Shame

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 Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  “When you doubt your own desirability, it is harder to trust Mitch’s desire for you.” I explain. “It’s far easier to locate the fault with him—and, to be fair, he gives you plenty to work with—than it is to face the depth of your own self-doubt.” Mitch, who had been pointing to Laura’s sexual passivity for years, had some realizations of his own. “I guess I’m not too creative, either. When we were doing the exercise, I felt uncomfortable taking the lead. I hate to admit it, but I liked the passive resistance most. I’m unbeatable at that one.” I reminded Mitch that when he met Hillary, his first love, she too took the lead. “You do indeed express yourself with great eloquence in the physical realm, but you’re highly dependent on a powerful interlocutor to make it safe for you. So far, Laura hasn’t been that.” When Mitch and Laura came to me, I was reluctant to take them on. They considered me the therapist of last resort; I was either the third or the fifth (I can’t remember which) they had consulted in more than two decades. For years, they had been trying to talk their way out of their rut. Evidently, it hadn’t worked. Instead they were engaged in a verbal thrust-and-parry, defensive, hostile, and totally fused. They had had plenty of self-disclosure, but it was far from intimate. I knew enough not to limit myself to the habits of the talking cure—talking had become squawking and was going nowhere. The exercises provided an alternative lens to examine their dynamics. The physicalization of their problems gave us a fresh text to read together. It was novel enough to jar them, and to interrupt their entrenchment. They were stretching into new territory. In my work with patients I stress that intimacy isn’t monolithic; nor is it always consistent. It is intermittent, meant to wax and wane even in the best relationships. The family therapist Kaethe Weingarten steers us away from looking at intimacy as a static feature of a relationship; she sees it instead as a quality of interaction that takes place in isolated moments and that exists both within and without long-term commitment. There’s the synchronization of dance partners, the sudden identification between strangers on a plane, the solidarity of witnesses to a catastrophe, the mutual recognition of survivors—of breast cancer, alcoholism, terrorism, divorce. There’s the intimacy between professionals and those they serve—doctor and patient, therapist and client, stripper and regular. While we expect to experience these discrete moments of recognition in ongoing relationships, they are not necessarily bound to any overarching narrative. They can be circumstantial, spontaneous, and without follow-up. Informed by Weingarten’s ideas, I no longer look at relationships as being either intimate or not. Instead, I track each couple’s ability to engage in a series of intimate bids tendered over time.

• From Story of O (1954)

  O, still lying motionless on her back, her loins still aflame, was listening, and she had the feeling that by some strange substitution Sir Stephen was speaking for her, in her place. As though he was somehow in her body and could feel the anxiety, the anguish, and the shame, but also the secret pride and harrowing pleasure that she was feeling, especially when she was alone in a crowd of strangers, of passers-by in the street, or when she got into a bus, or when she was at the studio with the models and technicians, and she told herself that any and all of these people she was with, if they should have an accident and have to be laid down on the ground or if a doctor had to be called, would keep their secrets, even if they were unconscious and naked; but not she: her secret did not depend upon her silence alone, did not depend on her alone. Even if she wanted to, she could not indulge in the slightest caprice—and that was indeed the meaning of one of Sir Stephen’s questions—without immediately revealing herself, she could not allow herself to partake of the most innocent acts, such as playing tennis or swimming. That these things were forbidden her was a comfort to her, a material comfort, as the bars of the convent materially prevent the cloistered girls from belonging to one another, and from escaping. For this reason too, how could she run the risk that Jacqueline would not spurn her, without at the same time running the risk of having to explain the truth to Jacqueline, or at least part of the truth? The sun had moved and left her face. Her shoulders were sticking to the glossy surface of the photographs on which she was lying, and against her knee she could feel the rough edge of Sir Stephen’s suitcoat, for he had come back beside her. He and René each took her by one hand and helped her to her feet. René picked up one of her mules. It was time for her to get dressed. It was during the lunch that followed, at Saint-Cloud on the banks of the Seine, that Sir Stephen, who had remained alone with her, began to question her once again. The restaurant tables, covered with white tablecloths, were arranged on a shaded terrace which was bordered by privet hedges, at the foot of which was a bed of dark red, scarcely opened peonies.

• From Story of O (1954)

  There was another girl, very young, a girl with bare shoulders and a choker of pearls around her neck, wearing one of those white dresses young girls wear to their first ball, two tea-scented roses at her waist and a pair of golden slippers on her feet, and a boy made her sit down next to O, on her right. Then he took her hand and made her caress O’s breasts, which quivered to the touch of the cool, light fingers, and touch her belly, and the chain, and the hole through which it passed. The young girl silently did as she was bid, and when the boy said he planned to do the same thing to her, she did not seem shocked. But even though they thus made use of O, and even though they used her in this way as a model, or the subject of a demonstration, not once did anyone ever speak to her directly. Was she then of stone or wax, or rather some creature from another world, and did they think it pointless to speak to her? Or didn’t they dare? It was only after daybreak, after all the dancers had left, that Sir Stephen and the Commander, awakening Natalie who was asleep at O’s feet, helped O to her feet, led her to the middle of the courtyard, unfastened her chain and removed her mask and, laying her back upon a table, possessed her one after the other. In a final chapter, which has been suppressed, O returned to Roissy, where she was abandoned by Sir Stephen. There exists a second ending to the story of O, according to which O, seeing that Sir Stephen was about to leave her, said she would prefer to die. Sir Stephen gave her his consent. About the AuthorPAULINE RÉAGE was a pseudonym for an editor at the prestigious NRF Review in Paris, whose editor in chief was her lover. She died in 1998. [image "Penguin Random House Next Reads logo" file=image_rsrc10A.jpg] What’s next on your reading list?Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she sobbed softly. Then she turned away from the group, stared out the window, and began scratching her skin, at first softly and then with deep, long digs. “Real bitter. Real bitter,” she repeated. I felt disoriented. Like Rosa, I grew alarmed. I wanted the old Magnolia back. And her clawing unnerved me. Was she trying to scrape away the insects? Or her blackness? I wanted to grab her wrists and still her hands before she lacerated her flesh. A long pause and then: “And they is other things Ah could say too, but they is very personal.” I knew that Magnolia was primed. I had no doubt that with the slightest prod, she would tell us everything. But she had gone far enough for the rest of us. Too far. Rosa’s distraught eyes were telling me, “Please, please, no more! Stop this!” And it was enough for me too. I had taken the lid off, but for once I did not want to look inside. After two or three minutes, Magnolia stopped weeping, stopped scratching. Slowly her smile reappeared and her voice became soft again. “But then Ah figure that the good Lawd has His reasons for giving us each a burden. Wouldn’t it be prideful fo’ me to try and figure out His reasons?” The group members were silent. Apparently embarrassed, they all—even Dorothy—looked away, out the window. This is, I kept trying to tell myself, good therapy: Magnolia has faced some of her demons and now seems poised on the brink of some important therapeutic work. Yet I felt I had desecrated her. Perhaps the other members felt that way too. Yet they said nothing. A heavy silence descended. I caught each member’s gaze and silently urged each to speak. Perhaps I had read into Magnolia too much earth mother. Perhaps it was only I who had lost an icon. I struggled to put my sense of desecration into words that would be useful to the group. Nothing came. My mind was silent. Giving up, I glumly resigned myself to a tired, scuffed comment I had uttered countless times before in countless group meetings: “Magnolia has said a great deal. What feelings do her words stir up in each of you?” I hated saying that, hated its ordinariness, its technical banality. Ashamed of myself, I slumped into my chair. I knew precisely how the group members would respond and grimly awaited their formulaic comments: “I feel I really know you now, Magnolia.” “I feel a lot closer to you now.” “I see you as a real person now.” Even one of the residents, venturing out of his role as silent observer, chipped in: “Me too, Magnolia. I see you as a full person, someone I can relate to. I experience you in three dimensions now.”

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

  “Sorry, Jack. No pay, no play.” “Just one? Please?” His eyes went past me. He smiled at the the kids watching. “You saw it happen right here,” he said. “Man almost walked off with the store. You there, Carrot-top—that’s right, you—don’t be shy, come on up, first game’s on the house. Used to be a Scout myself.” “No free games!” Rusty said. “The boss’ll kill us.” “Please, Smoke,” I said. Still smiling, he shuffled the disks. He didn’t exactly ignore me; I wasn’t even there. “Here,” Rusty said, and shoved something at me. “Take a ride or something.” It was a stuffed animal, a big pink pig with black trotters and a ring in its nose. I carried it up the midway, walking with the Ballard boys but unable to talk for the thickness in my throat. Sounds reached me from a distance. I floated without consciousness of movement. We walked here and there. At some point the Ballard boys climbed on a ride together and I lost them. I never even got their addresses. AFTER THE PARK closed I stood by the gate with some other Scouts from my troop. Except for me, they had driven down to Seattle that morning in groups of five and six with parents who had relatives they could visit until it was time to drive home. Dwight and I had come down by ourselves. While we waited to get picked up I tried to persuade Arthur to drive back with me and Dwight. I knew that Dwight would be drunk, and I didn’t want to be alone with him. But Arthur wouldn’t talk to me. As I spoke he looked away. I begged him shamelessly and at last he said, “Why should I?” I said, “I’d do it for you.” “Hah,” he said. But it was true, and he knew it. After a while he said, “Outstanding performance, Wolff. Truly outstanding.” We were among the last to go. When I saw the car coming I held the pig out to Arthur. I had not been able to think of an explanation for it. “Here,” I said. “You can have it.” “What do I want that thing for?” “Come on, take it. Please.” He said, “Well, we’re being very polite tonight, aren’t we?” But he took it. And that was what Dwight stared at as we walked toward him through the blaze of the headlights, this glowing pink pig carried by the sissy Arthur Gayle. And as if he knew how Dwight would describe the sight later on, Arthur, who despised him, smirked at Dwight, and wriggled and pranced every step of the way.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  This exchange happened so smoothly that none of the seminar members, perhaps not even Dr. Werner himself, was conscious of his switch into his seductive professional voice—or, it seemed, of Ernest’s eagerness to snuggle into the warmth of the therapeutic comforter. “You said there’s something of your mother in it,” remarked Barbara. “I never got much good stuff from her either.” “Does her ghost influence your feelings toward Myrna?” “It was different with my mother. I was the one who kept pulling away. I was embarrassed by her. I didn’t like thinking I was born of her. When I was young—maybe eight, nine—I felt suffocated when my mother got too close to me. I remember telling my analyst that my mother ‘sucked up all the oxygen in the room.’ That phrase became a slogan, a major motif, of my analysis: my analyst referred to it again and again. I used to look at my mother and think, I have to love her as my mother, but if she were a stranger I’d dislike everything about her.” “So,” said Dr. Werner, “now we know something important about your countertransference. Although you invite your patient to come closer, you unintentionally give her a simultaneous ‘don’t get too close’ message. She’ll intrude too far, suck up all the oxygen. And without a doubt she’s perceiving this second message and accommodating you. Again, let me repeat, we can’t hide these feelings from patients. I’ll say it once again: we can’t hide these feelings from patients. It’s the lesson for today. I cannot emphasize the point too strongly. No experienced therapist can possibly doubt the existence of unconscious empathy.” “Lot of ambivalence too,” said Barbara, “in your sexual feelings toward her. I’m struck by your response to her breasts—both longing and repulsion. You like those blouse buttons popping, but they bring up unpleasant memories of Mother.” “Yes,” added Tom, another of Ernest’s close friends, “and then you get self-conscious, start to question whether you may have unwittingly been staring at her breasts. Happens to me often.” “And your sexual attraction to her coupled with a wish to get away? What do you make of it?” asked Barbara. “Some dark primitive vagina dentate fantasy in me, no doubt,” replied Ernest. “But still there’s something in this patient that particularly ignites that fear.” Just before drifting off to sleep, Ernest wondered again whether he should stop seeing Myrna. Maybe she needs a female therapist, he thought. Maybe my negative feelings are too deep, too entrenched. But when he had raised that question in the seminar group, everyone, including Dr. Werner, said, “No, stay the course.” Myrna’s major problems, they felt, were with men and could best be addressed with a male therapist. Too bad, Ernest thought: he really wanted out.

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

  There are many ways to bring our erotic selves into our intimate relationships; they don’t all require words or literal exposés. How to go about it will depend on the particular relationship and the compatibility of the partners. Our cultural taboos about erotic fantasy are so strong that for many people the very idea of discussing it creates anxiety and shame. Yet fantasies are maps of our psychological and cultural preoccupations; exploring them can lead to greater self-awareness, an essential step in creating change. When we cordon off our erotic interiors, we are left with sex that is truncated, devoid of vibrancy, and not particularly intimate. What people fail to see is that dull, boring sexual relationships are often a consequence of shutting down the imagination in just this way. Our erotic imagination is an exuberant expression of our aliveness, and one of the most powerful tools we have for keeping desire alive. Giving voice to our fantasies can liberate us from the many personal and social obstacles that stand in the way of pleasure. Understanding what our fantasies do for us will help us understand what it is we’re seeking, sexually and emotionally. In our erotic daydreams, we find the energy that keeps us passionately awake to our own sexuality . 11 Putting the X Back in Sex Bringing the Erotic Home 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 I T 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.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In this way, the individual is able to move out of this “kill or be killed” counterattack bind. As one begins to open gradually to accepting one’s intense sensations, one enhances the capacity for healthy aggression, pleasure and goodness. It is no surprise, then, that traumatized individuals constrict and brace against their rage as socialized animals. But let us look at the cumulative consequence of suppressing rage. Tremendous amounts of energy need to be exerted (on an already strained system) to keep rage and other primitive emotions at bay. This “turning in” of anger against the self, and the need to defend against its eruption, leads to debilitating shame, as well as to eventual exhaustion. This involution adds another layer to the complexity and seeming intransigence of the festering traumatic state. For these reasons, titration becomes even more crucial as a measure to interrupt this self-perpetuating “shame cycle.” In the case of molestation and other forms of previous abuse, a substratum of self-reproach has already been laid beneath a later trauma during adulthood. Indeed, because immobility is experienced as a passive response, many molestation and rape victims feel tremendous shame for not having successfully fought their attackers. This perception and the overwhelming sense of defeat can occur regardless of the reality of the situation: the relative size of the attacker doesn’t matter; nor does the fact that the immobility might have even protected the victim from further harm or possibly death. † And I haven’t even included here the additional blanket of confusion and shame that occurs within the complex dynamics of secrecy and betrayal in the incestuous family. As traumatized individuals begin to reown their sense of agency and power, they gradually come to a place of self-forgiveness and self-acceptance. They achieve the compassionate realization that both their immobility and their rage are a biologically driven, instinctual imperative and not something to be ashamed of as if it were a character defect. They own their rage as undifferentiated power and agency, a vital life-preserving force to be harnessed and used to benefit oneself. Because of its profound importance in the resolution of trauma, I’ll repeat myself: the fear that fuels immobility can be categorized, broadly, as two separate fears: the fear of entering immobility, which is the fear of paralysis, entrapment, helplessness and death; and the fear of exiting immobility, of the intense energy of the “rage-based” sensations of counterattack. Caught in this two-sided clamp (of entering and exiting), immobility repels its antidote implacably so that it seems impossible to break through it.

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

  We commonly believe that the closer we feel to someone, the easier it will be to shed our inhibitions. But that’s only half the story. Intimacy does nurture desire, but sexual pleasure also demands separateness. Erotic excitement requires that we be able to step out of the intimate bond for a moment, turn toward ourselves, and focus on our own mounting sensations. We need to be able to be momentarily selfish in order to be erotically connected. Our ability to step away from our loved ones while trusting their steadfastness is forged in the security of our childhood bonds. The more we trust, the farther we are able to venture. When infants play peek a boo, the distance they can bear is only as far as the breadth of their fingers. What powers the game is the realization that, even when I don’t see you, you continue to exist. Older children play hide-and-seek, secure in the knowledge that someone will eventually come looking. The thrill of hiding is followed by the relief of being found. Erotic intimacy is an adult version of hide-and-seek. As when we were children, the stronger the connection the braver we are about stretching it. We know our beloved will be waiting for our return, will not punish our selfish pursuits, and in fact may even applaud them. In his book Arousal, Michael Bader links the idea of selfishness to the concept of sexual ruthlessness, which he defines as “the quality of desire that enables a person to surrender to the full force of his or her own rhythms of pleasure and excitement without guilt, worry, or shame of any kind.” Bader’s explanation emphasizes the importance of differentiation—the capacity to hold on to oneself in the presence of another. Without that ability, we become like James, who can’t get out of Stella’s head long enough to experience his own fervor. The rawness of our desire can feel mean, bestial, even unloving. Eros can feel predatory, a voracious grab. Whatever guilt we feel about taking—whatever shame we feel about our wantonness, our passion, our indecency—is intensified in the primitive vulnerability of sex. We bring to our intimate erotic encounters a lifetime of injunctions against selfishness in the context of love, the specifics of which are detailed in our erotic blueprint. In addition to the family legacy, we also carry a cultural legacy. We are socialized to control ourselves, to restrain our impulses, to tame the animal within. So as dutiful citizens and spouses we edit ourselves and mask our ravenous appetites and conceal our fleeting need to objectify the one we love.

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

  Reply to Objection 3: The excess of passion that amounts to a sin does not refer to the passion’s quantitative intensity, but to its proportion to reason; wherefore it is only when a passion goes beyond the bounds of reason that it is reckoned to be immoderate. Now the pleasure attaching to the marriage act, while it is most intense in point of quantity, does not go beyond the bounds previously appointed by reason before the commencement of the act, although reason is unable to regulate them during the pleasure itself. Reply to Objection 4: The turpitude that always accompanies the marriage act and always causes shame is the turpitude of punishment, not of sin, for man is naturally ashamed of any defect. Whether the marriage act can be excused without the marriage goods?Objection 1: It would seem that the marriage act can be excused even without the marriage goods. For he who is moved by nature alone to the marriage act, apparently does not intend any of the marriage goods, since the marriage goods pertain to grace or virtue. Yet when a person is moved to the aforesaid act by the natural appetite alone, seemingly he commits no sin, for nothing natural is an evil, since “evil is contrary to nature and order,” as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv). Therefore the marriage act can be excused even without the marriage goods. Objection 2: Further, he who has intercourse with his wife in order to avoid fornication, does not seemingly intend any of the marriage goods. Yet he does not sin apparently, because marriage was granted to human weakness for the very purpose of avoiding fornication (1 Cor. 7:2, 6). Therefore the marriage act can be excused even without the marriage goods. Objection 3: Further, he who uses as he will that which is his own does not act against justice, and thus seemingly does not sin. Now marriage makes the wife the husband’s own, and “vice versa.” Therefore, if they use one another at will through the instigation of lust, it would seem that it is no sin; and thus the same conclusion follows. Objection 4: Further, that which is good generically does not become evil unless it be done with an evil intention. Now the marriage act whereby a husband knows his wife is generically good. Therefore it cannot be evil unless it be done with an evil intention. Now it can be done with a good intention, even without intending any marriage good, for instance by intending to keep or acquire bodily health. Therefore it seems that this act can be excused even without the marriage goods. On the contrary, If the cause be removed the effect is removed. Now the marriage goods are the cause of rectitude in the marriage act. Therefore the marriage act cannot be excused without them.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Another passerby is cruising me up and down. My feelings are still a little hurt about the woman who crossed the street to get away from me. Sometimes I feel like such a menace to society when I walk down the street, my legs get rubbery and I can’t keep track of whether or not my feet are hitting the sidewalk. And I think if one more person even looks at me, I’m going to have hysterics. So I straighten my shoulders and give this one a level look, acknowledging that what she is thinking about me is not nearly outrageous enough. She looks a bit put-off, but a little wistful, too. She sticks her hands in her sleeves and walks on. Her robe is a dark, conservative color, but the cut and fabric is expensive. She does not look back, but I know it will take more than a walk home to make her forget me. It wouldn’t surprise me if she turns up as a client some day. Maybe she already has. This collision with the law has forced me to evaluate my life in a way that is thoroughly unpleasant. I keep going back, trying to find an explanation in my past that might appease the faceless authorities who seem determined to stomp me flat. Or maybe it really is my fault, maybe somewhere in this story I should have made a different choice, and maybe it’s not too late to fix it. Aw, what can you do? I knew way back then I was abnormal. Knew it as clearly as I knew I had two hands and only nine fingers. And what could I do about it? Nothing. (Well, I had a chilly premonition of city streets and crumpled money and dark, smoky bars. Where do we learn these things that everyone is so scrupulously careful not to tell us?) I felt like I needed some therapy, but I didn’t want some ego-shrinker getting me in a corner and writing down my answers to her questions. So, for the first time in my life, I joined a group, an ad hoc committee called Students for Solidarity. It was going to be my salvation. We were just a lot of juvenile troublemakers. And we irritated enough people in high places to make ourselves feel righteous. We were a self-appointed band of ideologies and vigilantes who kept tabs on suspicious professors, administrators, and students. If somebody seemed to have regressive tendencies, we would call a public meeting and air our grievances. We would also hold sit-ins outside their class, office, or dorm room—or burn them in effigy. Among the things that concerned us most were the … uh, it takes a minute for the lingo to come back to me … the holdovers, that was the phrase, the holdovers from exploitative, male-dominated, consumer-capitalist sexualities.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Connie wondered what he would say if he knew that Clifford's gamekeeper had been having intercourse with her, and saying to her "tha mun come to th' cottage one time." He would detest and despise her, for he had come almost to hate the shoving forward of the working classes. A man of her own class he would not mind, for Connie was gifted from nature with this appearance of demure, submissive maidenliness, and perhaps it was part of her nature. Winter called her "dear child" and gave her a rather lovely miniature of an eighteenth-century lady, rather against her will. But Connie was preoccupied with her affair with the keeper. After all Mr. Winter, who was really a gentleman and a man of the world, treated her as a person and a discriminating individual; he did not lump her together with all the rest of his female womanhood in his "thee" and "tha." She did not go to the wood that day nor the next, nor the day following. She did not go so long as she felt, or imagined she felt, the man waiting for her, wanting her. But the fourth day she was terribly unsettled and uneasy. She still refused to go to the wood and open her thighs once more to the man. She thought of all the things she might do--drive to Sheffield, pay visits, and the thought of all these things was repellent. At last she decided to take a walk, not towards the wood, but in the opposite direction; she would go to Marehay, through the little iron gate in the other side of the park fence. It was a quiet grey day of spring, almost warm. She walked on unheeding, absorbed in thoughts she was not even conscious of. She was not really aware of anything outside her, till she was startled by the loud barking of the dog at Marehay Farm. Marehay Farm! Its pastures ran up to Wragby park fence, so they were neighbours, but it was some time since Connie had called. "Bell!" she said to the big white bull-terrier. "Bell! have you forgotten me? Don't you know me?"--She was afraid of dogs, and Bell stood back and bellowed, and she wanted to pass through the farmyard on to the warren path. Mrs. Flint appeared. She was a woman of Constance's own age, had been a school-teacher, but Connie suspected her of being rather a false little thing. "Why, it's Lady Chatterley! Why?" And Mrs. Flint's eyes glowed again, and she flushed like a young girl. "Bell, Bell. Why! barking at Lady Chatterley! Bell! Be quiet!" She darted forward and slashed at the dog with a white cloth she held in her hand, then came forward to Connie. "She used to know me," said Connie, shaking hands. The Flints were Chatterley tenants.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "But Connie!" she said. "Whatever is the matter?" "Nothing!" said Connie, rather shame-facedly; but she knew how she had suffered in contrast to Hilda. Both sisters had the same rather golden, glowing skin, and soft brown hair, and naturally strong, warm physique. But now Connie was thin and earthy-looking, with a scraggy, yellowish neck, that stuck out of her jumper. "But you're ill, child!" said Hilda, in the soft, rather breathless voice, that both sisters had alike. Hilda was nearly, but not quite, two years older than Connie. "No, not ill. Perhaps I'm bored," said Connie a little pathetically. The light of battle glowed in Hilda's face: she was a woman, soft and still as she seemed, of the old amazon sort, not made to fit with men. "This wretched place!" she said softly, looking at poor old, lumbering Wragby with real hate. She looked soft and warm herself, as a ripe pear, and she was an amazon of the real old breed. She went quietly in to Clifford. He thought how handsome she looked, but also he shrank from her. His wife's family did not have his sort of manners, or his sort of etiquette. He considered them rather outsiders, but once they got inside they made him jump through the hoop. He sat square and well-groomed in his chair, his hair sleek and blond, and his face fresh, his blue eyes pale, and a little prominent, his expression inscrutable, but well-bred. Hilda thought it sulky and stupid, and he waited. He had an air of aplomb, but Hilda didn't care what he had an air of; she was up in arms, and if he'd been Pope or Emperor it would have been just the same. "Connie's looking awfully unwell," she said in her soft voice, fixing him with her beautiful, glowering grey eyes. She looked so maidenly, so did Connie; but he well knew the stone of Scottish obstinacy underneath. "She's a little thinner," he said. "Haven't you done anything about it?" "Do you think it necessary?" he asked, with his suavest English stiffness, for the two things often go together. Hilda only glowered at him without replying; repartee was not her forte, nor Connie's; so she glowered, and he was much more uncomfortable than if she had said things. "I'll take her to a doctor," said Hilda at length, "Can you suggest a good one round here?" "I'm afraid I can't." "Then I'll take her to London, where we have a doctor we trust." Though boiling with rage, Clifford said nothing. "I suppose I may as well stay the night," said Hilda, pulling off her gloves, "and I'll drive her to town tomorrow." Clifford was yellow at the gills with anger, and at evening the whites of his eyes were a little yellow too. He ran to liver. But Hilda was consistently modest and maidenly.

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

  9. A TRAGEDY (contd.) So the day came. It is difficult fully to describe my condition. There were, on the one hand, the zeal for ‘reform’, and the novelty of making a momentous departure in life. There was, on the other, the shame of hiding like a thief to do this very thing. I cannot say which of the two swayed me more. We went in search of a lonely spot by the river, and there I saw, for the first time in my life – meat. There was baker’s bread also. I relished neither. The goat’s meat was as tough as leather. I simply could not eat it. I was sick and had to leave off eating. I had a very bad night afterwards. A horrible night-mare haunted me. Every time I dropped off to sleep it would seem as though a live goat were bleating inside me, and I would jump up full of remorse. But then I would remind myself that meat-eating was a duty and so become more cheerful. My friend was not a man to give in easily. He now began to cook various delicacies with meat, and dress them neatly. And for dining, no longer was the secluded spot on the river chosen, but a State house, with its dining hall, and tables and chairs, about which my friend had made arrangements in collusion with the chief cook there. This bait had its effect. I got over my dislike for bread, forswore my compassion for the goats, and became a relisher of meat-dishes, if not of meat itself. This went on for about a year. But not more than half a dozen meat-feasts were enjoyed in all; because the State house was not available every day, and there was the obvious difficulty about frequently preparing expensive savoury meat- dishes. I had no money to pay for this ‘reform’. My friend had therefore always to find the wherewithal. I had no knowledge where he found it. But find it he did, because he was bent on turning me into a meat-eater. But even his means

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

  Simply doing that— and often it is not so simple at all—can have a profound effect. Sex becomes both a way to illuminate conflicts over intimacy and desire, and a way to begin to heal these destructive splits. Together, Joni and I use the text of her fantasies to address critical issues between her and Ray. Dependency and passivity, aggression, and control were all feelings that she disavowed for years, they had been allowed only in the privacy of her mind. By reclaiming them in therapy she was one step closer to liberating them at home. Once Joni was no longer held captive by the shame of her fantasies, she became more relaxed and self-accepting. To her surprise, she was able to approach Ray with all sorts of requests and only a modest amount of trepidation. Conversations ensued in which formidable obstacles were revealed to be nothing more than awkward misunderstandings that, through neglect, had snowballed out of control. For years Ray had assumed that his gentle approach was what Joni wanted. In fact, he thought that was what all women wanted, and he couldn’t figure out why asking “What can I do for you?” warranted such an irritated reply: “Nothing!” He had no way of knowing that, for Joni, being taken care of sexually meant abdicating all responsibility and luxuriating in passive dependency, guilt-free. Their dynamics had become absurd, with her rejection triggering his solicitousness, which in turn triggered more rejection. When Joni invited Ray to be more assertive and self-directed, this was as liberating for him as for her. For the first time, he felt that there was room for a full range of feelings, not just tender ones. Joni was surprised at Ray’s positive response to her own new assertiveness. Even claiming her desire to be passive was an unprecedented act of agency on her part. Like many women, she had internalized the powerful message that bold expressions of female sexuality are whorish, unattractive, selfish, and certainly not part of intimate love. “I was afraid that if I told Ray, ‘Do this, don’t do that, slow down, stay longer, like this, and this, and this,’ it would feel emasculating to him.” By deferring to Ray in all matters sexual, by looking to him for expertise and ignoring her own, Joni had fulfilled the age-old feminine mission of preserving her man’s ego and shoring up his masculinity. Or so she thought. But her assumptions proved wrong—because Ray gets turned on by her appetite, and even by her demands.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  I, however, am made of flesh, sold as a slave under Sin’s authority. I don’t understand what I do. I don’t do what I want, you see, but I do what I hate. So if I do what I don’t want to do, I am agreeing that the law is good. But now it is no longer I that do it; it’s Sin, living within me. I know, you see, that no good thing lives in me, that is, in my human flesh. For I can will the good, but I can’t perform it. For I don’t do the good thing I want to do, but I end up doing the evil thing I don’t want to do. So if I do what I don’t want to do, it’s no longer “I” doing it; it’s Sin, living inside me. (7:14–20) Doubtless, this passage has multiple resonances in the experience of anyone who has ever tried to keep any serious moral code. Doubtless too it is framed in such a way as to resonate with the non-Jewish moralistic tradition. But the main purpose of the passage does not lie in either of those areas. Paul is not attempting to describe either the normal Christian life or the normal pre-Christian life. He is not saying of any particular stage of spiritual experience, “This is what it feels like at the time,” true though that might be. He is highlighting the outworking of the divine purpose in the deeply ambiguous nature of Israel under the Torah. Israel rightly embraced the law as the divinely given covenant charter, but found that all the law could do was to show “Sin” up and actually cause it to swell to its full extent. It may at first glance seem astonishing. But Paul is affirming that this was what God had intended all along when giving the law to a people who, as Israel’s own scriptures testified repeatedly, were themselves rebellious, idolatrous, and sinful. Why? What was the point? When we read this passage in the light of our other investigations into the early Christian understandings of the “end of exile” and the “forgiveness of sins,” we get a clue as to what Paul is saying. Israel’s long “enslavement,” the “continuing exile” of Daniel 9 and many other texts, was not just a long, dreary process of waiting. It was the time in which the strange power called “Sin,” the dark force unleashed by human idolatry, was doing its worst precisely in the people of God. God’s people were captive, enslaved, to Babylon and its successors and to the dark powers that stood behind them.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  So too moral failure needs to be seen for what it is. Nobody imagined that Christians would be perfect, just like that! When a Christian sins, in this or any area of life, what is happening is a radical inconsistency, like a musician playing music from the wrong symphony or a host at a dinner party pouring out vinegar instead of wine. This relates to the problem I highlighted earlier: if we see the human vocation simply as the “works contract,” then we are likely to regard moral failures as merely the breaking of particular rules. They are much more than that. They are a refusal to follow the script for the great new drama in which we have been given our parts to learn. A sinning Christian is like someone walking on stage and reciting the lines that belonged in yesterday’s play. We have been given new lines for the new play, the great drama in which the royal priesthood takes up its new duties, including of course the renewed vision of holiness, but going far beyond into the life of worship and witness where the “rules” are a small, if still vital, element in a much larger vocation. And part of that vocation is precisely to celebrate Jesus as Lord on the territory where other gods have been worshipped. When it comes to Mammon, we need to know how to use money, particularly how to give it away. When it comes to Aphrodite, we need to know how to celebrate and sustain marriage, how to celebrate and sustain celibacy, and how to counsel and comfort those who, in either state, find themselves overwhelmed with conflicting and contrary desires. We are not, after all, defined by whatever longings and aspirations come out of our hearts, despite the remarkable rhetoric of our times. In the area of human well-being, that is the road to radical instability; in the area of theological beliefs, it leads to Gnosticism (where you try to discern the hidden divine spark within yourself and then be true to it). Jesus himself was quite clear, following in the prophetic tradition: the human heart is deceitful, and out of it come all kinds of things that defile people, that is, that make them unable to function as genuine human beings, as the royal priesthood they were called to be. The gospel Jesus announced was not about getting in touch with your deepest feelings or accepting yourself as you really are. It was about taking up your cross and following him. That is tough, and it doesn’t stop being tough when you’ve done it for a year, or a decade, or a lifetime. The victory won through suffering on the cross is implemented, here as elsewhere, through the suffering of Jesus’s followers, most of whom will continue to be troubled from time to time by temptation in relation to money and sex and many other things beside.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Because the plates and pots were always empty. But you never told me: Not once in your life. Huh? Once in your life?” Ashamed, I can only bow my head. “Second, I knew that you didn’t say anything nice behind my back—at least you had that, Oyvin, you knew that behind your back I bragged about you to others. But I knew you were ashamed of me. Ashamed all the way through—in front of me and behind my back. Ashamed of my English, my accent. Of everything I didn’t know. And the things I said wrong. I heard the way you and your friends made fun of me—Julie, Shelly, Jerry. I heard everything. Huh? ” I bow my head lower. “You never missed anything, Momma.” “How could I know anything that’s in your books? If I had a chance, if I could have gone to school, what I could have done with my head, my saychel! In Russia, in the shtetl, I couldn’t go to school—only the boys.” “I know, Momma, I know. I know you would have done as well as me in school if you’d had the chance.” “I got off the boat with my mother and father. I was only twenty. Six days a week I had to work in a sewing factory. Twelve hours a day. Seven in the morning to seven at night, sometimes eight. And two hours earlier, at five in the morning, I had to walk my father to his newspaper stand next to the subway and help him unpack the papers. My brothers never helped. Simon went to accountancy school. Hymie drived a cab—never came home, never sent money. And then I married Daddy and moved to Washington, and until I was old, I worked side by side with him in the store twelve hours a day and cleaned the house and cooked too. And then I had Jean, who never gave me one minute trouble. And then I had you. And you were not easy. And I never stopped working. You saw me! You know! You heard me running up and down the stairs. Am I lying?” “I know, Momma.” “And all those years, as long as they lived, I supported Bubba and Zeyda. They had nothing—the few pennies my father made from the paper stand. Later we opened a candy store for him, but he couldn’t work—the men had to pray. You remember Zeyda?”

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

  But I put on a thoughtful expression and said that I was aware of these problems. My father and my brother had given me similar warnings, I explained, and I was willing to endure whatever was necessary to get a good education. Mr. Howard seemed amused by this answer, and asked me on what experience my father and brother had based their warnings. I told him that they had both gone to prep schools. “Is that right? Where?” “Deerfield and Choate.” “I see.” He looked at me with a different quality of interest than before, as I had hoped he would. Though Mr. Howard was not a snob, I could see he was worried that I might not fit in at his school. “My brother’s at Princeton now,” I added. He asked me about my father. When I told him that my father was an aeronautical engineer, Mr. Howard perked up. It turned out he had been a pilot during the war, and was familiar with a plane my father had helped design—the P-51 Mustang. He hadn’t flown it himself but he knew men who had. This led him to memories of his time in uniform, the pilots he had served with and the nutty things they used to do. “We were just a bunch of kids,” he said. He spoke to me as if I were not a kid myself but someone who could understand him, someone of his world, family even. His hands were folded on the tabletop, his head bent slightly. I leaned forward to hear him better. We were really getting along. And then Huff showed up. Huff had a peculiar voice, high and nasal. I had my back to the door but I heard him come in and settle into the booth behind ours with another boy, whose voice I did not recognize. The two of them were discussing a fight they’d seen the previous weekend. A guy from Concrete had broken a guy from Sedro Woolley’s nose. Mr. Howard stopped talking. He leaned back, blinking a little as if he had dozed off. He did not speak, nor did I. I didn’t want Huff to know I was there. Huff had certain rituals of greeting that I was anxious to avoid, and if he sensed he was embarrassing me he would never let me get away. He would sink my ship but good. So I kept my head down and my mouth shut while Huff and the other boy talked about the fight, and about the girl the two boys had been fighting over. They talked about another girl. Then they talked about eating pussy. Huff took the floor on this subject, and showed no sign of giving it up. He

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

  “Nothing happened, but something did change when I got that ring. I didn’t make the connection at the time, but now I see it pretty clearly. Entering a family shut me down fast. I didn’t tell her about it. In fact, I even tried to deny to myself that anything was different. But pretty soon, I couldn’t get turned on by her. Eventually, every time she left town, or even if she was just out for the night, I was logging on or trolling the bars.” Eight years of transgressions followed, some discovered, some disclosed, some mercifully kept secret. The sequence became repetitive, the resolution of one episode led to the next wave of transgression. Philip’s shame at cheating was always followed by remorse and repentance. He felt terrible about hurting Jackie, and vowed to change. He would make a big show of being an upstanding man and a good husband, and she would forgive him and take him back. Then he would become restless, and a lecherous escalation would always follow. During these years they also had two sons, Jackie finished her first novel, Philip got tenure at a university, and they moved to New York. All these developments helped them put off dealing with the problem. But the latest round was, for Jackie, one too many. To understand Philip’s sexuality, I followed the link to his parents, whose marriage strikingly represented the cultural division between “safe” domesticity and “dangerous” eroticism. While his mother raised five kids, his father engaged in a continuous series of affairs, none of which he made great efforts to hide. Philip’s grandfather, as it turns out, had done the same. “My father, who was actually a very likable man, went about it without much regard for how it made the rest of us feel—least of all my mom,” Philip told me. His mother, whose suffering was severe, was nonetheless a practical woman who never forgot that she had five kids to feed. “She never spoke about it, but we all knew she needed us as much as we needed her.”