Mechanics of Desire
The conversation on Medium turns to the topic that got me to Medium, and I’m trying very hard not to geek out on people’s posts.
Have I ever told the story how I stumbled upon Medium? I don’t think I have. It was mostly by chance.
It started with the worst feeling a nerd can get; the realization you are too ignorant about a topic that means a lot to you, to be able to say you understand it and/or be good at it. It’s a dismaying moment that kicks off a frantic period of research and absorbing anything about this topic you can get your hands on.
It just so happens the topic this time was relationship. Mine was crashing. I knew what happened. I didn’t understand why. I spend a couple of days wondering what I was thinking and what he was thinking and what we had been thinking. As almost always, the only correct answer to questions involving the word ‘what’ and ‘thinking’, is we weren’t really thinking at all.
To satisfy my need to know, and get rid of this awful feeling, I had to find out how not-thinking works in interpersonal (romantic) relationships. Which led me to books, like Ester Perel’s “Mating in Captivity”. It also led me to this site:
On this site, I got pointed to the blog of Dr. Robert Burriss. Who was the reason I created a Medium account and the first person I followed.
My year long studying did not give me the tools to pull my relationship out of it’s nose dive as I had hoped at the start. Instead, I found the knowledge that I needed to give myself the permission to let it crash and walk away from the wreckage on to a better and healthier relationship.
Along the way I also happened upon some things, which when pointed out seems so logical, yet everyone I know has them wrong. One of those things is the mechanics of desire.
There’s two sorts of desire.
There’s spontaneous desire, which seems to happen all by itself. You’re going about your day, minding your business, suddenly -BAM- you’re horny.
This sort of desire is treated like the holy grail of desire. The most desirable desire. In the stories we been telling ourselves as a society, spontaneous desire is both abundant and the only sort of desire that is real desire. To many minds it’s a benchmark for love, sincerity, worth and the health of a romantic relationship.
And then there is reactive desire, which is a desire that comes on in response to some sort of stimuli. (I almost wrote it’s triggered. While technically correct, the word ‘triggered’ is starting to change its meaning. Lets not go there in this blog.)
This sort of desire is scoffed at as being the undesirable desire. According to the same stories we’ve been telling ourselves, reactive desire is insincere and quickly linked to obligation, manipulation, pressure and low worth.
The stories we’ve been telling ourselves are a load of bullvine excrement.
There is nothing wrong with reactive desire.
The truth of the matter is, once you get past your hormone crazy teenage years, spontaneous desire will come around a lot less than it used to. And the times it does come around, is in the crazy “in love” phase of your live. That is the same time when researches will have a hard time telling your brain scan apart from a heroin user on their high. This phase can come and go, even in the same relationship. Some people are able to sustain this phase for years. Researchers have found some couple’s brain scans after 40 years of marriage to be similar to new couples of a few months. If this is you, congratulations.
To a lot, maybe even most, other people the “in love” phase and the accompanying spontaneous desire, fades. You’re not loving any less. Your brain just looks sober on the scans.
To some people, spontaneous desire never comes. That could be physical or psychological, the difference isn’t important to my point. They just never get that -BAM- horny.
If you have a certain type of mind, one that can get stuck in ‘modes’, you will very likely have less spontaneous desire. If you for instance have a tendency to obsess over thoughts, or trouble ‘switching off’ from work, or get into the flow when doing something really easily, you are likely not getting horny unless prompted.
Specially when your life gets busy (or you get children) if you are waiting around to get ‘into the mood’ spontaneously, you can be waiting for a long time. As one of the experts explained it: “If you think you will be ironing your laundry and suddenly become incredibly horny, no. It’s not going to happen.”
Reactive desire however, is always available. You can always awaken either your own desire, or that of your partner, pretty much at will. And yes, that can take a little time. It all depends on which stimuli you need, and how much of it. But once awoken, reactive desire is not one bit different from spontaneous desire. It’s not less sincere. It’s not out of obligation. Your relationship should not be in trouble because you put in a little effort.
At some level, we all know this. There’s a huge market for different kind of stimuli. Everything from perfumes to fashion are aimed to awaken reactive desire. Barry White and Marvin Gaye build careers on it. (If you’re humming Lets Get It On to yourself now, you’re welcome.)
But, and I am blaming the before mentioned bull shit stories for this one too, these things are used more in the ‘in love’ phase, when we need it less, and less in the long term relationship phase, when we need it more. This makes very little sense. Think about it.
