Disappointment

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.

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• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I’ll tell you: we are nothing more than ‘maladaptive coping strategies.’” I spoke with her for a long time and did all I could to mollify her. I tried to suggest gently that she not stereotype the doctors and urged her to be patient. Affirming my loyalty to the principles with which we had started the group, I concluded, “Remember, Paula, none of this makes any difference because I have my own research plan. I’m not going to be controlled by their mechanistic perspective. Trust me!” But Paula was not to be mollified, nor, as it turned out, would she trust me. The workshop festered in her mind. For weeks she ruminated about it and finally directly accused me of selling out to the bureaucracy. She submitted a minority report of one to the National Cancer Institute, and it did not lack vigor or rancor. Finally, one day Paula came into my office and announced that she had decided to leave the group. “Why?” “Well, I’m just tired of it.” “Paula, there’s more to it than that. What’s the real reason?” “I told you, I’m tired of it.” No matter how I probed, she continued to insist on that excuse, though we both knew that the real reason was that I had disappointed her. I used all my cunning (and after all my years of practice, I knew a few ways to get around people), but to no avail. Each of my attempts, including some ill-advised bantering and appeals to our long friendship, was greeted by an icy glare. I had no more rapport with her and had to endure the sorrow of a deceptive discussion. “I’m just working too hard. It’s too much for me,” she said. “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying for months, Paula? Cut down all your visits and phone calls to the dozens of patients on your roll. Simply come to the group. The group needs you. And I need you. Surely ninety minutes a week isn’t too much.” “No, I can’t do things piecemeal. I need a clean break. Besides, the group isn’t where I am anymore. It’s too superficial. I need to go deeper—to work with symbols, dreams, and archetypes.” “I agree, Paula.” By this time I was very sobered. “It’s what I want too, and we’re just now breaking that ground in the group.” “No, I’m too tired, too drained. Each new patient forces me to relive my own time of crisis, my own Calvary. No, I’ve decided: next week will be my last meeting.” And so it was. Paula never returned to the group. I asked her to call me at any time if she wanted to talk. She replied that it was also possible for me to call her.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I don’t know, G. said, answering his own question, I wanted it to end, I guess, I didn’t want to go back to being so miserable; or maybe it was something else, maybe I did have some hope, not that he would feel what I felt but that he would let me give it to him somehow, that he would receive it. If I could just kiss him, he said, his voice stripped now and small, if I could kiss him just once, that would be enough, I wouldn’t want anything more. I looked at him then, wondering if he meant what he said, if he was really so new to desire that he could believe it. I don’t think so, I said, speaking for the first time since he had started his story, my voice raw, I don’t think that’s how it works; it was a ridiculous thing to say, I knew it even as I spoke. Whatever, G. said, still not looking up, it doesn’t matter, he didn’t give me a chance. I told him that I loved him but he didn’t understand me, or he pretended not to understand, I had to explain it, and once I started speaking I couldn’t stop, after being silent for so long I spoke too much. But it didn’t matter what I said, I only made things worse by talking. He didn’t welcome it at all, and he hadn’t had any idea; I guess I thought he had known it somehow, that he was all I thought about, the only thing, the only thing I cared about. But he was surprised, really surprised, and he didn’t welcome it, he turned away when I kept talking. He wasn’t cruel to me, he was gentle, he was even kind, but he didn’t pretend we could go on as we had. We would stop being friends, he said, he said he was sorry; he didn’t want me to suffer, and it was the quickest way to end suffering, and anyway he couldn’t be comfortable with me now. I was crying then, G. said, I don’t think he had ever seen me cry before, I couldn’t stop. Why did you tell me, he said, I’ve lost something too, you’ve taken something from me too. And I had, I realized, I had ruined so much, for him and for me. I was wrong to tell him, G. said, I shouldn’t have said anything, along with everything else now I’m so sorry for what I said. But there’s nothing I can do, I have to live with it, like I have to live with everything else I feel. He paused, and then, But what if I can’t bear it, he said, looking up at me, finally catching my eye, and though at first I thought the question was rhetorical I realized it was genuine, I needed to have something to say. I remembered the confidence I had had, hours before, in my own competence, the pleasure I had taken in the solace I could give, and I wished I could have some of it back, that it would ease the sense I had now of helplessness and loss, though loss of what I wasn’t precisely sure, an idea of myself, I suppose, which shouldn’t have been so precious to me but was.

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

  Traditionally, monogamy was viewed as one sexual partner for life, like swans and wolves. Today, it has come to mean having one sexual partner at a time. (As it turns out, even swans and wolves only appear to be monogamous.) The woman who marries, divorces, is single for a while, has several lovers, remarries, divorces, then marries for a third time can nonetheless meet the criteria for monogamy provided that she remains sexually exclusive within each relationship. Yet a man who is committed to the same woman for fifty years, but allows himself a one-night tryst in the fifteenth year, is readily consigned to the category of the infidel. If you’ve cheated, you’ve cheated. As Bob Dylan sang “The times they are a-changing.” In the past fifty years we have opened ourselves to a wealth of new marital and family configurations. We can have straight, gay, or transgender marriages. We can have domestic partnerships. We can be single parents, stepparents, adoptive parents, or child-free. Successive marriages and blended families are common. We can cohabitate and never marry, or we can be in a commuter marriage with only brief stints under one roof. Finely attuned to the fragility of matrimony, we now have prenuptial agreements and no-fault divorce. All these arrangements have redefined boundaries both within the couple and between the couple and the outside world. Yet, however elastic our attitudes toward marriage, we remain unflinching in our insistence on monogamy. With few exceptions—movie stars, aging hippies, swingers—the borders we draw around sexual exclusivity remain rigid. Our love affair with monogamy arguably comes at some cost. The Brazilian family therapist Michele Scheinkman says, “American culture has great tolerance for divorce—where there is a total breakdown of the loyalty bond and painful effects for the whole family—but it is a culture with no tolerance for sexual infidelity.” We would rather kill a relationship than question its structure. So entrenched is our faith in monogamy that most couples, particularly heterosexual couples, rarely broach the subject openly. They have no need to discuss what’s a given. Even those who are otherwise willing to probe sexuality in all its permutations are often reluctant to negotiate the hard lines around exclusivity. Monogamy has an absolute quality. According to this way of thinking, you can’t be mostly monogamous, or 98 percent monogamous, or periodically nonmonogamous. Discussing fidelity implies that it’s open to discussion, no longer an imperative. The prospect of betrayal is too dark, so we avoid the subject with practiced denial. We fear that the smallest chink in our armor will let in Sodom and Gomorrah. Despite a 50 percent divorce rate for first marriages and 65 percent the second time around; despite the staggering frequency of affairs; despite the fact that monogamy is a ship sinking faster than anyone can bail it out, we continue to cling to the wreckage with absolute faith in its structural soundness.

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

  Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. —Anaïs Nin It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before…to test your limits…to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. —Anaïs Nin IT ALWAYS AMAZES ME HOW much people are willing to experiment sexually outside their relationships, yet how tame and puritanical they are at home with their partners. Many of my patients have, by their own account, domestic lives devoid of excitement and eroticism, yet they are consumed and aroused by a richly imaginative sexual life beyond domesticity—affairs, pornography, cybersex, feverish daydreams. For them, sexual love becomes compromised in the making of a family, even a family of two. They numb themselves erotically. Then, having denied themselves freedom, and freedom of imagination, in their relationships, they go outside to reimagine themselves liberated from the constraints of commitment. Security inside, adventure and passion outside. So when the media frantically (yet regularly) announce that couples are not having sex, I can’t help thinking that they may be having plenty of sex, but not with each other. Passion may fuel the initial stages of a relationship, or it may not. Either way, the volatility of passionate eroticism is expected to evolve into a more staid, stable, and manageable alternative: mature love. Even the biochemistry of passion is known to be short-lived. The evolutionary anthropologist Helen Fisher says that the hormonal cocktail of romance (dopamine, norepineprine, and PEA) is known to last no more than a few years at best. Oxytocin, the cuddling hormone, outlasts them all. The fruits of this ripening love—companionship, deep respect, mutuality, and care—are considered by many to be a fair trade for erotic heat. If attraction and desire were the central actors in your courtship, now they retreat backstage to make way for the main act: building a life together. Eroticism is conspicuously absent from our idea of marriage. Of course, committed couples are expected to have sex, and even to enjoy it these days. Sex solely for the sake of reproduction is, theoretically, passé. But sex and eroticism are not the same, and the lascivious, intimate, ardent, needful, frivolous, erotic sex of lovers becomes rare after the housewarming party. In spite of the sexually saturated media that promise unfettered excitement provided we follow the ten ideas suggested in this week’s issue, there is still some anti-hedonism surrounding domesticated sex. Could it be that we’re inundated with articles about how to make sex hot with our partners because we don’t actually believe it can be hot with our partners? More to the point, could we believe deep down that it’s not supposed to be? Could we believe that regardless of how sexually free we might have been before tying the knot, marriage is no place for the naughtiness of lust?

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  “Your sign says you buy guns.” “I’m not buying any now.” “They’re worth a lot more than that,” I said. “A lot more.” “Then go get more.” “Maybe I will,” I said, but I knew better now. I also knew that if Chuck saw me walk out the door with all these shooters in my hands he would leave without me. “I could sell them for twenty,” I said. “I already told you, I’m not buying. If you want to pawn, five’s the limit.” Then she said, “All right. Throw in those other whatnots and you got yourself a deal.” “You mean twenty apiece?” She hesitated, then said, “Ten. Sixty for everything. Final offer.” “The binoculars are worth more than that,” I said. “All by themselves.” “Not as pawn they aren’t.” I kept staring at her back. She wasn’t moving. She knew I was going to give in, I could feel her knowing it, and that made me determined not to give in. I picked up the shotguns. Then I put them down again. “Okay,” I said. She locked the door behind me when I left. The lock shot home with a smack. I dropped the pawn tickets in the gutter, just as she knew I would. Amen___

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

  If marriage is about love, as we like to believe, then married sex must be a declaration of love. It has to be meaningful. But, the sex therapist Dagmar O’Connor says: For [married] sex to be “meaningful,” it must always be an expression of love—preferably of lifelong, abiding love—every time we climb into bed with one another. And what an incredible burden that is! It eliminates sex stimulated by a whole array of other emotions and sensations: playful sex and angry sex, quick, “mindless” sex and “naughty” sex. It eliminates, in fact, just about every occasion for having sex there is. After all, who can feel “lifelong, abiding love” that regularly—especially at eleven o’clock at night? Marriage, we’ve been taught, is about commitment, security, comfort, and family. It’s a serious business, a responsible and purposeful enterprise; it’s all the things we need, and all the things we need to do. Play and its playmates (risk, seduction, naughtiness, transgression) are left to fend for themselves outside the solid architecture of our homes. Many people in my field assume that the intensity that shapes the early stages of romance is a sort of temporary insanity, destined to be cured by the rigors of the long haul. Clinicians often interpret the lust for sexual adventure—ranging from simple flirting to infatuation, from maintaining contact with previous lovers to cross-dressing, threesomes, and fetishes—as an infantile fantasy or a fear of commitment. They favor a model of love as a companionate, intimate, collaborative partnership. What we are left with is a relationship that is strong on cooperation and communication but weak on complicity and playfulness. But dispassionate friendship is a problematic ecology for cultivating eroticism. The Day I Got That Ring… Jacqueline and Philip are trying to rekindle the spark they once had. Married for ten years, they are finally emerging from the haze of parenting young children. This fall their youngest son began kindergarten, and his new schedule put some order back into theirs. At the same time, in the past year their friends have gone through an epidemic of divorces. “All these couples we used to hang out with, who got married right around the same time as us, are throwing in the towel,” Philip tells me. “It makes you think about what you value, and it puts you face to face with the fatal flaws in your own relationship.” “And your fatal flaw?” I ask them. “Sex,” he answers. “Cheating,” she says. When they met, Jacqueline was the winning prize for Philip. “Jackie was smart, beautiful, and sexy. I couldn’t believe she was interested in me. I was really into her. I was all over her, too. We had great sex for a long time. Right up until I asked her to marry me,” he recalls. “What happened when she said yes?” I inquire.

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

  They forget that fire needs air . 6 Sex Is Dirty; Save It for Someone You Love When Puritanism and Hedonism Collide Sex without sin is like an egg without salt. —Luis Buñuel I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. —J. Edgar Hoover W HY DO SO MANY COUPLES become erotically alienated? The list of factors that contribute to the waning of excitement is long, and the one most commonly invoked is stress. “As soon as I sit down, I see the laundry that still needs folding, the unopened mail, the strewn toys, and it takes all sexual desire away from me.” “Between our new jobs, our old parents, and our young kids, I’m wiped out. I don’t have a very strong sex drive to begin with, but right now I don’t have any desire for it at all. Don’t take it personally.” But when my patients cite the all-too-real stresses of modern life to explain why romance went south, I suggest that there may be more to it. After all, stress was a reliable feature of their lives long before they met, and it didn’t stop them from leaping into one another’s arms. In the next tier of justification they trot out the deeper problems in the relationship: the heated bickering and icy standoffs, the lack of trust, the chronic disappointments, the cycles of blame. “Sex? You must be kidding. After what you just said to me?” “When’s the last time you showed me you were interested?” “Do you think you could put just a little effort into making yourself attractive?” “I wish you’d shut the damned TV off; it makes me feel like dead meat.” This litany of disenchantment notwithstanding, I believe there’s an additional layer to our libidinal demise that has to do with our culture’s deep ambivalence around sexuality. While we recognize the importance of sex, we nonetheless vacillate between extremes of excessive license and repressive tactics: “Don’t do it till you’re married.” “Just do it when you feel like it.” “It’s no big deal.” “It’s a huge deal.” “You need love.” “What’s love got to do with it?” It’s an all-or-nothing approach to sex. Porn sites proliferate on the Internet, yet we continue to debate whether or not to provide sex education in our schools and, if so, whether we should call it “Sex Ed” or opt for the less graphic “Health Ed.” Despite living in a time of unprecedented sexual freedom in America, the practice of policing sexuality has continued unabated since the days of the Puritans.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Perhaps the poem was a stark portrayal of what must have gone on in Irene’s home after her brother’s death, especially the parental clash as her father and mother each dealt with their loss in diametrically opposed ways. This situation is not uncommon after the death of a child: husband and wife grieve in different fashions (characteristically following gender stereotypes: more often than not the female grieves openly and emotively, while the male deals with grief through repression and active diversion). For many couples each of these two patterns actively interferes with the other—that is precisely the reason that so many marriages break up after the loss of a child. I thought of Irene’s connection to other images in Frost’s “Home Burial.” The changing view of the burial plot’s size was a brilliant metaphor: to the farmer it was both the size of the bedroom and so small that it was framed by the window; to the mother it was so large that she could see nothing else. And the windows. Irene was drawn to windows. “I’d like to live out my life in a high-rise apartment staring out the window,” she had said once. Or she imagined moving to a large seaside Victorian house where “I’d divide my time there between staring through the window at the ocean and pacing the rooftop widow’s walk forever.” The farmer’s wife’s bitter dismissal of friends who, after visiting the grave briefly, immediately made their way back to their everyday lives had been a familiar theme of Irene’s in therapy. Once, to make this point more graphic, Irene had brought in a print of Pieter Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus. “Look at these peasants,” she said, “working away, not bothering to look up at the boy falling from the sky.” She had even brought in Auden’s poetic description of the painting: In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. Other aspects of Irene in Frost’s “Home Burial”? The mother’s clinging to grief and the father’s matter-of-factness and impatience with her for not letting it go: that too I had heard her describe in her own family. But these observations, however graphic and informative, did not sufficiently explain why Irene had placed such importance on my reading the article. “The key to what has gone wrong in therapy”: those were her words, her promise. I felt let down. Perhaps I’ve overestimated her, I thought; for once she has missed the mark.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Though he had cleared his morning schedule, he had five consecutive sessions starting at one o’clock. Time was running out, and he turned to the real business of the day. “I’m going to have to leave soon,” he said, “very much against my will, but my patients await me. I cannot tell you how much I’ve enjoyed our talk. It’s really brought me out of myself. I needed it at this point in my life.” “How come?” “It’s been a bad time.” Ernest sighed, hoping his words, which he had rehearsed several times the night before, would seem spontaneous. “About two weeks ago I visited an old girlfriend of mine. Hadn’t seen her for a couple of years, and we had a lovely twenty-four hours together. Or so I thought. In the morning, I awoke and she was gone. Vanished. Not a trace of her. I’ve been in a bad way since. A very bad way!” “That’s dreadful.” Artemis was more concerned than Ernest had ever hoped for. “She was important to you? You were hoping to reconnect with her?” “Well, no.” Ernest thought of Halston and how she must have felt about him. “That’s not quite it. She was—well, what should I say?—more of a playmate, a sexual friend. So I’m not in grief about losing her. The real pain is not knowing. Was it something I did that caused her to run? Did I hurt her in some manner? Something I said? Was I an inconsiderate lover? Was I in some fundamental way unacceptable? You know what I mean. Stirs up a lot of bad stuff.” “I’m with you on that one,” she said, shaking her head sympathetically. “Been through that myself—and not too long ago.” “Really? It’s amazing how much we seem to have in common. Shouldn’t we try to heal one another? Continue this conversation some other time—say, at dinner tonight?” “Yes, but not a restaurant. I’m in a cooking mood. Yesterday I picked some beautiful chanterelles, which I’m going to make into a Hungarian mushroom ragout. Join me?” Never had therapy hours ticked by so slowly. Ernest could think of nothing but Artemis. He was enchanted with her. Again and again he prodded himself: Concentrate! Focus! Earn your fee! Sweep this woman from your mind. But Artemis refused to be swept. She had set up housekeeping in his frontal cortex, and there she stayed. There was something eerie and alluring about Artemis that brought to mind the immortal, irresistible African queen he remembered from Rider Haggard’s novel She. It did not escape Ernest that he was thinking more about Artemis’s charms than about alleviating her distress. Ernest, mind your priorities, he rebuked himself.

• From Story of O (1954)

  In the end, I see Story of O as a fable. Be careful what you wish for. René desires a woman who will withhold nothing from him, yet he falls truly in love with Jacqueline, a selfish lover who withholds everything. Sir Stephen desires the perfect submissive, yet after branding and shackling O as his personal property, he finds that O is not the one. And O, who desires to be desired and to perfectly satisfy her lovers’ every dark need, finds herself without a lover at all. She becomes a common vessel without anything meaningful to fill it, an object to be used but not treasured. We are left asking the question: Did O sacrifice herself for love, or did love make a sacrifice of O? Sylvia Day I The Lovers of RoissyHer lover one day takes O for a walk in a section of the city where they never go—the Montsouris Park, the Monceau Park. After they have taken a stroll in the park and have sat together side by side on the edge of a lawn, they notice, at one corner of the park, at an intersection where there are never any taxis, a car which, because of its meter, resembles a taxi. “Get in,” he says. She gets in. It is autumn, and coming up to dusk. She is dressed as she always is: high heels, a suit with a pleated skirt, a silk blouse, and no hat. But long gloves which come up over the sleeves of her jacket, and in her leather handbag she has her identification papers, her compact, and her lipstick. The taxi moves off slowly, the man still not having said a word to the driver. But he pulls down the shades of the windows on both sides of the car, and the shade on the back window. She has taken off her gloves, thinking he wants to kiss her or that he wants her to caress him. But instead he says: “Your bag’s in your way; let me have it.” She gives it to him. He puts it out of her reach and adds: “You also have on too many clothes. Unfasten your stockings and roll them down to above your knees. Here are some garters.” By now the taxi has picked up speed, and she has some trouble managing it; she’s also afraid the driver may turn around. Finally, though, the stockings are rolled down, and she’s embarrassed to feel her legs naked and free beneath her silk slip. Besides, the loose garter-belt suspenders are slipping back and forth. “Unfasten your garter belt,” he says, “and take off your panties.” That’s easy enough, all she has to do is slip her hands behind her back and raise herself slightly. He takes the garter belt and panties from her, opens her bag and puts them in, then says: “You shouldn’t sit on your slip and skirt. Pull them up behind you and sit directly on the seat.”

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I had no doubt about that: there were months when she said she lived only for our visits. And yet, close as we were, I had always thought that she and I met only obliquely, that we had always missed a true “I-thou” encounter. She had tried, as she had put it earlier in therapy, to keep me outside time, to know as little as possible about me, to pretend I had no life narrative with a beginning and an end. Now that changed. At the beginning of therapy, on a visit to her parents, Irene had come upon an old illustrated Frank Baum Oz book that she had read as a child. On her return she had told me that I had an uncanny physical resemblance to the Wizard of Oz. Now, after three years of therapy, she looked again at the illustration and found the resemblance less striking. I sensed that something important was happening when she mused, “Maybe you’re not the wizard. Maybe there is no wizard. Perhaps,” she went on, more to herself than to me, “I should simply accept your idea that you and I are just fellow travelers through this life, both of us listening to the bell tolling.” And I had no doubt that a new phase of therapy was beginning when she came into my office one afternoon in our fourth year looking straight at me, sat down, looked at me again, and said, “It’s strange, Irv, but you seem to have gotten a lot smaller.” Lesson 5: Reason Versus Treason As our work proceeded into the third year, I grew more and more discouraged. Therapy had hopelessly bogged down. So deeply mired in depression was Irene that I could not budge her. Nor approach her: when I inquired about how close or distant she felt in a session, she responded, “Miles and miles away—I can barely see you.” “Irene, I know you may be tired of hearing this, but we absolutely must consider beginning an antidepressant. We’ve got to understand and resolve why you’re so fixed in your opposition to medication.” “We both know what medication means.” “Oh?” “It means you’re quitting, giving up on our therapy work. I am not looking to be quickly fixed.” “Quickly fixed, Irene? Three years?” “I mean, making me feel better is no solution. It only postpones dealing with what I’ve lost.” No matter what arguments I used, I could not dissuade her from these beliefs, but eventually she humored me by allowing me to prescribe antidepressants.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  “That dog is purebred weimaraner,” Dwight said, keeping his eyes on the TV. “I don’t want it. I want my Winchester.” “Then you’re shit out of luck, because your Winchester is on its way to Seattle.” “But that was my rifle!” “And Champ’s your dog! Jesus! I trade some old piece of crap for a valuable hunting dog and what do you do? Piss and moan, piss and moan.” “I’m not pissing and moaning.” “The hell you aren’t. You can just make your own deals from now on.” My mother was at a political conference. She had done some local organizing for the Democratic party in the last state election, and now they were trying to get her to work for Adlai Stevenson. When she got home the next day I met her outside and told her about the rifle. She nodded as if she’d already heard the story. “I knew he’d do something,” she said. They had it out after I went to bed. Dwight made some noise but she backed him down. The rifle belonged to me, she said. He could yell all he wanted but on that point there was nothing to discuss. She made Dwight agree that when Champion’s owner sent up the AKC papers he’d promised to send, papers that would prove the dog’s illustrious line of descent, Dwight would call him and arrange to drive Champion down to Seattle and get my rifle back. He couldn’t do that now because he didn’t know the man’s last name or address. In this way the affair was settled to my satisfaction, except that the man somehow forgot to send the papers. WE TOOK CHAMPION hunting for the first time at a gravel quarry where mergansers liked to congregate. These ducks were considered bad eating, so most people didn’t shoot them. But Dwight would shoot at anything. He was a poor hunter, restless and unobservant and loud, and he never got the animals he went after. This made him furious; on the way back to the car he would kill anything he saw. He killed chipmunks, squirrels, blue jays and robins. He killed a great snowy owl with a 12-gauge from ten feet away and took potshots at bald eagles as they skimmed the river. I never saw him get a deer, a grouse, a quail, a

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Three different drugs were not only ineffective but resulted in unpleasant side effects: severe somnolence; alien and frightening dreams; loss of all sexuality and sensuality; a frightening sense of nothing mattering, of being removed from herself and her concerns. When I suggested that she consult a psychopharmacologist, she flatly refused. Desperate, I finally laid down an ultimatum: “You must see the consultant and follow his recommendations or I will not continue to work with you.” Irene looked at me unblinkingly. As usual, precise and constrained, she gave nothing extra in speech or movement. “I’ll consider it and give you my answer next session,” she said. But at our next meeting she did not respond directly to the ultimatum. Instead she handed me an issue of the New Yorker, open to an article by the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky titled “On Grief and Reason.” “In this,” she said, “you’ll find the key to what’s gone wrong in therapy. If not, if you read it and find no answer, then I’ll see your consultant.” Patients often ask me to read something of interest to them—some self-help book, an article about a new treatment or theory, a piece of literature that strikes close to their own situation. More than one writer-patient has handed me a long manuscript, saying, “You’ll learn a great deal about me by reading this.” This proposition has never proved valid: the patient could always have delivered the material verbally in far less time. Nor do they want an honest opinion of the writing from me—I generally loom too important to the patient to have the freedom to offer an objective commentary. Obviously they seek something else—my approval and admiration—and a therapist has far more direct and effective ways of dealing with that need than spending long hours reading a manuscript. I generally search for a gracious way to decline such requests—or at most agree to a quick skim. I value and protect my personal reading time. Yet I did not feel burdened as I began reading the article Irene had given me. I had great respect not only for her taste but for her clarity of mind, and if she believed this article contained the key to our impasse, I was confident that the time invested would be well spent. Of course, I would have preferred more direct communication, but I was learning to be receptive to Irene’s oblique and often poetic mode of discourse—a language she had learned from her mother. Unlike her father, a paragon of lucid rationality who had taught science in a small Midwestern high school, her mother, an artist, had communicated subtly. Irene had learned about her mother’s moods indirectly.

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

  In the next tier of justification they trot out the deeper problems in the relationship: the heated bickering and icy standoffs, the lack of trust, the chronic disappointments, the cycles of blame. “Sex? You must be kidding. After what you just said to me?” “When’s the last time you showed me you were interested?” “Do you think you could put just a little effort into making yourself attractive?” “I wish you’d shut the damned TV off; it makes me feel like dead meat.” This litany of disenchantment notwithstanding, I believe there’s an additional layer to our libidinal demise that has to do with our culture’s deep ambivalence around sexuality. While we recognize the importance of sex, we nonetheless vacillate between extremes of excessive license and repressive tactics: “Don’t do it till you’re married.” “Just do it when you feel like it.” “It’s no big deal.” “It’s a huge deal.” “You need love.” “What’s love got to do with it?” It’s an all-or-nothing approach to sex. Porn sites proliferate on the Internet, yet we continue to debate whether or not to provide sex education in our schools and, if so, whether we should call it “Sex Ed” or opt for the less graphic “Health Ed.” Despite living in a time of unprecedented sexual freedom in America, the practice of policing sexuality has continued unabated since the days of the Puritans. State intervention makes some of us breathe a sigh of relief while leaving others stricken with terror. We promote abstinence with fear-based tactics, threaten straying politicians with impeachment, fight gay marriage, and gnaw away at the fragile abortion laws. Though virginity seems a relic of a bygone era, every day our elected officials bring moral gravitas to the legislation of sexuality. Abortion, homosexuality, adultery, and “family values” have been active items on the national political agenda for more than thirty years. This sexual conservatism is rooted in the Puritan tradition, with its deep suspicion of pleasure and its moralistic attitude toward anything that strays from heterosexual, monogamous, marital, reproductive sexuality. Meanwhile, television producers invite us to phone in if we’ve had more than 100 sexual partners. Never before has sex been so publicly displayed, an incessant barrage of explicit images wherever we rest our eyes. Sex, the perennial default for advertising, has also become a commodity in itself.

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

  Oscar Wilde wrote, “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is getting what one wants, and the other is not getting it.” When our desires are unfulfilled, we are disappointed. It’s frustrating to be denied a raise, a college acceptance, an audition. When the object of our desire is a person, her rejection leaves us feeling lonely, unworthy, unloved, or—worse—unlovable. But fulfilled desire carries its own brand of loss. Getting what we want undermines the thrill of wanting it. The deliciousness of yearning, the elaborate strategies of pursuit, the charged fantasies, in short all the activity and energy that went into wanting give way to the foreclosure of having. Just think about the last thing you had to have until you owned it. Now that it’s yours, you may enjoy it, you may love it, but do you still want it? Do you even remember how much you wanted it in the first place? Gail Godwin wrote, “The act of longing will always be more intense than the requiting of it.” Is it harder to want what you already have? The law of diminishing returns tells us that increased frequency leads to decreased satisfaction. The more you use a product, the less satisfying each subsequent use will be. Paris just isn’t the same on your fifteenth trip as it was on the first. Fortunately, the logic of this argument breaks down when it is applied to love, for it is based on the erroneous assumption that we can own a person in the same way that we can own an iPod or a new pair of Prada heels. When my friend Jane said, “Perhaps I only want what I can’t have,” I responded, “What makes you think you have your husband?” The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility. It’s remarkable to me how a sudden threat to the status quo (an affair, an infatuation, a prolonged absence, or even a really good fight) can suddenly ignite desire. There’s nothing like the fear of loss to make those old shoes look new again.

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

  I can think of a number of things that I could suggest to this couple, joining them in their practical approach to the problem of diminishing desire. But I question the rationalist approach in matters of the heart. I think that the challenge of sustaining eros in a committed relationship over time is of a different nature. We don’t always know our aims in advance. Our desires are not exempt from conflict; nor are our passions free of contradictions. No amount of will or reason can dictate our love dreams. Reason doesn’t know the roots of our dreams; nor does it know the mysterious needs of the heart. We can’t always use the laws of profit and loss in our romantic and erotic lives. Applying the work ethos is tricky. Even the most logical approach cannot neutralize the ambivalence of love. I tell Ryan and Christine, “I have nothing new to offer in the ‘how to’ department. You’ve had dates, you’ve been burning incense, you’ve cracked into the Astroglide. And it’s landed you a steady diet of sex that’s satisfactory without being really satisfying. Do I get it?” “Yes, you get it, but what are you saying? That that’s it? 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.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  So even in this mission I was comparatively disappointed. I thought justice was not done to my clients, but I had not the means to secure it. At the most I could have appealed to the Political Agent or to the Governor who would have dismissed the appeal saying, ‘We decline to interfere.’ If there had been any rule or regulation governing such decisions, it would have been something, but here the sahib’s will was law. I was exasperated. In the meantime a Meman firm from Porbandar wrote to my brother making the following offer: ‘We have business in South Africa. Ours is a big firm, and we have a big case there in the Court, our claim being £ 40,000. It has been going on for a long time. We have engaged the services of the best vakils and barristers. If you sent your brother there, he would be useful to us and also to himself. He would be able to instruct our counsel better than ourselves. And he would have the advantage of seeing a new part of the world, and of making new acquaintances.’ My brother discussed the proposition with me. I could not clearly make out whether I had simply to instruct the counsel or to appear in court. But I was tempted. My brother introduced me to the late Sheth Abdul Karim Jhaveri a partner of Dada Abdulla & Co; the firm in question. ‘It won’t be a difficult job’ the Sheth assured me. ‘We have big Europeans as our friends, whose acquaintance you will make. You can be useful to us our shop. Much of our correspondence is in English and you can help us with that too. You will, of course, be our guest and hence will have no expense whatever.’ ‘How long do you require my services?’ I asked. ‘And what will be the payment?’ ‘Not more than a year. We will pay you a first class return fare and a sum of £ 105, all found.’ This was hardly going there as a barrister. It was going as a servant of the firm. But I wanted somehow to leave India. There was also the tempting opportunity of seeing a new country, and of having new experience. Also I could send £105 to my brother and help in the expenses of the household. I closed with the offer without any higgling, and got ready to go to South Africa. 33ARRIVAL IN NATALWhen starting for South Africa I did not feel the wrench of separation which I had experienced when leaving for England. My mother was now no more. I had gained some knowledge of the world and of travel abroad, and going from Rajkot to Bombay was no unusual affair. This time I only felt the pang of parting with my wife. Another baby had been born to us since my return from England. Our love could not yet be called free from lust, but it was getting gradually purer.

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

  If uncertainty is a built-in feature of all relationships, so too is mystery. Many of the couples who come to therapy imagine that they know everything there is to know about their mate. “My husband doesn’t like to talk.” “My girlfriend would never flirt with another man. She’s not the type.” “My lover doesn’t do therapy.” “Why don’t you just say it? I know what you’re thinking?” “I don’t need to give her lavish presents; she knows I love her.” I try to highlight for them how little they’ve seen, urging them to recover their curiosity and catch a glimpse behind the walls that barricade the other. In truth, we never know our partner as well as we think we do. Mitchell reminds us that even in the dullest marriages, predictability is a mirage. Our need for constancy limits how much we are willing to know the person who’s next to us. We are invested in having him or her conform to an image that is often a creation of our own imagination, based on our own set of needs. “One thing about him is that he’s never anxious. He’s like a rock. I’m so neurotic.” “He’s too much of a wimp to leave me.” “She doesn’t put up with any of my shit.” “We’re both very traditional. Even though she has a PhD, she really likes staying home with the kids.” We see what we want to see, what we can tolerate seeing, and our partner does the same. Neutralizing each other’s complexity affords us a kind of manageable otherness. We narrow down our partner, ignoring or rejecting essential parts when they threaten the established order of our coupledom. We also reduce ourselves, jettisoning large chunks of our personalities in the name of love. Yet when we peg ourselves and our partners to fixed entities, we needn’t be surprised that passion goes out the window. And I’m sorry to say that the loss is on both sides. Not only have you squeezed out the passion, but you haven’t really gained safety, either. The fragility of this manufactured equilibrium becomes obvious when one partner breaks the rules of the contrivance and insists on bringing more authentic parts of himself into the relationship.

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

  I’m lazy in the ‘make me feel special’ department. When we first met I bought him a briefcase for his birthday—something he saw in a store window and loved—and it had two tickets to Paris inside. This year I gave him a DVD and we celebrated with a couple of friends by eating a meat loaf his mother had made. Nothing against meat loaf, but that’s what it’s come to. I don’t know why I don’t do more. I’ve become complacent.” Adele, in her breathless riff, vividly captures the tension between the comfort of committed love and its muting effect on erotic vitality. Familiarity is indeed reassuring, and it brings a sense of security that Adele would never dream of giving up. At the same time, she wants to recapture the quality of aliveness and excitement that she and Alan had in the beginning. She wants both the coziness and the edge, and she wants them both with him. The Era of Pleasure Not so long ago, the desire to feel passionate about one’s husband would have been considered a contradiction in terms. Historically, these two realms of life were organized separately—marriage on one side and passion most likely somewhere else, if anywhere at all. The concept of romantic love, which came about toward the end of the nineteenth century, brought them together for the first time. The central place of sex in marriage, and the heightened expectations surrounding it, took decades more to arrive. The social and cultural transformations of the past fifty years have redefined modern coupledom. Alan and Adele are beneficiaries of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, women’s liberation, the availability of birth control pills, and the emergence of the gay movement. With the widespread use of the pill, sex became liberated from reproduction. Feminism and gay pride fought to define sexual expression as an inalienable right. Anthony Giddens describes this transition in The Transformation of Intimacy when he explains that sexuality became a property of the self, one that we develop, define, and renegotiate throughout our lives. Today, our sexuality is an open-ended personal project; it is part of who we are, an identity, and no longer merely something we do. It has become a central feature of intimate relationships, and sexual satisfaction, we believe, is our due. The era of pleasure has arrived. These developments, in conjunction with postwar economic prosperity, have contributed to a period of unmatched freedom and individualism. People today are encouraged to pursue personal fulfillment and sexual gratification, and to break free of the constraints of a social and family life heretofore defined by duty and obligation.

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

  But I do like sex, or at least I used to, I just don’t like it so much with him. He doesn’t get me sexually, and I can’t seem to let him in on it, either. It feels hopeless. I’m only twenty-nine. That’s too young to stop having sex.” “Is there a right age to stop having sex?” I ask her. “Later maybe we can pick a date. For now, I’d rather know what is it you want from Ray that you’re not getting.” “I want him to be more of a man, and I can’t believe I’m saying that out loud.” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t even know what it means. Like I want him to be some kind of 1950s Neanderthal. But I don’t want that. My mother had that. I don’t think my father ever asked her what she liked, in the bedroom or out of it. Ray is a mensch. He’s a real gentleman, he respects me, and he lets me be. I love how easy our relationship is, but it doesn’t do a thing for me sexually.” “What’s missing?” I inquire. Suddenly she leans over and grabs my wrist, not roughly, but with confidence. “This is what I want,” she says. Then, tentatively, gently, she brushes my forearm and adds, “This is what I get.” “So he’s passive?” “Not exactly. He initiates sex all the time, but the way he does it makes me crazy. He just sort of raises his eyebrows and goes, ‘Hmmm?’ It feels like he’s asking me, ‘Am I going to get laid tonight?’ like I’m supposed to take over from there.” “He has a way of approaching you that doesn’t say, ‘I want you,’ as much as ‘Do you want me?’ Is that it?” “Yes!” Joni shouts. I explain that if I’m going to understand what she wants from Ray, first I have to understand what it is she wants sex to provide. “If sex is a quest,” I ask her, “what is your Holy Grail?” Joni is quite forthcoming in disclosing her sexual past: the best experiences she’s had, the worst, and what made them so. She gives me a raft of information about the atmosphere she grew up in, her early stirrings, the age she started to masturbate, and the age when she understood what masturbation was. But when I ask her, “What does sex mean to you? What are the feelings that accompany your desire? What do you seek in sex? What do you want to feel? To express? Where do you hold back?” she looks at me, perplexed. “I have no idea,” she admits. “No one’s ever asked me that before.” All of us invest our erotic encounters with a complex set of needs and expectations.