Esther Perel | The secret to desire in a long-term relationship (2)
.. 13:03 Now, in this paradox between love and desire, what seems to be so puzzling is that the very ingredients that nurture love -- mutuality, reciprocity, protection, worry, responsibility for the other -- are sometimes the very ingredients that stifle desire. Because desire comes with a host of feelings that are not always such favorites of love: jea lousy, possessiveness,aggression, power, dominance, naughtiness, mischief. Basically most of us will get turned on at night by the very same thi ngs that we will demonstrate against during the day. You know, the erotic mind is not very politically correct. If everybody was fantasizing on a bed of roses,we wouldn't be having such interesting talks about this. 13:54 (Laughter) 13:55 But no, in our mind up there are a host of things going on that we don't always know how to bring to the person th at we love, because we think love comes with selflessness and in fact desire comes with a certain amount of selfishness in the bes t sense of the word: the ability to stay connected to one's self in the presence of another. 14:17 So I want to draw that little image for you, because this need to reconcile these two sets of needs, we are born with that. Our need for connection, our need for separateness , or our need for security and adventure, or our need for togetherness and fo r autonomy, and if you think about the little kid who sits on your lap and who is cozily nested here and very secure and comfort able, and a t some point all of us need to go out into the world to discover and to explore. That's the be ginning of desire, that exploratory need, curiosity, discovery. And then at some point they turn around and the y look at you. And if you tell them, "Hey kiddo, the world's a g reat place. > Go for it.[:] There's so much fun out there," then they can turn away and they can experience connection and separateness at the sa me time. They can go off in their imagination, off in their body, off in their playfulness, all the while knowing that there's someb ody when they come back. span> 15:16 But if on this side there is somebody who says, "I'm worried. I'm anxious. I'm depressed. My partner hasn't taken care of me in so long. ss="mceAudioTime">[:] What's so goo d out there? s="mceAudioTime">[:] Don't we have every thing you need together, you and I?" then the re are a few little reactions tha t all of us can pretty much recognize me of us will come back, came back a long time ago, a nd that little child who comes back is the child who will forgo a part of himself in order not to l ose the other. I will lose my freedom in order not to lose connection. ss="mceAudioTime">[:] And I will learn to love in a certain way that will become burdened with extra worry and extra responsibility and extr a protection,and I won't know how to leave you in order to go play, in order to go exp erience pleasure, in order to discover, to enter inside myself.<s pan class="mceAudioTime">[:] 16:10 Translate this into adult language. It starts very young. It continues into our sex lives up to the end. Child number two comes back but looks like that over their shoulder all the time. :] "Are you going to be there? Are you going to curse me, scold me?<spa n class="mceAudioTime">[:] Are you going to be angry with me?" >[:] And they may be gone, but they're never really away And those are often the people that will tell y ou, "In the beginning, it was super hot." Because in the beginning, the growing intimacy wasn't yet so strong that it actually led to the decrease of desire. The more connected I became, t he more responsible I felt, the less I was able t o let go in your presence.The third child doesn't really come back. 16:56 So what happens, i f you want to sustain desire, it's that real dialectic piece.[:] On the one hand you want the security in order to be able to go. On the other hand if you can't go, you can't have pleasure, you can't culminate, you don't have an orgasm, you don't get excited because you spend your time in the body and the head of the other and not in your own. [:] 17:18 So in this dilemma about reconciling t hese two sets of f undamental needs, there a re a few things that I've come to understand erotic couples do. One, they have a lot of sexual privacy.They understand that there is an erotic space that belongs to each of them. They also understand that foreplay is not something you do five minutes before the real thing. Foreplay pretty much starts at the end of the previous orgasm. They also understand that an erotic space isn't about, you begin to stroke the other. It's about you create a space where you leave Management Inc., maybe where you leave the Agile program -- 17:56 (Laughter) 17:58 And you actually just enter that place where you stop being the good citizen who is taking care of things and being responsible. 18:05 Responsibility and desire just butt heads. They don't really do well together. Erotic couples also understand that passion waxes and wanes. It's pretty much like the moon. It has intermittent eclipses. But what they know is they know how to resurrect it. They know how to bring it back. And they know how to bring it back because they have demystified one big myth, which is the myth of spontaneity, which is that it's just going to fall from heaven while you're folding the laundry like a deus ex machina, and in fact they understood that whatever is going to just happen in a long-term relationship, already has. 18:43 Committed sex is premeditated sex. It's willful. It's intentional. It's focus and presence. 18:52 Merry Valentine's.
