Desire

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 159 of 344 · 20 per page

• From Cleanness (2020)

  Since we had met he had been my only partner, he was the only partner I wanted, but it was a risk, I knew, neither of us could be sure the other was safe, and maybe the risk was part of my excitement, of course it was. Though it wasn’t my usual role or a role I usually enjoyed I was eager for it, more than eager, I was surprised by what I felt as I slicked myself with lubricant from the same drawer, hissing a little at the cold of it; and then I applied it to R., between the legs he had raised. I would take my time, I would be gentle, otherwise it would be difficult for him, I thought, I mean more difficult. But he didn’t want me to take my time, Go on, he said, I’m ready, drawing his legs up farther to make room for me. But he wasn’t ready, when I entered him he cried out, a terrible sound. I stopped but only briefly, since he said again Go, at least that’s what I thought he said, go, and I pressed farther into him, drawn forward by what he had said and by my own pleasure, which was exquisite; I had never fucked anyone bare before, there was a heat and silkenness in it I had never felt. R. had covered his face with his arm again, I couldn’t read his expression as I began to move, and really I was marveling so much at my own feeling that for a moment I neglected his. Anyway he was hiding it, that was why he had covered his face, to hide from me what he felt. I lowered my own face to the arm beneath which he hid, to the pit of his arm; I loved the smell of him, and tonight beside the familiar scent there was something else, his endurance, maybe, his response to pain, since pain was what his noises meant, or some of his noises. When I pressed into him there was a grunt of pain and when I drew out a little sound of need, an invitation or demand that I return, so that if it was pain it was pleasure too, or anyway satisfaction. I liked that I could make him feel this, I found myself seeking new angles to make him feel more, need and satisfaction and pain, it was like a new intimacy, though maybe there was something cruel in it as well, some cruelty in myself I sensed the shape of, a shape I had sensed before but never before with R. I would give him what he wanted, I thought, though whether I was giving something or taking it away I wasn’t sure.

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

  “If I care about her too much, I can’t risk exposing my aggression. I care about what she thinks of me, see? The person can’t be too close to me, or I feel threatened. I need distance to be turned on.” Jed is trying to map out the structure of his sexuality for Coral. Aggression is the initial motivator, but the real sexual charge is the autonomy that aggression permits him. “It’s about how manners don’t matter anymore. What other people think doesn’t matter anymore. Dignity doesn’t matter anymore. All there is is need, animal desire. It’s freedom, which I’ve been fighting for my whole life.” Let’s face it: Jed and Coral aren’t an ideal sexual fit. And it’s possible that this part of their relationship will never become Nine and 1/2 Weeks. Yet each time they’ve considered parting, they’ve realized that they may find a better sexual match, but not a better life partner. Here’s the direction I took. Given Jed’s ability to feel mastery largely in sexual dominance, I endorsed Coral’s request that she experience some of Jed’s assertiveness beyond the bedroom. “Part of what makes this so weird for me is that Jed is incredibly passive in every other aspect of our life. The contrast is totally jarring. I wish he were more decisive and less deferential generally.” I encourage Jed to start making some claims outside the sexual arena. He’s a novice at this kind of assertiveness. Choosing a restaurant or a movie is hard for him; telling her he wants to stay in New York for Thanksgiving (and not see her entire extended family, as they do every year) is almost impossible. I never suggest to Jed that he needs to reconfigure his sexuality. But I do urge him to learn to wield power in other areas of his life as well. It’s important for Jed to know that his wants will be honored outside the rituals of S-M. By the same token, he wouldn’t mind it if Coral transferred some of her directorial boldness from the editing room to their four-poster bed. Jed makes the point that Coral, too, could bring some assertiveness to their sex life. “When you finish brushing your teeth and putting on your pajamas, and then you ask me if we’re going to have sex tonight in this matter-of-fact, nudging way, it just doesn’t do anything for me. I need more of a charge. Tell me you want me, unzip my pants, walk naked into the room. Something, anything, besides, ‘Are we going to have sex tonight?’ I do it for you. I light the candles, create the mood you like, make love to you slowly. I do the vanilla for you. I try; you don’t.”

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

  If therefore the human intellect, knowing the essence of some created effect, knows no more of God than “that He is”; the perfection of that intellect does not yet reach simply the First Cause, but there remains in it the natural desire to seek the cause. Wherefore it is not yet perfectly happy. Consequently, for perfect happiness the intellect needs to reach the very Essence of the First Cause. And thus it will have its perfection through union with God as with that object, in which alone man’s happiness consists, as stated above ([1013]AA[1],7; Q[2], A[8]). Reply to Objection 1: Dionysius speaks of the knowledge of wayfarers journeying towards happiness. Reply to Objection 2: As stated above ([1014]Q[1], A[8]), the end has a twofold acceptation. First, as to the thing itself which is desired: and in this way, the same thing is the end of the higher and of the lower nature, and indeed of all things, as stated above ([1015]Q[1], A[8]). Secondly, as to the attainment of this thing; and thus the end of the higher nature is different from that of the lower, according to their respective habitudes to that thing. So then in the happiness of God, Who, in understanding his Essence, comprehends It, is higher than that of a man or angel who sees It indeed, but comprehends It not. OF THOSE THINGS THAT ARE REQUIRED FOR HAPPINESS (EIGHT ARTICLES)We have now to consider those things that are required for happiness: and concerning this there are eight points of inquiry: (1) Whether delight is required for happiness? (2) Which is of greater account in happiness, delight or vision? (3) Whether comprehension is required? (4) Whether rectitude of the will is required? (5) Whether the body is necessary for man’s happiness? (6) Whether any perfection of the body is necessary? (7) Whether any external goods are necessary? (8) Whether the fellowship of friends is necessary? Whether delight is required for happiness?Objection 1: It would seem that delight is not required for happiness. For Augustine says (De Trin. i, 8) that “vision is the entire reward of faith.” But the prize or reward of virtue is happiness, as the Philosopher clearly states (Ethic. i, 9). Therefore nothing besides vision is required for happiness. Objection 2: Further, happiness is “the most self-sufficient of all goods,” as the Philosopher declares (Ethic. i, 7). But that which needs something else is not self-sufficient. Since then the essence of happiness consists in seeing God, as stated above ([1016]Q[3], A[8]); it seems that delight is not necessary for happiness. Objection 3: Further, the “operation of bliss or happiness should be unhindered” (Ethic. vii, 13). But delight hinders the operation of the intellect: since it destroys the estimate of prudence (Ethic. vi, 5). Therefore delight is not necessary for happiness. On the contrary, Augustine says (Confess. x, 23) that happiness is “joy in truth.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Well, I started to converse with her. Her name was strange—Artemis—and she looked . . . what shall I say? Well . . . different, New Age type. Not a customer who would appear at my bank. Imagine, she spread avocado on her morning bagel and then took out of her string purse plastic packets of condiments and sprinkled it with sea salt and pumpkin seeds. And her costume was straight from King’s Road—flowered peasant blouse, long flowery purple skirt, cord belt, lots of gold chains and beads. A flower child grown up, so she seemed. “But,” he continued, his story flowing out all the more forcefully for having been dammed, “in actuality she was down-to-earth, well educated, and most lucid. We struck up an immediate friendship and conversed for hours, until the waitress came to set the table for lunch. I was fascinated by her and invited her to lunch with me. This despite the fact that I had a business luncheon scheduled. And I don’t have to tell you, Doctor, that this was very unlike me. In fact, most of this was unlike me. Eerie.” “What do you mean, Halston?” “I feel strange saying this because I view this office as a bastion of rationality, but there was something very strange about Artemis—alien is not too strong a term—it’s as though I were under a spell. Let me go on. When she told me she couldn’t have lunch with me because she had a prior commitment, I asked, ‘What about dinner tonight?’—again without even checking my date book. ‘Sure,’ she said and asked me to dine at her home. She lived alone, she said, and had planned to cook a mushroom ragout with some chanterelles she had picked the day before from the Mount Tamalpais forest.” “And you did?” “Did I? Most assuredly I did. And it was one of the premier evenings of my life—at least, up to a momentous point.” He paused, shaking his head as he had when his memory had first returned to him, then went on, “It was extraordinary being with her. Everything flowed naturally. Legendary dinner—what a marvelous cook. And I’d brought some first-class California wine, a Stag’s Leap cabernet. And then after dessert, a first-rate British trifle—the first I’ve seen in this country—she brought out some marijuana. I hesitated but decided, ‘When in California, live as the natives,’ and I took the first puff of my life.” A befuddled look on his face, Halston paused. “And?” Ernest prodded. “And then, after we cleared the dishes, I began to feel a warm, pleasant glow.” Another pause, another headshake. “And?” “That was when the most extraordinary thing happened—she asked me if I wanted to go to bed with her. Just like that, all matter-of-fact, She was so natural, so graceful, so—so—I don’t know—adult. None of that typical American ‘Will she or won’t she?’ melodrama I detest.”

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

  On the contrary, It is written (2 Macc. 15:14): “This is he that prayeth much for the people, and for all the holy city, Jeremias the prophet of God”: and that his prayer was granted is clear from what follows (2 Macc. 15:15): “Jeremias stretched forth his right hand, and gave to Judas a sword of gold, saying: Take this holy sword, a gift from God,” etc. Further, Jerome says (Ep. contra Vigilant.): “Thou sayest in thy pamphlets, that while we live, we can pray for one another, but that when we are dead no one’s prayer for another will be heard”: and afterwards he refutes this in the following words: “If the apostles and martyrs while yet in the body can pray for others, while they are still solicitous for themselves, how much more can they do so when the crown, the victory, the triumph is already theirs!” Further, this is confirmed by the custom of the Church, which often asks to be assisted by the prayers of the saints. I answer that, The saints are said to pray for us in two ways. First, by “express” prayer, when by their prayers they seek a hearing of the Divine clemency on our behalf: secondly, by “interpretive” prayer, namely by their merits which, being known to God, avail not only them unto glory, but also us as suffrages and prayers, even as the shedding of Christ’s blood is said to ask pardon for us. In both ways the saints’ prayers considered in themselves avail to obtain what they ask, yet on our part they may fail so that we obtain not the fruit of their prayers, in so far as they are said to pray for us by reason of their merits availing on our behalf. But in so far as they pray for us by asking something for us in their prayers, their prayers are always granted, since they will only what God wills, nor do they ask save for what they will to be done; and what God wills is always fulfilled—unless we speak of His “antecedent” will, whereby “He wishes all men to be saved” [*Cf. [5047]FP, Q[19], A[6], ad 1]. For this will is not always fulfilled; wherefore no wonder if that also which the saints will according to this kind of will be not fulfilled sometimes. Reply to Objection 1: This prayer of the martyrs is merely their desire to obtain the robe of the body and the fellowship of those who will be saved, and their consent to God’s justice in punishing the wicked. Hence a gloss on Apoc. 6:11, “How long, O Lord,” says: “They desire an increase of joy and the fellowship of the saints, and they consent to God’s justice.”

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

  These couples, in their own ways, have chosen to acknowledge the possibility of the third: the recognition that our partner has his or her own sexuality, replete with fantasies and desires that aren’t necessarily about us. When we validate one another’s freedom within the relationship, we’re less inclined to search for it elsewhere. In this sense, inviting the third goes some way toward containing its volatility, not to mention its appeal. It is no longer a shadow but a presence, something to talk about openly, joke about, play with. When we can tell the truth safely, we are less inclined to keep secrets. Rather than inhibiting a couple’s sexuality, recognizing the third has a tendency to add spice, not least because it reminds us that we do not own our partners. We should not take them for granted. In uncertainty lies the seed of wanting. In addition, when we establish psychological distance, we, too, can peek at our partner with the admiring eyes of a stranger, noticing once again what habit has prevented us from seeing. Finally, renouncing others reaffirms our choice. He is the one I want. We admit our roving desires, yet push them back. We flirt with them, all the while keeping them at a safe distance. Perhaps this is another way of looking at maturity: not as passionless love, but as love that knows of other passions not chosen. Inviting the Third There are a lot of ways to invite the third into a relationship that don’t include extramarital sex, and a few that do. For most people, the mention of sexually open relationships sets off the red warning lights. Few subjects having to do with committed love evoke such a visceral response. What if she falls in love with him? What if he never comes back? The idea that you can love one person and have sex with another with impunity makes us shudder. We fear that transgressing one limit can lead to the potential breach of all limits. We conjure up images of chaos: promiscuity, orgies, debauchery. Against this decadence, being a couple is the only barricade. It protects us from our impulses. It is our best defense against unbridled animality. Adam Phillips makes the point that “monogamy is a kind of moral nexus, a keyhole through which we can spy on our preoccupations.” A number of thorny questions arise in discussion of consensual nonmonogamy. Is emotional commitment always bound to sexual exclusivity? Can we love more than one person at the same time? Is sex ever “just sex?” Are men more naturally prone to roam than women? These questions perhaps top the list, but there are more. Is jealousy an expression of love or a sign of insecurity? Why are we eager to share our friends, but demand exclusivity from our lover? I don’t pretend to have an answer to these questions. I do believe, however, that we can benefit from taming our romantic nostalgia in order to ponder them seriously.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Its name?” Ernest urged when Halston paused. “Describe everything about your meeting.” “Doctor, I don’t understand. Why these questions?” “Humor me on this, Halston. Painting the scene as vividly as possible will help you to recall all the feelings you experienced.” In response to Halston’s protests that he had no interest in recalling the feelings, Ernest reminded him that the development of empathy was a first step in improving his relationships with women. Hence, recalling his experiences and what Artemis may have experienced would be a valuable exercise. A lame rationale, Ernest knew, but plausible. As Halston dutifully recounted all the details of that eventful day, Ernest listened hard but learned only a few new particulars. The café was the Book Depot, and Artemis was a lover of literature—that, Ernest felt, might be useful information. She had told Halston that she was in the midst of rereading the great German novelists—Mann, Kleist, Böll—and that very day had purchased a copy of the new translation of Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. Because of Halston’s increasing suspiciousness, Ernest eased off—lest at any moment his patient might say, “Look, you want her address and phone number?” Which, of course, was precisely what Ernest did want. Would save him a lot of time. But he now had enough to begin. Bright and early one morning a few days later, Ernest drove to Mill Valley, parked, and walked into the Book Depot. He looked around the long, narrow bookstore, once a train depot, and then checked the cheery café attached to it and the dozen outdoor tables warming in the morning sun. Finding no woman resembling Halston’s description of Artemis, he went to the counter and ordered an extra-seedy bagel from the waitress, whose nose and lips were lavishly beringed. “Bagel with what?” she asked. Ernest scanned the menu board. No avocado. Was Halston fabricating? Finally he decided to put himself at an advantage by requesting a double order of cucumbers and sprouts with his herb-and-chive cream cheese. As he settled himself at a table, he saw her enter. Flowered bulging blouse, long plum-colored skirt—his favorite hue—beads, chains, and all: it had to be Artemis. More beautiful than he had imagined. Halston hadn’t mentioned, perhaps had not even noticed, her lustrous golden hair, which she wore Middle European style, swept into a coil and held firm with a tortoiseshell clasp at the back of her head. Ernest melted: all his lovely Viennese aunts, the first objects of his pubescent erotic drive, had worn their hair in that very fashion. He took her in quickly as she ordered and paid at the counter. What a woman—lovely in all ways, penetrating turquoise-blue eyes, heavy lips, finely dimpled chin, about five feet four inches tall in her flat sandals, a stirring, rippling, perfectly proportioned body.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  How much smaller I have become, I said to myself, through an erosion necessary to survival perhaps and perhaps still to be regretted, I’ve worn myself down to a bearable size. And then I realized that I had wandered into a maze of narrow streets, the walls on either side too high to glimpse the gold dome of my landmark, and I began to walk more quickly, spurred by the unease that always claims me when I lose track of where I am. GOSPODAR It would have made me laugh in English, I think, the word he used for himself and that he insisted I use for him—not that he had had to insist, of course, I would call him whatever he wanted. It was the word for master or lord, but in his language it had a resonance it would have lacked in my own, partaking equally of the everyday ( Gospodine , my students say in greeting, mister or sir) and of the scented chant of the cathedral. He was naked when he opened the door, backlit in the entrance of his apartment, or naked except for a series of leather straps that crossed his chest, serving no particular function; and this too might have made me laugh, were there not something in his manner that forbade it. He didn’t greet me or invite me in, but turned without a word and walked to the center of what I took to be the apartment’s main room. I didn’t follow him, I waited at the edge of the light until he turned again and faced me, and then he did speak, telling me to undress in the hallway. Take off everything, he said, take off everything and then come in. I was surprised by this, which was a risk for him as for me, for him more than for me, since he was surrounded by neighbors any of whom might open their doors. He lived on a middle floor of one of the huge apartment blocks that stand everywhere in Sofia like fortresses or keeps, ugly and imperious, though this is a false impression they give, they’re so poorly built as already to be crumbling away. I obeyed him, I took off my shoes and then my coat and began to undo the long line of buttons on my shirt, my hands fumbling in the dark and in my excitement, too. I pulled down my pants, awkward in my haste, wanting him and also wanting to end my exposure, though it was part of my excitement.

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

  I see the man who looks at porn online not because he doesn’t find his wife attractive but because her lack of enthusiasm leaves him feeling that there’s something wrong with him for wanting sex. I see people so ashamed of their sexuality that they spare the one they love the ordeal. I see people who know they are loved, but who long to be desired. They all come to see me because they yearn for erotic vitality. Sometimes they come sheepishly; sometimes they arrive desperate, dejected, enraged. They don’t just miss sex, the act; they miss the feeling of connection, playfulness, and renewal that sex allows them. I invite you to join me in my conversations with these questers as we work toward opening up and coming a step closer to transcendence. For those who aspire to accelerate their heartbeat periodically, I give them the score: excitement is interwoven with uncertainty, and with our willingness to embrace the unknown rather than to shield ourselves from it. But this very tension leaves us feeling vulnerable. I caution my patients that there is no such thing as “safe sex.” I should point out, however, that not all lovers seek passion, or even, at one time, basked in it. Some relationships originate in feelings of warmth, tenderness, and nurturance, and the partners choose to remain in these calmer waters. They prefer a love that is built on patience more than on passion. To them, finding serenity in a lasting bond is what counts. There is no one way, and there is no right way. Mating in Captivity aspires to engage you in an honest, enlightened, and provocative discussion. It encourages you to question yourself, to speak the unspoken, and to be unafraid to challenge sexual and emotional correctness. By flinging the doors open on erotic life and domesticity, I invite you to put the X back in sex. 1 From Adventure to Captivity Why the Quest for Security Saps Erotic Vitality The original primordial fire of eroticism is sexuality; it raises the red flame of eroticism, which in turn raises and feeds another flame, tremulous and blue. It is the flame of love and eroticism. The double flame of life. —Octavio Paz, The Double Flame PARTIES IN NEW YORK CITY are like anthropological field trips—you never know whom you’ll meet or what you’ll find. Recently I was milling around a self-consciously hip event, and, as is typical in this city of high achievers, before being asked my name I was asked what I do. I answered, “I’m a therapist, and I’m writing a book.” The handsome young man standing next to me was also working on a book. “What are you writing about?” I asked him. “Physics,” he answered. Politely, I mustered the next question, “What kind of physics?” I can’t remember what his answer was, because the conversation about physics ended abruptly when someone asked me, “And you? What’s your book about?” “Couples and eroticism,” I answered.

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

  Like the song, ‘Is That All There Is?’” Christine asks. “There’s no logic to this. Passion is unpredictable; it doesn’t follow the dictates of cause and effect. What works on Monday might not work on Thursday. The solution is often a surprise, not the result of the kind of work you’ve been doing until now. So let’s not talk about work. Instead, let’s talk about freedom. Play.” “Huh?” “Try something with me,” I suggest to them. “It may seem off the beaten path; but since your path has become a dead end, you may as well give it a shot. What rigidifies desire is confinement. I’d like you to think about its opposite: freedom. Talk about it in the broad sense. When do you feel most free in your relationship? In what ways does being married make you more free, and in what ways does it make you less free? How much freedom are you comfortable giving each other? Giving yourselves?” I start the conversation in my office in the hope that they’ll continue it on their own. I like to make suggestions that might jolt people out of their complacency, or at least bring about a different way of thinking. I try to create some discomfort with the status quo. Although Ryan and Christine are unhappy with their situation, I’m not sure if they’re unhappy enough to brave change. In therapy I throw out a lot of ideas, never knowing where they’ll land or if they’ll take root. I let the idea of freedom sit for a while, to see if it will sprout. A few months later Ryan begins one session by announcing: “All right, you want to hear a real midlife story? You’re going to get one. My wife’s best friend from college came to visit us recently. You know I work from home, so we’ve had lunch together a few times with the babysitter and the kids—definitely not a pickup scene.” Barbara is a humanitarian worker in her mid-forties who runs programs in crisis situations all over the world. No kids, a serial monogamist, independent, she’s committed to the cause but getting a little tired of the lifestyle. He goes on, “She’s beautiful, too, did I mention that? She lives the life I didn’t live. I feel middle-age and middle-class around her. Nothing wrong with that, you’ll say, but her adrenaline is contagious. She really hits a nerve in me, and she excites me. I’ve developed this amazing crush on her. You know how I’ve been talking about this feeling of deadness, my energy dropping, my body getting heavier? It’s like when I settled down, I shut down. Well, her energy has woken me up. I want to kiss her. I’m scared to do it and scared not to. I feel like a fool, guilty, but I can’t stop thinking about her. You know, I meant it when I made my vows. I’m in love with my wife; this has nothing to do with her.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  No explanation, ever. He had been devastated. Psychotherapy had never entirely erased his pain, and even now, all these years later, the memory still stung. Above all, Ernest hated not knowing. Poor Artemis: she had given so much to Halston, taken such risks, and in the end been so shabbily treated. Over the next few days Ernest thought occasionally about Halston but dwelled often upon Artemis. In his fantasy she became a goddess—beautiful, giving, nurturing but badly wounded. Artemis was a woman to revere, honor, treasure: the idea of debasing such a woman seemed hardly human to him. How tormented she must be by not knowing what had happened! How many times must she have relived that night, trying to understand what she had said, what she had done, to drive Halston away. And Ernest knew he was in a privileged position to help her. Aside from Halston, I am, he thought, the only one who knows the truth of that night. Ernest had often been awash in grandiose fantasies of rescuing distressed damsels. He knew that about himself. How could he not know? Again and again his analyst, Olive Smith, and his supervisor, Marshal Strider, had rubbed his nose in it. Rescue fantasies played a role both in his personal relationships, where he often overlooked warning signals of obvious incompatibility, and in his psychotherapy, where his countertransference sometimes ran wild and he became overinvested in curing his female patients. Naturally, as Ernest pondered the rescue of Artemis, the voices of his analyst and supervisor came to mind. Ernest listened and accepted their critique— but only to a point. Deep inside he believed that his overinvestment made him a better therapist, a better human being. Of course women should be rescued. That was an evolutionary truism, a species-survival strategy built into our genes. How horrified he’d been long ago when, in his comparative anatomy course, he had found that the cat he was dissecting had been pregnant and was carrying five tiny, marble-sized fetuses in her uterus. Likewise he abhorred caviar, possible only through the slaughter and plundering of pregnant sturgeon. Most horrifying had been the Nazi extermination policy, that had carried the terror to women housing the “seeds of Sarah.” And so Ernest never questioned his decision to persuade Halston to redress his transgression. “Consider what she must have felt,” he repeatedly asked his patient in subsequent sessions—to which Halston would irritably reply, “Doctor, I’m the patient, not her.” Or Ernest would urge on Halston the wisdom of the eighth and ninth steps of the twelve-step recovery program: Make a list of all persons we have harmed, and make direct amends to such persons whenever possible. But all his arguments, no matter how skillfully put, failed to budge Halston, who seemed unimaginably self-absorbed and callous.

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

  In his steamy affair, Doug courts it secretly. Bill’s devastation is born of a desperate attempt to deny it. Selena and Max invite it in fantasy, but draw the line there. Joan and Hiro escort the third straight into their bedroom. Marriage has become a matter of love; love is a matter of choice; and choice implies renouncing others. But that doesn’t mean the others are dead. Nor does it mean that we need to deaden our senses so as to protect ourselves from their allure. Acknowledging the third has to do with validating the erotic separateness of our partner. It follows that our partner’s sexuality does not belong to us. It isn’t just for and about us, and we should not assume that it rightfully falls within our jurisdiction. It doesn’t. Perhaps that is true in action, but certainly not in thought. The more we choke each other’s freedom, the harder it is for desire to breathe within a committed relationship. Pursue the logic, and you have the itinerary for an emotionally enlarging journey. It goes something like this: I know you look at others, but I can’t fully know what you see. I know others are looking at you, but I don’t really know who it is they’re seeing. Suddenly you’re no longer familiar. You’re no longer a known entity that I need not bother being curious about. In fact, you’re quite a mystery. And I’m a little unnerved. Who are you? I want you. Accommodating the third opens up an erotic expanse where eros needn’t worry about wilting. In that expanse, we can be deeply moved by our partner’s otherness, and soon thereafter deeply aroused. I’d like to suggest that we view monogamy not as a given but as a choice. As such, it becomes a negotiated decision. More to the point, if we’re planning to spend fifty years with one soul—and we want a happy jubilee—it may be wiser to review our contract at various junctures. Just how accommodating each couple may be to the third varies. But at least a nod is more apt to sustain desire with our one and only over the long haul—and perhaps even to create a new “art of loving” for the twenty-first century couple . 8 Parenthood When Three Threatens Two If someone is counting on children to bring them peace of mind, self-confidence, or a steady sense of happiness, they are in for a bad shock. What children do is complicate, implicate, give plot lines to the story, color to the picture, darken everything, bring fear as never before, suggest the holy, explain the ferocity of the human mind, undo or redo some of the past while casting shadows into the future. There is no boredom with children in the home.

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

  Lucky for me, so many gay men get off on turning a straight guy that I get laid all the time!” Emir is a one-woman man, and has been his whole life. “I’ve always had girlfriends, real girlfriends, women I’ve loved whom I’ve stayed with for years. That’s me. I’ve been with Althea for five years now. We used to have a great sex life, but since we had a baby six months ago she doesn’t want sex nearly as often as she used to. I have to deploy my whole seductive arsenal to convince her, and sometimes even that doesn’t work. Most of the time I take care of myself.” Emir’s favorite fantasy is having sex with two women at once. “I like the idea of all that attention.” Many straight men fantasize variations on the theme of the omni-sexual woman. She doesn’t have to be wooed or coaxed into sex. She doesn’t have to get in the mood, because she’s always in the mood. She doesn’t say, “How can you think about sex now when we have so much stuff to do?” She says, “More, more, more.” She doesn’t make him feel bad for wanting sex, because she wants it just as much. When two French maids invite you into their bed, you can be sure that neither one of them is going to say, “Not tonight, honey, I’m too tired.” Poor Man’s Bread Until recently, sexual fantasy has gotten a bad rap. What Christianity viewed as a sin later became, in the eyes of modern psychology, a perversion limited to the dissatisfied and the immature. Even today, many people believe that fantasy is nothing more than thin compensation for libidinal frustration and lack of opportunity due to failure of nerve, arrested development, or a paunch. They believe that what we fantasize about sexually is what we want to have happen in reality. “If my husband was really attracted to me he wouldn’t need to look at pictures of women with big boobs,” complains one wife. “When I fantasize about other men ravishing me, I feel like I’m betraying my boyfriend,” says another client. “What kind of woman wants to be raped?” I, too, used to take the narrow view that fantasy was the poor man’s bread—the meal of the sensually impoverished. I had been taught to regard fantasies as a symptom of neurosis or immaturity, or as erotically tinged romantic idealizations that blind one to his or her partner’s true identity and undermine real-life relationships. I was stuck at the border between the imaginary and the real, diverted from delving into the complexity of the erotic mind. Luckily, I was curious enough to ask my patients about their fantasy lives. But once they told me, I still didn’t know what to do with the information.

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

  I answer that, As the Philosopher says (Phys. ii, 2), the end is twofold—the end “for which” and the end “by which”; viz. the thing itself in which is found the aspect of good, and the use or acquisition of that thing. Thus we say that the end of the movement of a weighty body is either a lower place as “thing,” or to be in a lower place, as “use”; and the end of the miser is money as “thing,” or possession of money as “use.” If, therefore, we speak of man’s last end as of the thing which is the end, thus all other things concur in man’s last end, since God is the last end of man and of all other things. If, however, we speak of man’s last end, as of the acquisition of the end, then irrational creatures do not concur with man in this end. For man and other rational creatures attain to their last end by knowing and loving God: this is not possible to other creatures, which acquire their last end, in so far as they share in the Divine likeness, inasmuch as they are, or live, or even know. Hence it is evident how the objections are solved: since happiness means the acquisition of the last end. OF THOSE THINGS IN WHICH MAN’S HAPPINESS CONSISTS (EIGHT ARTICLES)We have now to consider happiness: and (1) in what it consists; (2) what it is; (3) how we can obtain it. Concerning the first there are eight points of inquiry: (1) Whether happiness consists in wealth? (2) Whether in honor? (3) Whether in fame or glory? (4) Whether in power? (5) Whether in any good of the body? (6) Whether in pleasure? (7) Whether in any good of the soul? (8) Whether in any created good? Whether man’s happiness consists in wealth?Objection 1: It would seem that man’s happiness consists in wealth. For since happiness is man’s last end, it must consist in that which has the greatest hold on man’s affections. Now this is wealth: for it is written (Eccles. 10:19): “All things obey money.” Therefore man’s happiness consists in wealth. Objection 2: Further, according to Boethius (De Consol. iii), happiness is “a state of life made perfect by the aggregate of all good things.” Now money seems to be the means of possessing all things: for, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. v, 5), money was invented, that it might be a sort of guarantee for the acquisition of whatever man desires. Therefore happiness consists in wealth. Objection 3: Further, since the desire for the sovereign good never fails, it seems to be infinite. But this is the case with riches more than anything else; since “a covetous man shall not be satisfied with riches” (Eccles. 5:9). Therefore happiness consists in wealth.

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

  This isn’t a justification of infidelity, or an endorsement. Temptation has existed since Eve bit the apple, but so, too, have injunctions against it. The Catholic church is expert not only in avoiding temptation but also in meting out penance for those we couldn’t resist. What’s different today is not the desires themselves but the fact that we feel obligated to pursue them—at least until we tie the knot, when we’re suddenly expected to renounce all we’ve been encouraged to want. Monogamy stands alone, like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, trying to hold back a flood of unbridled licentiousness. Inviting the Shadow Some couples choose not to ignore the lure of the forbidden. Instead, they subvert its power by inviting it in. “I would never want him to be unfaithful, but knowing it’s possible keeps me sexually interested in him.” “Pretending there are no handsome men in the world doesn’t make my relationship safer and certainly doesn’t make it more honest.” “My girlfriend is beautiful. Men are always coming on to her. The way she laughs it off makes me feel great; she keeps picking me.” These couples share fantasies, read erotica together, or reminisce about the past. They admit that, yes, the delivery man was hot. So was the computer tech, the salesman at Barney’s, your neurologist, the neighbor’s wife. Selena and Max have license to flirt but draw the line at realizing the possibilities. “We’re both gluttons for attention. I get a real ego boost when someone hits on me, especially now that I have a kid. And when someone hits on Max? Forget it. I feel like I’m going home with the prom king.” Max and Selena like to play with possessiveness, but both are dead certain of the rules of the game. When Elsa returns from a conference, Gerard is always curious about whom she met. “Was there anyone interesting? Did you tell him about your fantastic husband? And were you flirting while you were raving about me?” Wendy has always known that George has a weakness for blonds. So last Thursday she decided to be one for the day. She donned a platinum wig and a trench coat and showed up unannounced at the building site to take him to lunch. He says, “Great. The guys are going to think I’m having an affair.” Wendy doesn’t miss a beat: “Let them be jealous.”

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

  Elizabeth wants to be manhandled, told what to do—as if, through her erotic self, she can correct an imbalance in her life and replenish something vital. She delights in the abandon that comes with the sense of powerlessness. And I would add that she also gets a charge from playing in the forbidden zone of inequality. “When he comes on to me forcefully, it makes me feel sexy. It heightens the tension. Like he wants me so much he just can’t help himself,” Elizabeth says. Vito, quick to respond, adds, “She can’t help herself, either. When she gives in, I know I’m irresistible.” The harsh realities of violence, rape, sexual trafficking, child pornography, and hate crimes require that we keep a tight rein on the abuses of power that pervade the politics of sex. The poetics of sex, however, are often politically incorrect, thriving on power plays, role reversals, unfair advantages, imperious demands, seductive manipulations, and subtle cruelties. American men and women, shaped by the feminist movement and its egalitarian ideals, often find themselves challenged by these contradictions. We fear that playing with power imbalances in the sexual arena, even in a consensual relationship between mature adults, risks overthrowing the respect that is essential to human relationships. By no means am I calling for a reversal of history or an antifeminist agenda. Any discussion of modern-day couples and sexuality would be perversely wrongheaded if it did not recognize the enormous and vastly salutary influence of feminism on the shape of American family life. The women’s movement sought to eliminate deep-rooted gender inequalities and to unearth the structures that perpetuated male domination in all spheres of life, including sexuality. It challenged the double standard that encouraged sexual experimentation by men, even seeing it as a necessary developmental stage, but forbade that same curiosity in women. This same double standard demanded sexual loyalty from women, while turning a blind eye on roaming men because “That’s how men are.” (There are still countries today where a man can murder his unfaithful wife with no legal repercussions whatsoever. In some cultures, killing her is the only way to restore his honor and that of his family.) Gender differences and their ensuing taboos and prohibitions had long been viewed as categorical imperatives, biologically rooted and therefore immutable. Feminism showed that these undisputed truisms and characterizations were, in fact, social constructions that reinforced a long-standing gender ordering—one that obviously favored men. Books like Our Bodies, Ourselves and The Women’s Room aimed to restore a sense of sexual ownership to women, both legally and psychologically, and to free them from the constraints that had governed female sexuality.

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

  The very dynamics of power and control that can be challenging in an emotional relationship can, when eroticized, become highly desirable. In the crucible of the erotic mind, we bring the more vexing components of love—dependency, surrender, jealousy, aggression, even hostility—and transform them into powerful sources of excitement. My patient Oscar can’t stand being told what to do by his bossy wife, yet he enjoys being tossed around by her sexually. When she barks orders about the dishes, the experience takes him back to his mom’s kitchen. But he does not feel this regressive threat once the lights have been turned off. What he loathes in the domestic sphere becomes his choice in the erotic. Maxwell, who keeps a shrewd eye on his beautiful girlfriend’s many admirers, repeatedly brings them up when he makes love to her. What threatens in public becomes enchantment in private. He parlays his daily fears into nightly seductions. And Elizabeth, the take-charge woman, loves to get a break when Vito takes over sexually. She does not experience his control as oppressive. On the contrary, she feels taken care of. And she feels a renewed respect for him when, “For a change, he knows what to do.” His control offers her a safe container in which she can release her lusty self. The imbalance of power is both safe and sexy—at once protective and liberating. Subverting Power Some would say that Elizabeth’s desire for submission is nothing more than a reenactment of traditional male domination. They would claim that sexual arrangements in which one partner is dominant and controlling, the other passive and weak, are inherently hierarchical and oppressive, nothing more than a sexist replay of patriarchy. But prisoners rarely have the desire to pretend they are prisoners. Only the free can choose to make believe. To my thinking, being able to play with roles goes some way toward indicating that you’re no longer controlled by them. Play has the potential to disrupt the very notion of gender categorization. For Elizabeth, being controlled sexually is itself a subversive act that is ultimately liberating. The same is true for Marcus, who heads the research and development unit of a large international software company. He is a classic type A man: competitive, ambitious, spending more time in the air than on the ground. His tough-mindedness and aggressiveness have made him a natural leader in his highly competitive field. The word “power” is attached to many of his activities and often turns up in his conversation. He takes power walks, drinks power drinks, does power lunches, and recharges during ten-minute power naps. And in his free time, he likes a good spanking.

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

  GLOSS. (non occ.) The Lord indeed by the miracle of the loaves shewed that He is the Creator of the world: but now by walking on the waves He proved that He had a body free from the weight of all sin, and by appeasing the winds and by calming the rage of the waves, He declared Himself to be the Master of the elements. Wherefore it is said, And straightway he constrained his disciples to get into the ship, and to go to the other side before unto Bethsaida, while he sent away the people. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Vict. Ant. e Cat. in Marc.) He dismisses indeed the people with His blessing and with some cures. But He constrained His disciples, because they could not without pain separate themselves from Him, and that, not only on account of the very great affection which they had for Him, but also because they were at a loss how He would join them. BEDE. (in Marc. 2, 27) But it is with reason that we wonder how Mark says, that after the miracle of the loaves the disciples crossed the sea of Bethsaida, when Luke relates that the miracle was done in the parts of Bethsaida, unless we understand that Luke means by the desert which is Bethsaida not the country immediately around the town, but the desert places belonging to it. (Luke 9:10.) But when Mark says that they should go before unto Bethsaida, the town itself is meant. It goes on: And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Vict. Ant. e Cat. in Marc.) This we must understand of Christ, in that He is man; He does it also to teach us to be constant in prayer. THEOPHYLACT. But when He had dismissed the crowd, He goes up to pray, for prayer requires rest and silence. BEDE. (in Marc. 2, 28) Not every man, however, who prays goes up into a mountain, but he alone prays well, who seeks God in prayer. But he who prays for riches or worldly labour, or for the death of his enemy, sends up from the lowest depths his vile prayers to God. John says, When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force and make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone. (John 6:15) It goes on: And when even was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and he alone on the land.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  He was dulling my pleasure, I thought, not removing it entirely but taking off its edge. But he didn’t take off its edge, not really, and when there was a slackening in the leash I lunged forward, like the dog he called me. There wasn’t anything special about his cock, it was solid and sizeable and thick, but none of these to a remarkable degree, and he had shaved himself as all men here do, which I hate, the bareness of it is obscene somehow, I can’t accustom myself to it. But I was eager, and as I took him in my mouth I felt the gratitude I nearly always feel in such moments, not so much to him as to whatever arrangement of things had allowed me what as a child I thought I would always be denied. It was large enough that I didn’t try to take all of it at once; eager as I was there are certain preparations required, the relaxation and lubrication of passages, a general warming up. But immediately his hand was on my head again, forcing me down, and when it was clear that the passage was blocked, he used both of his hands to hold me, at once pulling me to him and jerking his hips forward in short, savage thrusts, saying Dai gurloto , give me your throat, an odd construction I had never heard before. This was painful, and not only for me, it must have hurt him too. But I did give my throat, I found an angle that gave him access, and soon enough I relaxed and there was a rush of saliva and he could move however he wanted, as he did for a while, maybe there was pleasure for him after all. As there was for me, the intense pleasure I’ve never been able to account for, that can’t be accounted for mechanically; the pleasure of service, I’ve sometimes thought, or more darkly the pleasure of being used, the exhilaration of being made an object that had been lacking in sex with R., though that had had its own pleasures, pleasures I longed for but that had in no way compensated for the lack of this. I want to be nothing, I had said to him, and it was a way of being nothing, or next to nothing, a convenience, a tool. He stopped moving then, taking his hands from my head and even from the chain, which fell superfluous and cold down my back. Kuchkata , he said, not kuchko anymore, the vocative that had softened the word and made it tender to my ears; no longer addressing me but speaking of the object I had become, he said Let the bitch do it herself.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  THE LITTLE SAINTHis name meant light, or that was the root of it, the root too of the word for holy, for any number of words associated with sanctity and the church; and this was why later, when I grew fond of him, I called him Svetcheto, the little saint. It made him laugh, both because it was bad Bulgarian, he told me, no one who actually spoke the language would say it, and also because he liked it, I thought, not the name but that I had made it up for him. I liked it too, not least because it was so at odds with the things we did together, with how I used him or how we used each other. And maybe there actually was something saintly about him, his slightness and quiet in the hoodie that framed his face like a monk’s cowl when I saw him that first time, or in the bathrobe he wrapped around himself later, when I came to his door; and maybe there was something saintly in his endurance, too, I guess I think there was, in his desire for pain. But that first day I didn’t know his name, I thought probably I would never see him again. We had chatted online for the first time just an hour or so earlier, though I had looked at his profile often; he was always online, for months I had been fascinated by him. It was a kind of profile common enough in the States or Western Europe but I had never seen one like it here; it claimed that anyone who wanted to could fuck him, that he wanted it rough, that his only demand was to be fucked bare, he wanted as many loads as he could get. No limits whore, it said, in good pornographic English, with a Bulgarian translation beneath. I was curious to know what that meant here, no limits, and where he had learned it. Many of the things he listed were things I wanted, too, what I liked to be done to me, which is why I took so long to write him; we wanted the same things and so were incompatible, as people say. Maybe I came to be excited by the thought of doing to him what others had done to me, what in those weeks or months I had wanted done more often and to greater extremes. Maybe it happened slowly but it seemed sudden, the desire I felt for the boy whose photos appeared in little boxes that accompanied his profile, in one his face twisted in an erotic grimace, in another three fingers, his own, inserted in his ass.