Today, the return of my occasional advice column. If you’re new here and wondering why anyone would ask for my advice: I’m a journalist, essayist, and the author of the memoir Want Me: A Sex Writer’s Journey into the Heart of Desire. (A bit more about me here.) Have a question? Hit reply or click here to ask anonymously. I’ll tackle questions around any of the topics I circle around in this newsletter: sex, gender, feminism, pop culture, motherhood, desire, writing, The Rock—you name it. I’m a 35yo female in a long term relationship/marriage with a man. I recently read your book and saw so much of my own challenges around sex and sexuality in your experience, except where you ended up embodying the porn star to receive validation, I did the opposite—became super passive, perhaps a sex doll to your porn star. Fast forward to years of marriage and two kids, a reckoning of not seeking external validation, especially through sex. The issue is I have no interest in partnered sex anymore. Any advice on exploring my sexual identity and desires (for basically the first time) without triggering old patterns? It sounds like you’re back to the drawing board. You had sex a certain way for most of your life, and you’re not interested in having that kind of sex anymore. Simple enough: no more of that. But the “issue,” as you put it, is that after swearing off the erotic charge of validation—the feeling of being wanted and desired—you’ve completely lost interest in partnered sex. I wonder: is this an issue for you, for your husband, or both? I’m reminded of a line from Miranda July’s All Fours about how the protagonist could hear her husband Harris’s dick “whistling impatiently like a tea kettle, at higher and higher pitches until I finally couldn't take it and so I initiated.” Clearly, July’s book comes at a time when conversation has exploded around the dissatisfactions of heteronormative marriage and motherhood. We’ve seen an influx of bestselling divorce memoirs, an unparalleled amount of attention paid to non-monogamy, and high-profile discussions challenging conventional values around sex in marriage. As I’ve written before, “women are hungry for narratives that challenge the patriarchal status quo around marriage, motherhood, and sex.” You spent your pre-marriage days feeling like “a sex doll,” in your own words. Then, within your marriage, you had a “reckoning.” Here are a few definitions of that word: “the settlement of accounts, as between two companies,” “a statement of an amount due,” “an accounting, as for things received or done.” Woof. I mean, “a statement of an amount due” speaks to so much of what we’re seeing in the culture right now, right? The easiest part of that reckoning is to say that there is an overdue balance. It’s often harder to say exactly how you want to settle up. And, to extend the metaphor to its breaking point, are you acting as a lone debt collector or is your partner equally interested in this reckoning? In a sense, you’ve experienced a collapse of sexual meaning. Sex was being desired; it was passive; it was being acted upon. It had a circularity: your wanting was being wanted. What does it mean to desire outwardly, to be a sexual actor? What even is sex anymore? You might try reflecting on the seed of desire that you already have: the want to want, which is a want. What grows from that seed might not be an interest in partnered sex but an insight into the undercurrent of your wanting. You specifically say you don’t have an interest in partnered sex, which suggests to me that you might have an interest in un-partnered sex. If that’s the case, that is where you start—and maybe it’s where you stay. (A disinterest in partnered sex within marriage can speak to so many different things, from the fundamental nature of one’s sexuality to the anti-eroticism of domesticity to unmet needs within a relationship.) You know all the usual tools of exploration, I’m sure: toys, books, audio erotica, porn—and, most of all, your own mind. On all those fronts, I would caution that in escaping the disappointments and punishments of heteronormative sexual scripts, it’s possible to fall into equally suffocating constraints. A flight from “old patterns” can become punitive and pathologizing when you disallow yourself the real pleasures of validation. Some of those pleasures are inextricably tied up in the patriarchal culture that made sex so unsatisfying for you. But this might be a throwing-out-the-baby-with-the-bath-water situation. I opened my memoir with a quote from July, actually:
That quote came from a New Yorker interview that she did in 2017 after publishing her short story “The Metal Bowl,” which was in many ways a precursor to All Fours. The story is about a protagonist who appeared in a porn film when she was younger but has never told her husband, despite the fact that it’s become central to her desire and arousal. She can’t orgasm unless she imagines people watching the film, which is to say: watching and wanting her. Can you love your monstrous creature, even just a little? Can you appreciate that she survived and how she found a way to live? Can you take good care of her? Instead of banishing the monster, invite her in. Have a little chat. Love her up. Tuck her into bed. This newsletter relies on paid subscribers. Will you upgrade for just $5 a month to support my work? I’d be grateful. A forward, restack, and “like” is also much appreciated. <3
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četvrtak, 6. lipnja 2024.
Desire without validation
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