
wanting
with these four things:

1.
Wanting
is not about desiring your partner to do something for you. It’s not the same as wanting him to pay attention to you, or to make you feel secure and desirable.

2.
Wanting
doesn’t make your partner a criminal, the way the police want a fugitive. Wanting doesn’t give you permission to make your partner a prisoner.

3.
Wanting
is more than an urge to merge. Wanting your partner is about a desire for
her
. It surfaces as concern for her separate interests, even when they don’t line up with yours. Wanting obliges you to act in her best interests, because her welfare and happiness is intrinsic to yours.

4.
Wanting
is not being covetous, possessive, or jealous. Possessiveness and jealousy masquerade as profound desire, but they stem from weakness. True wanting stretches your Four Point of Balance.
¹²⁹

I’ve said desire is a capacity you can develop by expanding the depth and scope of meanings you bring to it. Tom’s meanings could be summarized in a single sentence:
If you love me, you will …

After Tom’s parents divorced, he lived with his mother. Times were hard. Mother struggled to keep them fed with a roof over their heads.
She worked hard and expected Tom to help around the house. But more than that, Mother expected Tom to make her life easier since she worked so hard. During his adolescence, it was a rare day that Tom’s mother didn’t say,
“If you love me, you’ll do this for me. Look at all I do for you!”

Tom hated when his mother said this. When he was younger, he worked hard to appease her. When he got older, he walked out when she harangued him. He’d heard it all before. He became more defiant and reactive to his mother saying,
“If you love me, you will …”

Tom became a young man who didn’t want to want. Wanting produced feelings he didn’t handle well. Mother used Tom’s desire to please her against him. It made him an easy target for her manipulations. Over time, wanting her to be happy was tantamount to offering himself up to do whatever she wanted.

In our initial session Tom said, “I guess it made me somewhat leery of women. My mother was a pretty controlling and manipulative woman. She had to be. She had to take care of herself and me. She didn’t get any help from my Dad. Maybe the reason I hesitate to get married—maybe the reason I don’t want to have sex—is because I’m afraid Helen is going to turn into my mother.” Tom thought he had made it to safe ground.

I asked, “Is that why you haven’t chosen Helen yet?”

Tom looked surprised. “I never thought of myself as not choosing Helen. Maybe that’s why I haven’t asked her to marry me.”

Part of
wanting
involves
choosing
. Choosing means selecting one person among the many you could want. Choosing requires making a decision (hopefully involving deliberation) and arriving at a selection. Choosing is a deliberate act of will and judgment. Choosing is the co-evolutionary process of self-definition. Choosing is self-creation. Choosing is how we become the self we want.