Chagrin

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 6 of 14 · 20 per page

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  How far removed John is from the lofty pronouncements of a Clement of Alexandria is evident in the fact that public shame could be invoked as a check on the fornication of Christian men.  Th e dire insistence on sexual exclusivity grated against the most en- trenched habits of sexual life in the Roman Mediterranean. More subtle but no less consequential in its challenge to mainstream habits was the Chris- tian opposition to divorce and remarriage. For the Christians, marriage was not only the exclusive legitimate venue for erotic experience, it was a unique bond that could not be dissolved by civil law. Th e Romans had one of the most liberal regimes of divorce in human history; legally, divorce could be obtained unilaterally, without cause, by either party, without cumbersome procedural obstacles; the strict separation of spousal property, and the pro- hibition of gifts between the husband and wife, abetted easy separation. Th is image must be qualifi ed by an appreciation for the hard realities faced by the majority of families who lived along the edges of subsistence; divorce was the prerogative of the well- to- do. Nevertheless it was a discreet reserve of feminine power in Roman society. But the stark commands of Christian scripture ensured that the church would universalize a strict opposition to divorce and erode this wellspring of women’s clout.   FROM SHAME TO SIN Th e result was an inevitable slide toward patriarchy. Women were fl atly prohibited from seeking divorce, and so long as their fi rst husband was still living, they were forbidden to remarry, on pain of accusation of adultery. John Chrysostom, in the very same set of sermons that showed him sympa- thetic to the humble suff erings of women, could unleash a rhetoric against women that grates the modern ear. “Th ey are like runaway slaves, who fl ee the master’s house but drag their chains along. Women who leave their husbands carry around the condemnation of the law like a chain, and are accused of adultery. . . . For she whose husband is alive becomes an adulter- ess.” In a society where a woman’s sexual honor was the mea sure of her worth, those were words calculated to bruise. John knew that Christian rules ran against common practice. “It may happen that slaves change their masters, even if the master is living, but the wife can never change hus- bands so long as he is living. It is adultery. Don’t read me the laws which have been laid down for those outside, which command that a notice of divorce be rendered and then set you free. You will not be judged by those laws on the day God has appointed, but by the law he has established.”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Miss Moote was standing outside the door. She smiled at me and put her hand on my shoulder. “You OK?” she asked. “Sure,” I said. “This will blow over,” she assured me. I made a pleading face. “Let me just see Mrs. Noble and Miss Candi, please? Then Pll go.” Miss Moore nodded. I wanted to talk to her so badly, but I felt as though I was standing in a boat that was drifting away from everyone. I said goodbye and walked away. Mts. Noble was marking test papers. She looked up as I came into the classroom. “I heard,” she said, and continued to correct papers. I sat on top of a desk in front of hers. “I came to say goodbye.” Mts. Noble looked up and took off her glasses. “You're quitting school over this?” I shrugged. “They suspended me, but I’m not coming back.” “They suspended you? Over the lunchroom incident?” Mrs. Noble rubbed her eyes and slipped her glasses back on. “Do you think I did something wrong?” She sat back in her chair. “When you do something out of conviction, my dear, it should be because you believe it’s the right thing to do. If you look for approval from everyone, you'll never be able to.act,” I felt criticized. “I’m not asking everybody, I was just asking you,” I sulked. Mts. Noble shook her head. “Just think about coming back. You must go to college.” I shrugged. “I’m never gonna finish high school. I’m going into the factories.” “You need skills, even to be a laborer.” I shrugged. “I can’t afford college, that’s one thing. My parents aren’t going to spend a dime on me ot co-sign a loan either.” She ran her hands through her hair. I noticed for the first time how grey it was. “What do you want to do with your life?” she asked me. I thought about it. “I want a good job, a union job. I'd really like to get into the steel plant, or Chevy.” “T guess it wasn’t fair of me to want you to want mote.” “Like what?” I said, angry that I was now a disappointment to her, too. “I could see you becoming a great American poet, or a fiery labor leader, or discovering the cure for cancer.” She took off her glasses and wiped them with a Kleenex. “I wanted you to help change the world.” I laughed. She had no idea how powerless I really was. “I can’t change anything,” I told her. I toyed with telling her what had happened on the football field, but I just couldn’t find the words to begin. Stone Butch Blues 45 “Do you know what it takes to change the world, Jess?” I shook my head. “You have to figure out what you really believe in and then find other people who feel the same way. The only thing you have to do alone is to decide what’s important to you.”

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  Yours sincerely, Trevor Those were the polite letters. If we were having a real, full-on argument or if I’d gotten in trouble at school, I’d find more accusatory missives waiting for me when I got home. Dear Trevor, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.” —Proverbs 22:15 Your school marks this term have been very disappointing, and your behavior in class continues to be disruptive and disrespectful. It is clear from your actions that you do not respect me. You do not respect your teachers. Learn to respect the women in your life. The way you treat me and the way you treat your teachers will be the way you treat other women in the world. Learn to buck that trend now and you will be a better man because of it. Because of your behavior I am grounding you for one week. There will be no television and no videogames. Yours sincerely, Mom I, of course, would find this punishment completely unfair. I’d take the letter and confront her. “Can I speak to you about this?” “No. If you want to reply, you have to write a letter.” I’d go to my room, get out my pen and paper, sit at my little desk, and go after her arguments one by one. To Whom It May Concern: Dear Mom, First of all, this has been a particularly tough time in school, and for you to say that my marks are bad is extremely unfair, especially considering the fact that you yourself were not very good in school and I am, after all, a product of yours, and so in part you are to blame because if you were not good in school, why would I be good in school because genetically we are the same. Gran always talks about how naughty you were, so obviously my naughtiness comes from you, so I don’t think it is right or just for you to say any of this. Yours sincerely, Trevor I’d bring her the letter and stand there while she read it. Invariably she’d tear it up and throw it in the dustbin. “Rubbish! This is rubbish!” Then she’d start to launch into me and I’d say, “Ah-ah-ah. No. You have to write a letter.” Then I’d go to my room and wait for her reply. This sometimes went back and forth for days. The letter writing was for minor disputes. For major infractions, my mom went with the ass-whooping. Like most black South African parents, when it came to discipline my mom was old school. If I pushed her too far, she’d go for the belt or switch.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  The board members could no longer ignore the falling stock price. The firing of Katzenberg and Ovitz made Eisner the most hated man in Hollywood, and as his fortunes fell, all of his enemies came out of the woodwork to hasten his destruction. His fall from power was fast and spectacular. Understand: The story of Michael Eisner is much closer to you than you think. His fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale. The reason is simple: we humans possess a weakness that is latent in us all and will push us into the delusional process without our ever being aware of the dynamic. The weakness stems from our natural tendency to overestimate our skills. We normally have a self-opinion that is somewhat elevated in relation to reality. We have a deep need to feel ourselves superior to others in something—intelligence, beauty, charm, popularity, or saintliness. This can be a positive. A degree of confidence impels us to take on challenges, to push past our supposed limits, and to learn in the process. But once we experience success on any level—increased attention from an individual or group, a promotion, funding for a project—that confidence will tend to rise too quickly, and there will be an ever-growing discrepancy between our self-opinion and reality. Any success that we have in life inevitably depends on some good luck, timing, the contributions of others, the teachers who helped us along the way, the whims of the public in need of something new. Our tendency is to forget all of this and imagine that any success stems from our superior self. We begin to assume we can handle new challenges well before we are ready. After all, people have confirmed our greatness with their attention, and we want to keep it coming. We imagine we have the golden touch and that we can now magically transfer our skills to some other medium or field. Without realizing it, we become more attuned to our ego and our fantasies than to the people we work for and our audience. We grow distant from those who are helping us, seeing them as tools to be used. And with any failures that occur we tend to blame others. Success has an irresistible pull to it that tends to cloud our minds. Your task is the following: After any kind of success, analyze the components. See the element of luck that is inevitably there, as well as the role that other people, including mentors, played in your good fortune. This will neutralize the tendency to inflate your powers. Remind yourself that with success comes complacency, as attention becomes more important than the work and old strategies are repeated. With success you must raise your vigilance. Wipe the slate clean with each new project, starting from zero. Try to pay less attention to the applause as it grows louder.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  and march on London with his troops. He would force the queen to get rid of his enemies within the court and secure his position as her lead councillor. He would be forceful but respectful of her position; seeing him in person and with his troops, the queen would certainly relent. After a swift march through England, he suddenly showed up one morning in her bedchamber, his uniform caked in mud. The queen, caught by surprise and not knowing if he had come to arrest her and launch a coup, retained her composure. She offered him her hand to kiss and told him they would talk of Ireland later that day. Her calmness discomfited him; it was not what he had expected. She possessed a strange kind of power over him. Somehow the tables had been turned, and now he agreed to postpone their talk to the afternoon. Within hours, he found himself taken by her soldiers and placed under house arrest. Counting on his influence over the queen and how often she had forgiven him, he wrote her letter after letter, apologizing for his actions. She did not respond. This had never happened before, and it frightened him. Finally, in August of 1600, she freed him. Grateful for this and plotting his comeback, he asked just one favor—to restore to him the monopoly he had possessed over the sale of sweet wines in England; he was hopelessly in debt and this was his principal source of income. Much to his chagrin, she refused to honor his request. She was playing some game, trying to teach him a lesson or tame him, but that would never happen. She had pushed him too far. He retired to his house in London and gathered around him all of the disgruntled noblemen in England. Together he would lead them on a march to the queen’s residence and take over the country. He predicted that thousands of Englishmen, who still adored him, would rally to his cause and swell the ranks of his troops. In early February 1601, he finally put his plan into action. To his utter dismay, Londoners stayed in their houses and ignored him. Sensing the foolhardiness of the venture, his fellow soldiers quickly deserted. Virtually alone, he retreated to his house. He knew this was the end for him, but at least he would remain defiant. That afternoon, soldiers came to arrest Essex. Elizabeth arranged for a quick trial, and Essex was found guilty of treason. This time Elizabeth did not hesitate to sign the death warrant. During his trial, Essex maintained the most insolent air. He would go to his death denying his guilt and refusing to ask forgiveness. The night before he was to be beheaded, the queen sent her own chaplain to prepare him for the end. Confronted with this representative of Elizabeth, who relayed her last words to him, Essex broke down. All those moments in which he had sensed her

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Peace, and Kissinger should not be getting so much credit. He wanted to know what the elites at the parties in Georgetown were saying about him. Were they finally changing their minds in any way about Richard Nixon? Despite his nervousness, by 1972 it was clear that events were lining up well for him. His Democratic opponent in his reelection bid would be Senator George McGovern, a diehard liberal. Nixon was ahead in the polls, but he wanted much more. He wanted a complete landslide and mandate from the public. Certain that men like O’Brien had some tricks up their sleeve, he began to rail at Haldeman to do some spying and get some dirt on the Democrats. He wanted Haldeman to assemble a team of “nutcutters” to do the necessary dirty work with maximum efficiency. He would leave the details up to him. Much to his chagrin, in June of that year Nixon read in the Washington Post of a botched break-in at the Watergate Hotel, in which a group of men had attempted to plant bugs in the offices of Larry O’Brien. This led to the arrest of three men—James McCord, E. Howard Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy—with ties to the committee for the reelection of President Nixon. The break-in was so badly done that Nixon suspected it was all a setup by the Democrats. This was not the efficient team of nutcutters he had advocated. A few days later, on June 23, he discussed the break-in with Haldeman. The FBI was investigating the case. Some of the men arrested were former CIA operatives. Perhaps, Haldeman proposed, they could get top brass in the CIA to put pressure on the FBI to drop the investigation. Nixon approved. He told Haldeman, “I’m not going to get that involved.” Haldeman responded, “No, sir. We don’t want you to.” But Nixon then added, “Play it tough. That’s the way they play and that’s the way we’re going to play it.” Nixon put his counsel, John Dean, in charge of the internal investigation, with clear instructions that he should stonewall the FBI and cover up any connections to the White House. Anyway, Nixon had never directly ordered the break-in. Watergate was a trifle, nothing to tarnish his reputation. It would fade away, along with all the other dirty political deeds never discovered or recorded in the history books. And indeed he was correct, for the time being—the public paid little attention to the break-in. Nixon went on to have one of the biggest landslides in electoral history. He swept every state except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. He even won over a large percentage of Democrats. He now had four more years to solidify his legacy and nothing to stop him. His popularity numbers had never been higher.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  203Lecture 21—The Church’s Encounter with Modern Learning GERMAN HAPPENINGS õ The German theologian David Friedrich Strauss became famous when he published a book called The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined . It came out in 1835 and was met with extremely harsh reviews. õ Strauss had said that the rationalists and traditional Christians who believed in the role of the supernatural both got Jesus wrong. The Gospels were not accounts of miracles, nor were they stories of natural events that looked like miracles. In essence, the Jesus stories were myths. õ These events did not really happen at all; per Strauss, they tell us more about the worldview of the apostles than about Jesus himself. The authors of the Gospels used imagery and tropes from the Jewish tradition to make an argument about who they believed Jesus to be— images like God feeding the Israelites with manna. õ This radical critique cost Strauss his job at the University of Tübingen. Note that Strauss was an original thinker, but he was also totally a product of the university system that German reformers had worked hard to create. That system was, itself, a radical critique of old models of higher education, so it’s only natural that it would produce theological radicals like Strauss. õ The epicenter of political and social reform at the time was Prussia, in what is now eastern Germany. In the early 19th century, the bureaucrats of the Prussian government believed that they had a duty to encourage the formation of loyal and ethical Prussian citizens. Education was the state’s business, not the business of churches.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  I guess it’s coffee, although I can almost see through to the bottom of the cup. He tips the cup to his little-guy lips but refrains from raising a pinky — he couldn’t care less about cheering me up. He’s in the morning-after mode right now; he’s not looking directly at either of us and he has cleared his throat several hollow times. Linda sits up straighter and visibly tries to pay better attention. She shakes her head and clears her own throat one, two, three times in a row. Now Larson is glaring at her, his eyes vivid blue on a yellow background. I look away. I can feel her gazing at my ear. I look back. Then she winks and he sees and now it’s even more tense. We have selected the Titanic with ivory satin and the vault with the million-year guarantee of no seepage. He has accepted with grace both the outfit we’ve brought on a wire hanger and the prescription bottle full of safety pins, all sizes, that we think he’ll need to make her clothes fit her now. Linda thought he probably had special clamps for that sort of thing but we decided it would be better if he used the safety pins from her junk drawer. He looked at them for a long second and then set them on the corner of the kidney-shaped desk. I’ve given up on the long-underwear idea. Actually, I’m wearing it myself because of how cold it is outside. In a brown paper sack sitting next to my chair, between Linda and me, is her wig. We hate to give it over, both of us have held it in our laps at different times during the last few hours. It is too morbid, though, even for us. She takes it out of the bag quickly and shows it to Larson, puts it back in. She told me in the car she was going to try and scare him with it, but I guess she changed her mind. He informs us that the flowers have started to arrive, invites us to come back and see how they have begun to arrange them on stands and in clusters. We rise and leave the pale gray suit on its hanger, the wig crouching in its sack, the bottle of pins from the top left kitchen drawer. My sister touches the mahogany desk like it’s a tree in the forest. As we match his tiny steps down the wainscoted hall we have no idea, at this minute, that he is an artist, a gentleman. We have no idea as we move toward the scent of the flowers and the Christmas greens that he will continue on through his beautiful house, leaving us behind to read cards and talk. He will go through two more rooms, down a set of stairs to a place where she lies.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  it’s a twenty-foot leap, there’s no way you’re better off with optimism than with a realistic calibration of your confidence. And Moore literally has the scars to prove it. He humbly admits, “Believing in myself did not prevent my feet from getting burned on [a] fire walk.” Moore, along with colleagues Elizabeth Tenney of the University of Utah and Jennifer Logg of Georgetown University, has explored whether people actually believe that more optimism will lead to better performance. Their 2015 paper examines performance on a variety of tasks, ranging from math problems to Where’s Waldo? puzzles. The researchers led some participants to be optimistic about their likely performance. When others were asked to guess at how well those participants would do as compared with ones who were not so optimistic, Moore and his colleagues found that people do, indeed, believe in The Little Engine That Could. The people who think they can get up the hill or finish more math problems or find Waldo were rated as more likely to actually do it. This unfettered belief in the power of optimism is, of course, widespread in Silicon Valley, which makes Ron Conway a contrarian in a world where being overly optimistic is not only considered a job requirement for founders but is also actively encouraged. And that ethos is reflected in founders’ actual beliefs. A survey of three thousand entrepreneurs found that 81% of founders put their odds of success at 70% or better and a third of founders put their odds of success at 100%! Given that only about one in ten of the ambitious ventures Conway invests in generates a positive return, that optimism borders on the delusional. Of course, if optimism actually improves performance, delusional confidence might be worth it. If you are in a business where you only have a 10% chance of success, maybe being optimistic improves your chances to 40%. Even if that is far short of the 70% shot you think you have, that boost might be worth the cost of being poorly calibrated. Moore and his colleagues tested just this idea, looking to see if the more- optimistic participants had better performance on the math problems or found Waldo more often. While they did find that more-optimistic people stuck to the tasks longer, the optimists failed to perform measurably better on these tasks than the people who were less optimistic.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  The Pharisee stereotype would suffer from stereotype inaccuracy if Pharisees were not found to be any more hypocritical than any other group. It would suffer from valence inaccuracy if the trait of being a hypocrite itself was viewed more negatively than it actual y is. To get to the “truth” of the matter, one would have to re-narrate the Pharisees so that the same qualities that Matthew presents as negative would be re-represented as positive (or at least neutral). This means taking Matthew’s version seriously enough on a surface level, but challenging it on a level of valuation. But can one re-narrate hypocrisy as a positive trait? Final y, the error would have been dispersion inaccuracy if Matthew saw a greater homogeneity in the Pharisees than actual y existed. Did Matthew unfairly cast all Pharisees as hypocrites despite the fact there were some who were not hypocrites? 17 A problem with the accuracy question is that demonstrating either the veracity (even if only partial) of a stereotype requires an ability to compare the stereotype against how the group under question real y is in itself. 18 Even apart from the essentialist 15 Pickering, Stereotyping, 2, 3. 16 Charles Judd and Bernadette Park, “Definition and Assessment of Accuracy in Social Stereotypes,” PsycholRev 100 (1993): 110–12. 17 Ibid. 18 Penelope J. Oakes and Katherine J. Reynolds, “Asking the Accuracy Question: Is Measurement the Answer?” in Spears et al., Social Psychology, 51. 17 Matthew’s Trojan Horse 117 presuppositions involved in this, we simply do not have access to the relevant data required to determine what kind of error Matthew might have made. Modern studies that attempt to do this usual y use self-questionnaires for the purpose of self-analysis, a process that raises problems for researchers. Obviously, researching the ancient Pharisees cannot include such a self-evaluation, whether problematic or not, and this leaves us only with Matthew’s account and perhaps some relevant information from Josephus or the Talmud. All three of these sources have enough ideology in their portrayals of the Pharisees to make them unreliable sources for the purposes of historical reconstruction. Specifical y, Matthew’s representation of his opponents is so loaded with polemic that one must treat it with extreme caution as a source of historical information. If Matthew’s stereotype of the Pharisees cannot be taken as an accurate representation of the Pharisees of history, it can nevertheless be taken seriously as a narrative creation, reflecting Matthew’s social and ideological location. Matthew’s Pharisee stereotype reflects reality from his own subjective vantage point and relative to his own values.19 While stereotypes are not accurate in any objective way, they nevertheless “provide the perceiver with an accurate representation of reality from that perceiver’s own vantage point, and relative to that perceiver’s own values. ”20 Certainly there were real Pharisees

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Pathetic FallacyShe, the woman in the Dream House, always buys too much produce. It never makes sense to you how she fills her fridge—every shelf bursting with leafy greens and robust stalks and thick roots and rotund bulbs, the bright, modern lines of the appliance utterly concealed. There is something sensual about it, almost erotic, until everything begins to go bad. Every time you open the fridge it smells more and more like a garden (dirt, rain, life), and then like a dumpster, and then, eventually, like death. You mention it once, but then she does that thing where she repeats what you’ve said a few times, each time getting a little more sarcastic until you apologize, though you never know what you are apologizing for. It is her money, yes, her fridge. And her rot. Dream House as the First ThanksgivingYou arrive in Bloomington just before the holiday to learn that she has invited her entire graduate cohort over for Thanksgiving.24 You stare at her in disbelief. “All of them?” you ask. You count the number of people in your head. “But you have, like, two chairs,” you say. “Only one small table. You haven’t even really unpacked.” She does not say anything. “You told them it’s potluck style, right? They’re bringing their own side dishes, and we just have to do, like, a bird or something?” “No,” she says. “No. That would be rude. We are taking care of people.” “Who is going to take care of us?” you say. “I’m broke.” “Don’t be such a fucking bitch,” she says. This is how you find yourself at the Kroger’s at 11 p.m., alone, picking up groceries and trying to remember how you ended up there. You pay for all of it. Back at the house you discover that she has only a handful of pans, too, and you defrost the Cornish game hens and baste them in oil and salt and pepper, and at some point you realize you’ll have to cut them in half. You’re not normally squeamish about meat but you find yourself balking at the idea of cracking through those backbones, pressing glistening spatchcocks down onto the aluminum foil. “Help me,” you say. She takes off her shirt and bra and cuts each of them with a pair of kitchen shears. The blades bite and open the birds from thigh to throat. The sound of it is terrible. It reminds you of the time you were ten feet from a lion in South Africa and it was tearing the skin off a zebra leg, and the caveman part of your brain was screaming RUN RUN RUN. She pulls out the spines and turns the birds over; presses them into the pan like open books. You are still cooking when people arrive, still cooking as people are laughing and eating off paper plates standing up and not quite looking at you.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  The intimate story of a couple can indeed tell us a lot about their erotic life, but it can’t tell us everything. There is a complex relationship between love and desire, and it is not a cause-and-effect, linear arrangement. A couple’s emotional life together and their physical life together each have their ebbs and flows, their ups and downs, but these don’t always correspond. They intersect, they influence each other, but they’re also distinct. That’s one reason why, to the chagrin of many, you can often “fix” a relationship without doing anything for the sex. Maybe intimacy only sometimes begets sexuality. Separateness Is a Precondition for Connection It is too easily assumed that problems with sex are the result of a lack of closeness. But my point is that perhaps the way we construct closeness reduces the sense of freedom and autonomy needed for sexual pleasure. When intimacy collapses into fusion, it is not a lack of closeness but too much closeness that impedes desire. Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exist without the other. With too much distance, there can be no connection. But too much merging eradicates the separateness of two distinct individuals. Then there is nothing more to transcend, no bridge to walk on, no one to visit on the other side, no other internal world to enter. When people become fused—when two become one—connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with. Thus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex. The dual (and often conflicting) needs for connection and independence are a central theme in our developmental histories. Throughout childhood we struggle to find a delicate balance between our profound dependence on our primary caregivers and our need to carve out a sense of independence. The psychologist Michael Vincent Miller reminds us that this struggle is vividly represented in children’s nightmares: “the abandonment dreams of falling or being lost, and the engulfment dreams of being attacked or devoured by monsters.” We come to our adult relationships with an emotional memory box ready to be activated. The extent to which our childhood relationships nurture or obstruct both sets of needs will determine the vulnerabilities that we bring into our adult relationships—what we most want and what we most fear. We all straddle both needs. Their intensity and priority fluctuate throughout our lives; and, as it happens, we tend to choose partners whose proclivities match our vulnerabilities.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  The intimate story of a couple can indeed tell us a lot about their erotic life, but it can’t tell us everything. There is a complex relationship between love and desire, and it is not a cause-and-effect, linear arrangement. A couple’s emotional life together and their physical life together each have their ebbs and flows, their ups and downs, but these don’t always correspond. They intersect, they influence each other, but they’re also distinct. That’s one reason why, to the chagrin of many, you can often “fix” a relationship without doing anything for the sex. Maybe intimacy only sometimes begets sexuality. Separateness Is a Precondition for Connection It is too easily assumed that problems with sex are the result of a lack of closeness. But my point is that perhaps the way we construct closeness reduces the sense of freedom and autonomy needed for sexual pleasure. When intimacy collapses into fusion, it is not a lack of closeness but too much closeness that impedes desire. Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exist without the other. With too much distance, there can be no connection. But too much merging eradicates the separateness of two distinct individuals. Then there is nothing more to transcend, no bridge to walk on, no one to visit on the other side, no other internal world to enter. When people become fused—when two become one—connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with. Thus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex. The dual (and often conflicting) needs for connection and independence are a central theme in our developmental histories. Throughout childhood we struggle to find a delicate balance between our profound dependence on our primary caregivers and our need to carve out a sense of independence. The psychologist Michael Vincent Miller reminds us that this struggle is vividly represented in children’s nightmares: “the abandonment dreams of falling or being lost, and the engulfment dreams of being attacked or devoured by monsters.” We come to our adult relationships with an emotional memory box ready to be activated. The extent to which our childhood relationships nurture or obstruct both sets of needs will determine the vulnerabilities that we bring into our adult relationships—what we most want and what we most fear. We all straddle both needs. Their intensity and priority fluctuate throughout our lives; and, as it happens, we tend to choose partners whose proclivities match our vulnerabilities.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 4: The saying of our Lord refers to the time of the New Law, when the aforesaid permission was recalled. In the same way we are to understand the statement of Chrysostom [*Hom. xii in the Opus Imperfectum falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom], who says that “a man who divorces his wife according to the law is guilty of four crimes: for in God’s sight he is a murderer,” in so far as he has the purpose of killing his wife unless he divorce her; “and because he divorces her without her having committed fornication,” in which case alone the law of the Gospel allows a man to put away his wife; “and again, because he makes her an adulteress, and the man whom she marries an adulterer.” Reply to Objection 5: A gloss observes here: “She is defiled and abominable, namely in the judgment of him who first put her away as being defiled,” and consequently it does not follow that she is defiled absolutely speaking; or she is said to be defiled just as a person who had touched a dead or leprous body was said to be unclean with the uncleanness, not of sin, but of a certain legal irregularity. Wherefore a priest could not marry a widow or a divorced woman. Whether a husband could lawfully take back the wife he had divorced?Objection 1: It would seem that a husband could lawfully take back the wife he had divorced. For it is lawful to undo what was ill done. But for the husband to divorce his wife was ill done. Therefore it was lawful for him to undo it, by taking back his wife. Objection 2: Further, it has always been lawful to be indulgent to the sinner, because this is a moral precept, which obtains in every law. Now the husband by taking back the wife he had divorced was indulgent to one who had sinned. Therefore this also was lawful. Objection 3: Further, the reason given (Dt. 24:4) for its being unlawful to take back a divorced wife was “because she is defiled.” But the divorced wife is not defiled except by marrying another husband. Therefore at least it was lawful to take back a divorced wife before she married again. On the contrary, It is said (Dt. 24:4) that “the former husband cannot take her again,” etc.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Why, if it's a letter from her ladyship, I'm sure her ladyship wouldn't want me to read her letter to you, Sir Clifford. You can tell me what she says, if you wish." But the face with the fixed blue eyes sticking out did not change. "Read it!" repeated the voice. "Why, if I must, I do it to obey you, Sir Clifford," she said. And she read the letter. "Well, I _am_ surprised at her ladyship," she said. "She promised so faithfully she'd come back!" The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of wild, but motionless distraction. Mrs. Bolton looked at it and was worried. She knew what she was up against: male hysteria. She had not nursed soldiers without learning something about that very unpleasant disease. She was a little impatient of Sir Clifford. Any man in his senses must have _known_ his wife was in love with somebody else, and was going to leave him. Even, she was sure, Sir Clifford was inwardly absolutely aware of it, only he wouldn't admit it to himself. If he would have admitted it, and prepared himself for it; or if he would have admitted it, and actively struggled with his wife against it: that would have been acting like a man. But no! he knew it, and all the time tried to kid himself it wasn't so. He felt the devil twisting his tail, and pretended it was the angels smiling on him. This state of falsity had now brought on that crisis of falsity and dislocation, hysteria, which is a form of insanity. "It comes," she thought to herself, hating him a little, "because he always thinks of himself. He's so wrapped up in his own immortal self, that when he does get a shock he's like a mummy tangled in its own bandages. Look at him!" But hysteria is dangerous: and she was a nurse, it was her duty to pull him out. Any attempt to rouse his manhood and his pride would only make him worse: for his manhood was dead, temporarily if not finally. He would only squirm softer and softer, like a worm, and become more dislocated. The only thing was to release his self-pity. Like the lady in Tennyson, he must weep or he must die. So Mrs. Bolton began to weep first. She covered her face with her hand and burst into little wild sobs. "I would never have believed it of her ladyship, I wouldn't!" she wept, suddenly summoning up all her old grief and sense of woe, and weeping the tears of her own bitter chagrin. Once she started, her weeping was genuine enough, for she had had something to weep for.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Fourth, Paul uses the verb “to work hard” (kopiaō ) to mean dedicated apostolic activity. He applies it to himself twice, in Galatians 4:11 and 1 Corinthians 15:10. But here he uses it four times and exclusively for women, for Mary (16:6), Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis (16:12). Finally, we return to that Junia just mentioned (16:7), to a case that would be comic if it were not tragic. For the first millennium of Christianity, commentators recognized correctly that Junia was a female name. She was the wife of Andronicus as Prisc[ill]a was the wife of Aquila. Then, for the second millennium of Christianity, she was turned into a male. Junia, so the claim went, was short for the male name Junianus. That, however, was patently untrue because, although there were over 250 known cases of a female Junia in antiquity, there was not a single one of a male Junia as the abbreviation of Junianus. The reason for that rather desperate claim was also quite clear. If Junia were allowed to remain a female, then, since she was “prominent among the apostles,” it was obviously possible for a woman to be an apostle. Paul, of course, had no problem with that combination of gender and function. For him women as well as men were called by God to be apostles of Christ. The Christian gender equality that existed in marriage and home also prevailed in assembly and apostolate. THE CONSERVATIVE PAUL ON PATRIARCHY We are back once more with the ethics for extended families seen above with regard to slavery. Read with us through these full household codes for specifically Christian homes. As you do so, notice their multiple layers of hierarchy. Vertically from top to bottom the order is descending, from parents to children to slaves. Horizontally within each set the order is from inferior to superior: first wives, then husbands; first children, then fathers; first slaves, then masters: wives and husbands Colossians 3:18, 19 Ephesians 5:22–24, 25–33 children and fathers Colossians 3:20, 21 Ephesians 6:1–3, 4 slaves and masters Colossians 3:22–25; 4:1 Ephesians 6:5–8, 9 You will also notice that, internally, it is not a matter of children and parents, but of children and fathers, and not of slaves and owners, but of slaves and masters . Actually, as we saw above in Roman attitudes toward slaves, a Roman paterfamilias, or father of the household, would probably consider the above admonitions far too liberal. First of all, they require mutual and reciprocal, even if unequal and hierarchical, obligations. Second, those deemed inferiors—wives, children, slaves—are addressed directly and not through their presumed superiors—husbands, fathers, masters. Be that as it may, we focus here on wives and husbands to emphasize how, in those two texts, Pauline Christian gender equality is deradicalized back into Roman gender hierarchy: Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. (Col. 3:18) Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly. (Col.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  It may be counterintuitive, but it’s been my experience as a therapist that increased emotional intimacy is often accompanied by decreased sexual desire. This is indeed a puzzling inverse correlation: the breakdown of desire appears to be an unintentional consequence of the creation of intimacy. I can think of many couples whose opening lines in my office go something like this: “We really love each other. We have a good relationship. But we don’t have sex.” Joe relishes Rafael’s intense interest in him but doesn’t like being engulfed physically—Joe will only be a “top.” Susan and Jenny feel closer than ever after they adopt their first child together, but that closeness does not translate into sensuality. Adele and Alan refer to their nights away at a hotel as intimate, but not particularly passionate. Despite their erotic frustrations, these couples seem to share a fine intimacy, not a lack thereof. Andrew and Serena are clear that sex has been an issue from the beginning, and that regardless of how much their relationship has flourished, it is never enough to charge them erotically. Before she met Andrew, Serena had experienced a luscious sexual life in a number of long-term relationships. In her experience, mounting intimacy had consistently led to better sex, so she was surprised when it didn’t work that way with Andrew. When I asked her why she stayed with him when from the first date she didn’t feel desired by him, she answered, “I thought we’d work on it. That with love it would get better.” “Sometimes it is the love that stands in the way,” I explained, “so just the opposite happens.” Listening to these men and women has led me to rethink what I had long assumed about the correlation between intimacy and sexuality. Rather than looking at sex as an exclusive outgrowth of the emotional relationship, I’ve come to see it as a separate entity. Sexuality is more than a metaphor for the relationship—it stands on its own as a parallel narrative. The intimate story of a couple can indeed tell us a lot about their erotic life, but it can’t tell us everything. There is a complex relationship between love and desire, and it is not a cause-and-effect, linear arrangement. A couple’s emotional life together and their physical life together each have their ebbs and flows, their ups and downs, but these don’t always correspond. They intersect, they influence each other, but they’re also distinct. That’s one reason why, to the chagrin of many, you can often “fix” a relationship without doing anything for the sex. Maybe intimacy only sometimes begets sexuality. Separateness Is a Precondition for Connection It is too easily assumed that problems with sex are the result of a lack of closeness.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  The therapist’s delight when a taxing and unpleasant patient decides to terminate, his boredom with a particular patient and the subsequent use of that boredom as a guide in therapy, the therapist’s chagrin at the damage his patient has inflicted on another, his yearning to redress that wrong, lapses in which he loses sight of his patient’s best interests, his grandiose rescue fantasies, his lustful fascination with a character in a patient’s life, his dilemma about whether healers are ever off duty—all of these foibles, and more, are taken from my personal experience. The final surreal dialogue between man and ninth-lifer cat is meant to represent a type of truth—a therapeutic inquiry into the ultimate concern of death. A few attributions for that discussion are in order: the psychologist who said that many refuse the loan of life to avoid the debt of death was Otto Rank. The ancient philosopher who said “Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not” was Lucretius, expounding upon Epicurus. And Nabokov was the Russian writer who, in his autobiography, Speak, Memory, pictured life as a brilliant spark between two vast and identical pools of darkness: the darkness existing before birth and the darkness following death. The same image is to be found in Schopenhauer, with whom, no doubt, Nabokov was familiar. I have deeply disguised the identity of all the patients and acquaintances who appear in these stories. Some of the events described took place long ago and many of the characters are dead. All those who provided incidents or dreams read the manuscript in both early and final draft and gave me permission to publish it. Irvin D. Yalom, M.D. *Yalom, I., Greaves, C., “Group Therapy with the Terminally Ill,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 134:4, April 1977, pp. 396-400; Spiegel, D., Yalom, I., “A Support Group for Dying Patients,” International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 28:2, April 1978; Spiegel, D., Bloom, J., Yalom, I., “Group Support for Metastatic Cancer Patients: A Randomized Prospective Outcome Study,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 38:527-534, May 1981. *Yalom, I., Vinogradov, S., “Bereavement Groups: Techniques and Themes,” International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 38:4, October 1988; Yalom, I., Lieberman, M., “Bereavement and Heightened Existential Awareness,” Psychiatry, 1992. Author’s Note In this book, I have tried to be both storyteller and teacher. On the occasions when these two roles conflicted and I had to choose between inserting a juicy pedagogical comment and maintaining the dramatic pace of the story, I almost always put the story first and attempted to fulfill my teaching mission through indirect discourse. Readers interested in a fuller discussion may consult my Web page: www.yalom.com. There I provide relevant references to the professional literature and discuss a number of technical aspects of these six tales: patient confidentiality, the boundary between fiction and nonfiction, the therapeutic relationship, the here-and-now ahistoric approach, therapist transparency, existential therapeutic approaches, and bereavement dynamics.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Though “The Hungarian Cat Curse” is my most fictional and fantastical tale, it is studded with real events and issues. The therapist’s delight when a taxing and unpleasant patient decides to terminate, his boredom with a particular patient and the subsequent use of that boredom as a guide in therapy, the therapist’s chagrin at the damage his patient has inflicted on another, his yearning to redress that wrong, lapses in which he loses sight of his patient’s best interests, his grandiose rescue fantasies, his lustful fascination with a character in a patient’s life, his dilemma about whether healers are ever off duty—all of these foibles, and more, are taken from my personal experience. The final surreal dialogue between man and ninth-lifer cat is meant to represent a type of truth—a therapeutic inquiry into the ultimate concern of death. A few attributions for that discussion are in order: the psychologist who said that many refuse the loan of life to avoid the debt of death was Otto Rank. The ancient philosopher who said “Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not” was Lucretius, expounding upon Epicurus. And Nabokov was the Russian writer who, in his autobiography, Speak, Memory, pictured life as a brilliant spark between two vast and identical pools of darkness: the darkness existing before birth and the darkness following death. The same image is to be found in Schopenhauer, with whom, no doubt, Nabokov was familiar. I have deeply disguised the identity of all the patients and acquaintances who appear in these stories. Some of the events described took place long ago and many of the characters are dead. All those who provided incidents or dreams read the manuscript in both early and final draft and gave me permission to publish it. Irvin D. Yalom, M.D. *Yalom, I., Greaves, C., “Group Therapy with the Terminally Ill,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 134:4, April 1977, pp. 396-400; Spiegel, D., Yalom, I., “A Support Group for Dying Patients,” International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 28:2, April 1978; Spiegel, D., Bloom, J., Yalom, I., “Group Support for Metastatic Cancer Patients: A Randomized Prospective Outcome Study,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 38:527-534, May 1981.*Yalom, I., Vinogradov, S., “Bereavement Groups: Techniques and Themes,” International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 38:4, October 1988; Yalom, I., Lieberman, M., “Bereavement and Heightened Existential Awareness,” Psychiatry, 1992.Author’s Note In this book, I have tried to be both storyteller and teacher. On the occasions when these two roles conflicted and I had to choose between inserting a juicy pedagogical comment and maintaining the dramatic pace of the story, I almost always put the story first and attempted to fulfill my teaching mission through indirect discourse.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Meanwhile, with a permanent staff of about fifty servants and no questions asked, our city household and country place were the scenes of a fantastic merry-go-round of theft. In this, according to nosy old aunts, whom nobody heeded but who proved to be right after all, the chief cook Nikolay Andreevich and the head gardener Egor, both staid-looking, bespectacled men with the hoary temples of trusty retainers, were the two masterminds. When confronted with stupendous and incomprehensible bills, or a sudden extinction of garden strawberries and hothouse peaches, my father, a jurist and a statesman, felt professionally vexed at not being able to cope with the economics of his own home; but every time a complicated case of larceny came to light, some legal doubt or scruple prevented him from doing anything about it. When common sense required the firing of a rascally servant, the man’s little son would as likely as not fall desperately ill, and the resolution to get the best doctors in town for him would cancel all other considerations. So, with one thing and another, my father preferred to leave the whole housekeeping situation in a state of precarious equilibrium (not devoid of a certain quiet humor), with my mother deriving considerable comfort from the hope that her old nurse’s illusory world would not be shattered.