Big issues, big answers

Dear Cary,

Here's one that I fear will apply to a lot of your readers, so why not kill many birds with a single stone: What do you do when the person you've been with for 10 years, and love like your own blood, inspires absolutely no sexual desire in you? Is it shallow to want that passion, and should one therefore tough it out? Or is denying the physical self a sure path to ruin at some point -- meaning, of course, that a breakup is the only solution? I know there's no answer to this question, really, but a perspective would be much appreciated. There's a lot of love, but no passion; it's almost like being siblings, and I don't know if that's enough.

Brother Man

Dear Brother Man,

Get yourself a cup of coffee, America, and settle back. This is going to be a long one.

My general perspective is that all the elements of a relationship coexist and compete along a continuum in a fluid and shifting way. Sex, love, friendship, kinship, dependence, attraction, all these attachments and desires graze in the relationship like animals in an ecosystem; like economic actors in a marketplace, they build places for themselves, they trade and produce. As well, they're buffeted by external forces like the need for money, housing, cleanliness, an automobile, social status, belonging. They're buffeted by hunger, fear of death, physical health, all these things. It's really a big soup!

Now, maybe the sex in your relationship is truly gone. That happens. That's why we have divorce. Sometimes the sex dies and nothing can revive it. But more often, the sex in a relationship is simply competing for nourishment against all the other voracious actors in the relationship economy. I think the only way to find out is to try to revive it. If, after numerous resuscitation attempts, it's still lying there unmoving, pale, cold to the touch, then it's dead. In that case you, my unfortunate friend, are going to wish you were Italian. But most likely, what you're dealing with is the gradual displacement of sex in the hierarchy of mutual needs and relationship events.

There are a lot of ways to look at it, but let's just take this one: Why not look at it in terms of cost-benefit? Why not ask, What would it cost to improve your sex life, and how great would the benefit be? To start with, what would it cost to first simply elevate sex in importance in your relationship so you could get your significant other onboard? Say you wanted to make sex the most important thing in your relationship? Could you lobby your significant other to get her onboard for that? What would that take? That alone might take you to the brink of divorce! Think of all the worms in the can! You mean sex is not good now? You don't love me? Why don't you love me? Are you having an affair? I've seen the way you look at my sister!

But let's back up even from that point: What would be the ideal sex life? Every day? Twice a day? Would three times a week do it for you? What, exactly, are you looking for? If you wanted to make sex the most important thing in the relationship, you might discover that even an incremental change would be quite costly in terms of effort, mutual understanding, counseling, etc. It's not like you couldn't do it, but it might be easier and less expensive to get a hooker.

But suppose you could make your life a sex-centered life, so that sex becomes the one thing you're really good at, so it's the one thing you know you've got going. Suppose you could do it. Why don't you?

I think the reason more people don't do this becomes clear if you look at your relationship as an economic model. Then you see the enormous range of competing desires and competing entertainments made possible by our society's remarkable productive capacity and our vaunted talent for creating amusement and diversion. Those entertainments and diversions may themselves emerge out of our fear of sex and our own bodies, and our constant desire to escape the spiritual vacuity of capitalism, but be that as it may, they're competing for your desires, your allegiance, your dollar and your time. True, many rather expensive entertainments, such as movies, rock concerts, the opera, professional sports, title fights on pay-per-view, violin lessons, etc., still do not have the physiological payoff of sex. But neither do they carry its risk. Your TV may not enlighten you, but it will not reject you either! Your food may not cause orgasm, but it will be dependably rewarding.

Sex, on the other hand, is the garden of delights that lies beyond the jungle of deepest fears. You have to go there if you want it. It's not going to come to you. But you don't always really want to go there, do you? Especially, in the marriage household, when you don't know who you'll find there. You might find yourself! You might find your sister! (You mentioned her first, not me!)

It's not like there's something wrong with you because you've allowed certain competing entertainments to tap some of your resources. You might even say that as a relationship grows it becomes more sophisticated, and while sex is still a great thing to do, our appetites become variegated and rarefied: We suddenly find it necessary to have a nice briefcase! What is that about? Suddenly we have to hear some Mozart, or Cole Porter, or Coleman Hawkins, right now! We need, absolutely need, to see the Gerhard Richter exhibit at the MOMA. What I'm saying is that the wonderful civilizing and stabilizing effect of a long-term relationship is that once the basic needs are met, all kinds of more refined appetites can afford to assert themselves. You create emotional security for yourself and next thing you know you're learning French! Why? Because we have infinite capacities as humans, and sex is just one of the magic buttons you can push. I mean, sure, if you're poor you can always fuck. It's free to fuck your wife, in pure dollars -- except of course for the contraceptive costs, and then, if no contraceptives, the potentially enormous costs of raising kids. It's basically a good free entertainment. And maybe if you lost your job, your friends, your car, your TV, your kitchen, your dogs, your guitar, your paints, your violin, and had no friends and it was just you and her, maybe you would fuck a lot more. But does that make sense?

All I'm saying is if the sex isn't great in your relationship you can change that but there's a cost. How much would you pay? A hundred dollars? Two hundred and fifty dollars? Of course, with prostitutes you're paying for certain other costs -- the cost of concealment, the cost of illegality. What if you tried to pay your wife? Would she take it? Or would that be some kind of sin? Would she be insulted? Why? Because prostitutes are bad women? Because we don't publicly venerate their skills, although they make more per hour than many lawyers?

Are you trying to have kids? Why are you fucking? That's the other question. For a guy, fucking is about attainment. Once you've attained, where's the attaining? This boner is for attainment? Who's available to attain? We want to attain something! Maybe if our wives made it scarcer, we'd fight harder to get it. (Maybe not. Don't want to find out.) Maybe if there was a threat from competition. See, I think a lot of us guys when we settle down we want security; we want someone we can trust, we go for a sure thing. But then there's no competition, so we lose our edge, our nasty possessiveness, our cunning and guile, our good grooming, our weight control: Because we've got it! But what have we got? Maybe we haven't got the erotic thing we thought we were getting because we were kidding ourselves about the relationship between eroticism and security. Can they mix? What we really wanted, maybe, was security, safety, a harbor in the storm of life, and the way to acquire that was sex! Maybe sex was only a means to an end, only we can't admit it, or we don't want to!

The fact is, when you get right down to it, in our culture, good sex between men and women in committed relationships is not that important, is it? If it were, wouldn't we have more traditional institutional support for good sex? Wouldn't the president be urging us to have more sex? Wouldn't we have sex church on Sunday? Wouldn't we have sex synagogue and sex mosque and sex temple? We're not a sexy society. We're a theocracy. On one hand, we've got church. On the other hand, all we've got is Esalen and Good Vibrations.

Couldn't we elect a president who could go out on a limb and just say, "America, we're not screwing enough! More screwing!" Maybe that's what President Clinton was trying to tell us! Screw more big-haired bimbos! That's what we need! Under the desk, you! What is wrong with us? I'll tell you what's wrong with us, we're still a Protestant, Calvinist, workaholic, techno-warrior culture and sex is fine for making babies but pleasure doesn't feed the bulldog. And every week the letters pour in: I'm in a great relationship all except the sex.

I get so many letters about the sex not being good in long-term relationships that I'm sort of fed up. Why don't we just all stay in bed this Sunday and screw! We work too hard the rest of the week. On Saturday you rest, you recuperate, you recoup your vital juices. On Sunday you go at it like dogs. Why not? America, I challenge you to screw!

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