Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship (34 page)

1. Desire is
wanting
. Human sexual desire is about desiring your partner, and not just desiring sex, per se. Poorly differentiated people don’t want to
want
, but they want to be wanted.

2. Sexual desire problems create (and arise from) two-choice dilemmas. Two-choice dilemmas exist because choices are finite in love relationships. In emotionally fused relationships, your choices decrease as your partner starts to develop a more solid flexible self.

3. Human desire is incredible: Our self mobilizes itself by allowing itself to want. What we want eventually involves becoming more than we are. Rather than being driven by discomforts and deprivations, our sense of “unfulfilled destiny” drives us forward.

I
n this chapter, we’ll explore the dark side of sexual relationships. (In
Chapter 11
we’ll examine the spiritual and enlightened aspects of your sexual desire.) Unfortunately, lots of dark things go on when sexual desire problems show up. There’s a reason why someone wrote, “A long association—prolonged human contact, when a man and woman live together—this ends up producing a sort of rot, a poison.”
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Unkind acts are a fact of life in marriage. Emotional gridlock, emotional fusion, and two-choice dilemmas trigger everyday emotional abuse that leaves no physical evidence. If you want to torture your partner in a monogamous relationship, there’s no better or more common way than to use sex and desire. I call this emotional torture “normal marital sadism.”

Normal marital sadism shows up in myriad ways, like saying hurtful things or withholding important information. You might be adept at strategic maneuvering or subtly (and not so subtly) coercing, pressuring,
manipulating, and demeaning your partner. Everyone-for-himself, bad-faith dealings are common in some marriages.

Have you and your partner made a deal with the Devil? Do your desire problems stem from a bargain that’s come back to haunt you? From their worst instincts, couples make unwholesome emotional bargains. Some deals kill sexual desire, guaranteed: Think of a trophy wife (or husband). Her marriage is based on the art of the deal. Sex is usually an important part of that arrangement. Ironically, the deal itself guarantees sexual desire will fade.

Let me tell you about Barbie and Ken, a couple whose desire problems grew out of this kind of deal. Barbie and Ken were a matched set: Trophy wife and trophy husband. Ken was a successful neurosurgeon, used to people deferring to him. Barbie was a beautiful stay-at-home housewife, used to men chasing after her. Both Ken and Barbie generally got their way with other people. They were acutely vain and insecure, and both distrusted the opposite sex.

Barbie was movie-star-quality attractive, with large breasts, heavy makeup, and big hair; she was flamboyantly sexual and flirtatious. When Barbie was younger, she created a stir when she entered a party. Now, in her late forties, she looked a bit hardened and overdone.

Ken was square-jawed and rugged featured. He was a buffed nails, power-lunch kind of guy. Women swooned over his charm and good looks. Ken had no respect for them. In this way, Ken was much like Barbie: She disrespected men for being “led around by their dicks,” but she desperately needed their attention.

Barbie and Ken were the prototypic beautiful couple. In restaurants, people turned to get a better look at them. They had money, wore expensive clothes, drove nice cars, and belonged to the right country club. They took dance lessons and put on torrid displays of sexy moves that other couples applauded. Ken and Barbie thrived on the applause, because they weren’t hearing any in their bedroom.
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Ken had been a good catch as far as Barbie was concerned. Barbie’s
mother had pointed Ken out as a suitable marriage candidate, and Barbie had gone after him. Men were easy for Barbie. She knew men thought they were the ones “scoring,” but she was using them. Ken had lit up like a Christmas tree when she sent a little sexual energy his way. He came on strong, and Barbie let him sweep her off her feet.

Barbie liked being adored, in and out of bed. When they first had sex, Ken made love to her slowly. Like most men, he was so taken with her beauty, she got to just lay back and receive. She usually climaxed receiving oral sex. Then Ken would enter her and have his orgasm.

Ken loved screwing Barbie. He marveled at how her slim body looked and felt. He liked to put her on her back and watch her while he was in her. Ken watched himself with this beautiful woman, with the feeling of
Oh man, I’m in heaven. Look at what I get to screw!

While they were dating, Barbie and Ken had sex two or three times a week. Once married, sex quickly decreased to once a month. Barbie liked being seduced. She doled out sex as a reward. However, once she felt she was expected to have sex, that was the end of that. Neither Ken nor Barbie had much solid sense of self or capacity for intimacy. Being seen accurately by someone else was not their thing. Within five years, sex happened once or twice a year. Their twelve-year marriage turned into a war of attrition.

When they came to see me, Barbie was threatening to leave the marriage. She was the LDP, Ken pressured her for sex, and she had just about had it. She felt used by Ken. She said all he wanted from her was sex. She didn’t say that physical beauty and sex were all she felt she had to offer.

Ken said Barbie had “lied to him,” because she always acted so sexy when they were dating. In truth, Ken felt he had bought Barbie. She had quit her job soon after they married. He supported her, and he felt entitled to the goods. They had made an implicit deal: his money, status, and financial security for her looks and plenty of sex. This originally got them together. Now the deal turned Barbie off and the lack of sex infuriated Ken.

Barbie and Ken had social acquaintances, but neither one had close friendships. Barbie had girlfriends she gossiped with and exchanged advice, but they never talked straight or confronted each other. Neither Barbie nor Ken felt obligated to tell the truth, particularly when it would
be personally difficult. Neither one trusted the other, and neither one was trusting or trustworthy.

Acts of unkindness were daily events between Ken and Barbie. As far as they were concerned, if they weren’t yelling, they weren’t fighting, but emotional torture was standard fare. Ken worked Barbie over by telling her she was frigid. He would ask her if she was lesbian. Barbie accused Ken of being a sex addict. They competed for who was the bigger victim, who had been more duped going into this marriage, and who was more heroic for putting up with the other’s shortcomings.

As I said, if you want to inflict pain within the confines of marriage, torturing your partner around sexual desire is the most common (and effective) way to do it. Sexual relationships are the Devil’s playground for normal marital sadism.

Normal marital sadism
(also known as NMS) involves pleasure derived from inflicting psychological pain or abuse, but stops short of physical domestic violence. Normal marital sadism occurs far more frequently than physical abuse. We torment those we love while feigning unawareness. Many of us do it often and with impunity.

We’ve talked about functioning from the best in you. That’s because the worst in you can (and probably often does) run the show. We
all
have a nasty side. Nasty as in “not a very good person.” There’s a side to all of us that’s primitive, petty, vindictive, and punitive. Evil, actually. The more you and your partner are emotionally fused—the more you depend on your partner for validation and anxiety regulation through accommodation—the more likely you (and your partner) engage in normal marital sadism.

You’re a normal marital sadist if you frequently (a) need to “get even,” (b) hold grudges, (c) can’t control your temper, or (d) feel justified and entitled to attain retribution when your feelings are hurt. Even conflict-avoidant couples who seemingly agree on everything conduct covert warfare at night between the sheets.

You could argue Barbie had low desire because she was angry at Ken, and certainly she was furious with him. But sexual withholding isn’t reducible to low desire. Sexual withholding is how you instill feelings in your mate. Barbie withheld sex when she was angry. She didn’t want to be a source of pleasure for Ken. Quite the contrary, she wanted to be a source of unhappiness, which is a common stance in NMS. Barbie was angry a lot, and she wanted to make Ken angry or frustrated too.

Sexual withholding is also how you position your mate in particular ways. Sometimes Barbie withheld sex to make Ken defer to her. Sometimes she did it to make him go away. Sometimes she wanted to attack his reflected sense of self. Other times she faked orgasms, and felt contempt for Ken when he took pride in his sexual performance.

Normal marital sadism is as simple as withholding the sweetness of sex, while acting like you want to please. Even when they had sex, there were times Barbie deliberately thought about other things. Barbie and Ken were equally sadistic to each other. Ken hammered Barbie’s reflected sense of self by ogling younger women and sending sexual vibes to her girlfriends. Over the years, Barbie accused Ken of having affairs many times. Ken always denied it and told her she was insecure.

The American Psychiatric Association glossary defines
sadism
as “pleasure derived from inflicting physical or psychological pain or abuse on others. The sexual significance of sadistic wishes or behavior may be conscious or unconscious. When necessary for sexual gratification, [it is] classifiable as a sexual deviation.” The Association also considered (and then dropped) the diagnostic category of “sadistic personality disorder.” The criteria included (a) humiliating and demeaning others, (b) lying to inflict pain, (c) restricting the autonomy of people in close relationships, and (d) forcing compliance through intimidation. Apparently, this diagnostic category considered marital sadism to be normal: The diagnosis wasn’t applicable if sadistic behavior was directed toward one person, such as a spouse.
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Do normal healthy people really engage in normal marital sadism?
Judging from research I’ve done and my clinical observations, the answer is resoundingly “Yes!” According to twenty couples attending one of my Passionate Marriage® Couples Retreats,
every one
reported doing things deliberately to hurt their partner. Half the group reported really enjoying it. One woman found NMS sexually arousing. A quarter of the group added mind-twisting torture by denying they were doing it when accused by their partner. Three-quarters reported deliberately procrastinating to infuriate their mate.

This might suggest people attending our Retreat are a highly select group of troubled souls. But another sample I gathered suggests they are just normal people like everyone else. In a sample of one hundred therapists, 88 percent said they engaged in NMS. Moreover, 87 percent estimated their clients did likewise. Here’s the really important thing: Therapists who didn’t see themselves inflicting NMS also didn’t see it in their clients.