Sexual desire, we talk about it frequently, well especially when it is absent. This is also, according to Sébastien Landry, sexologist and author of “Sexual desire” (ed. In Press), the number one reason for consultations, regardless of gender. Suffice to say that this famous sexual desire gives us a hard time, and that in case of inhibition, it worries us. Why ? Because today, we must succeed in our relationship at all costs and that this success requires a good and big sexual activity. In other words and from a different angle, we say to ourselves that if the desire plummets, and so does the couple.
However, we are wrong, at least in part. Because the desire and the couple, if they get along well and like to work together, are not essential to each other. We can be in a relationship and no longer desire (that, we understood) and desire without being in relation. And this sentence, precisely, teaches us a lot about the expression of desire within the love scheme. So let’s take stock of all these notions, on the relationship between couple and desire, in order to better understand what is playing out in our beds, in our bodies and especially in our heads.
Desire prefers novelty to security
Mathilde, 36, has been in a relationship for twelve years. She and her partner no longer make love “so much”: “If I had to put a figure on it, I would say that we share one intercourse per month, and again”, says the young woman, who claims that the longevity of the relationship has something to do with it. She is not entirely wrong: “At the start of a relationship, discovery and novelty feed excitement, and since time goes by, discovery and novelty fade away (we know each other now), the excitement has nothing more to put under. the tooth”, develops the sex therapist. But is it inevitable? Do we necessarily, one day, have to get used to the idea that time destroys desire and that the couple configuration completes excitement? It would be a shame to have to deprive yourself of one or the other. Yet that’s how Sophia, 37, sees it: “I know that my relationship is acquired, and that this acquisition goes against my desire, as if sex allowed the relationship to be born, but that once the relationship was in place, sex had no more role to play “, she tells us.
This distinction between couple and desire, between acquired and active sexuality, is at the origin of our many questions. It is also approached by the psychotherapist Esther Perel. In a TED video *, she asks a simple question: how to desire what we already have? “I think that at the heart of what makes desire last in a stable relationship lies in the reconciliation of two basic needs: our need for security, for predictability, and our need for adventure, risk, surprise”, she expresses on stage. We are therefore tempted to think that the couple is incompatible with desire, that we cannot on the one hand enjoy a loving cocoon (the couple) and on the other make room for the unforeseen (including sexual feeds). This is why we find ourselves, after several years, to think that we must choose between “desire and couple”. So let’s be clear: nobody asks us to choose, first because the love bond (also) forms the couple, and the couple can live without desire and without sexuality. But if we do not have to choose, it is also because we can connect these two notions and nothing is lost.
Admiration and imagination: the two keys to a desire capable of cohabiting with the couple
Faced with a sexual desire at half mast, the sexologist Sébastien Landry wants to be reassuring: “Sexual desire does not necessarily fade over time, but it changes”. Seen like that, things are already better. But how does it change? He changes to go where? The expert specifies that “admiration can replace novelty”. It is when we admire our partner that the desire is taken, because the admiration continues to arouse in us a semblance of novelty, precisely, but above all inaccessibility, which is in line with Esthel Perel’s words.
But this novelty which is dear to us is not played out only in the feeling of admiration. Suffice to say that the one who does not admire her partner, or not enough, could quickly find herself stuck in front of a desire impossible to unlock. The novelty is also lodged in the imagination. Is it imagining that our relationship is brand new, unvested, full of surprises at the next corner of the couch? We can, but it is not necessarily easy. Always being that there is of that: “If, for example, we feel desire for a stranger, a person that we meet in the street, it is because we imagine something new”, emphasizes the sex therapist. At the same time, it is quite true, one can only imagine. Anaïs, 33, remarks: “I feel desire for a colleague but more for my husband. It comforts me because it means that I still want to make love, but hey, looks like i don’t wanna have sex with the right person“, she confides.
What if, to want to make love with “the right person”, you then had to stimulate your imagination and see your partner as a stranger? For that, the track would be to no longer “freeze” it in a state, not to repeat to us that “this evening, it will come home at six o’clock and turn on the TV”. He may come home at six o’clock and turn on the TV, but as long as we are sure, we will act on that certainty, we will block our partner in this projection. He, thus, will not dare to move a millimeter (not even change the channel). Granting the other the right to be “otherwise” is to encourage him – nonverbally – to be otherwise. And therefore new.
Review your notion of desire
What if it was enough for us to redefine the desire for the desire and the couple to get along well? What if looking at desire from a different angle allowed us, frankly, to no longer see the absence of desire as a drama? If, first, we stopped believing that desire is essential to the health of the couple, we would release the pressure since we would give up a belief that was heavy to bear.
But we can also, to go further, link amorous desire and sexual desire, understand that love, when it sets in, does not prevent desire, and that desire, when it is there or is not there, do not orient our feelings. To do this, let’s recreate a “larger” desire, a desire that not only reflects a desire to make love but rather a desire to be with the other, to share tenderness. This is what Danaé, 40, tries to think: “I tell myself that love is a form of desire, that if I love my partner, I still want him, despite my sexual desire in small form”, she reveals. Should we play with words? Not necessarily. It would take, let’s say, get out of sexuality as we perceive it : “We think that there is a good time to make love, but also perfect places, ideal practices. These are brakes. However, to hold back less, let’s go back to the basis of sexuality, sexuality as a pleasure to be together “, advises the sex therapist.
Here is, see desire as a desire to connect with each other, and “lean” on our feelings, because if feelings are not necessarily the motor of desire (and vice versa) they are quick to help us. They are only the enemy of desire when they have been around for a long time. Rather, they are a part of our desire. So yes to declarations of love and communication, because if I no longer want you but love you, and I say it, worries can rebound and fly away, and then desire can take its place again. in the couple.
Read also:
- Can sexting revive desire?
- What if writing erotic news could boost desire? C
- How to talk about his fantasies?
- 9 useful tips for living sex right now
- Mirror sexuality: the way we caress the other reflects our expectations (in this matter)
