Sometimes it’s easier not to go there, go to the place of new experience, the beginnings of a new relationship, love or flirtatious friendship. It can be a small danger zone for tender hearts that have been disappointed before. A place where previous upsets and unfulfilled expectations jump on for the ride, scanning the horizon for slights even before a first kiss. Spoiling our ability to meet someone or something anew, we’re before ourselves, getting in our own way, killing potential pleasure and kindness before we begin.
These new people are little triggers, not time-bombs. We don’t know them, they don’t know us, it’s not personal, at least not yet. But they already have the power to activate something in us that longs for fulfilled connection and desire.
I’m longing to hold hands in an art gallery, have a dirty weekend in Rome and be in the sultry heat of Asia. I don’t have a lover, art galleries are closed, the white linen sheets will have to wait, the borders are closed to Sri Lanka. Though I remain fearlessly optimistic in the power of setting intentions and open to offers. Of course, unfulfilled longing abounds, it’s natural and there’s no reason to censor this in ourselves. Unfulfilled longing creates an absence in us, in our hearts, a yearning for something other than we’re experiencing, it’s human.
In The Erotic Mind, Jack Morin outlines Longing and Anticipation as the first of the four cornerstones of arousal. The others being ‘overcoming ambivalence’, ‘breaking taboos’ and ‘the search for power’. Longing and desire are key to any erotic relationship, without it we have no healthy tension, no sexy reason to stay. When longing and desire are involved and fulfilled, relationships are connecting, satisfying; intimacy goes a long way in soothing much else, of keeping connected, of being in the body, of the healing power of orgasm. Adding to our complicity, a sense of our partner being with us, even when we’re alone. In good relationships that absence has expression, a trust in knowing that we’ll we meet again. Our longing and desire are welcome, a glue that holds us together, an erotic charge that allows truth, creativity, expansion and freedom.
If you’ve ever had an unhealthy erotic relationship, you’ll know the opposite. You know the affairs based on passion and fresh air, the sex when it happens is intense, yet between times so is the sense of loss and longing. The tension of waiting for the next text, the next meeting, the next plan, the next connection. Causing off the scale anxiety, our nervous systems hypervigilant, triggering old memories, bringing up all ‘our stuff’, going off into romantic dreaming or illusions of dread. In unhealthy erotic relationships, unmet longing and desire add both frisson and melancholy to our lives; the sense of wanting, loss or unfulfillment hanging heavily on us. Unmet anticipation, taking up space in our heads; frustration occupying the penthouse of our minds, trampling mud into the white fluffy rugs of clear thinking. All the while hoping for transformation that can’t happen when we’re locked into an unconscious loop of wanting what we can’t have.
Sex therapist Esther Perel talks about this place of ‘secure ambivalence’ which is a familiar easy place for an avoidant person and emotional torture for the anxious. So it can be easier to shut down, pretend it doesn’t matter, be scared of being needy or possessive. And so we shut out overtures of attraction as we make assumptions that are unfounded, building unnecessary walls around our hearts. Why do this to ourselves? And how do we stop? In new beginnings of relationships, where is a safe place for unbounded love that longs for expression and connection?
What does it take to know our worth, to hold our boundaries, to create situations and sex that work for us? That’s the long cut – to have made enough mistakes, to understand ourselves well enough to communicate clearly, to shoo away the time-wasters and invite in connections that have meaning for us. Connections that allow us to show enough honesty, vulnerability and the strength to believe we can guide our sensual lives in a way that serves us. Unfulfilled longing doesn’t come with a particular relationship label. If you want to hang out with the polyamorously inclined it takes reserves of heart stamina, opening up to your lover only to be aware they’ll undoubtedly have to leave. If you’re mostly monogamous, how do you keep desire alive in a long-term relationship, to claim variety and depth within, rather than look anew outside?
What can we create that makes us feel good with what we have? In this special time, when much of life can feel on hold or online, it’s becoming even more important to create encounters and meetings that leave us closer, fulfilled rather than empty, after the call is complete. Can we share what our heart, mind and body are saying? Admitting we want to be held and seen, rather than feel we have to sparkle or seduce, can be liberating. How do we have the courage to express our fears and tendernesses without the expectation that someone is willing or able to fulfil the depth of our longing but can simply recognise and hold it without needing to bolt, make small talk or change the subject to the weather or the C-word?
I like the idea of creating meetings that give us a steady aliveness, the metaphor of nurturing sustained arousal rather than a quick peak orgasm. Don’t get me wrong, a desirous quickie has its place, but if we’re feeling vulnerable, why not admit we’re longing for closeness instead of banal sexting. It might feel needy but it might be more honest.
Managing expectations and boundaries kindly, especially our own seems vital. So rather than closing things down with a view that nothing can happen anyway, how can make wonderful use of the online connection, to use the time we do have to open up in a safe way, to play and get to know one other? Can we set intentions for authenticity and joy, to meet each other fully in the time together with presence and interest? If the mood shifts to the erotic, to find the online equivalent of the afterglow stillness and wonder; to close them with consideration. So we can each go softly into our separate lives or nights, grateful for our connection: anticipation and longing fulfilled, trust establishing, happy to return to secure solitude.