Behind Closed Doors: Sex Is a State of Mind

"Sex is not a thing you do. It's a place you go." 

One of the first punchlines in Esther Perel's TED Talk "The Secret to Desire in a Long-Term Relationship" is a powerful one. The dichotomy between desire and love is pervasively perplexing, a paradox explored in rom coms as often as it is in the pages of Cosmo, Men's Health, and most of the books in the self-help aisle of Barnes and Noble. Headlines like "Keep the Spark Alive in Your Marriage!" and "How to Stay Hot For Each Other!" paint the long, winding road of monogamy as drudgerous and dull, filled with few detours from the routine of changing diapers and paying the mortgage and bingeing on Thai food in front our TVs. It's hard not to feel universally cynical about sex - we are like little kids with new toys; so excited to open our presents on Christmas only to abandon them months later when we are thoroughly satiated by their bells and whistles. 

As a child of divorce, I've been particularly aware of this issue, but hopeful in equal parts - perhaps my early awareness of relationship woes could help me build something better in the future, a partnership that would include hot sex and a loving best friend to boot. As with many of life's conundrums, we often are able to find solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems by approaching them from new perspectives. We cannot circumvent the brain's need for novelty - this is hardwired from birth, it's true. We cannot get around our dependence on anticipation, mystery, and tension - it is in this charged space of not having and not knowing that we find a great deal of desire. Changing these things is not possible, but throwing in the towel shouldn't be either. I once learned a quote that changed my life: "'It is what it is' is the mantra of mediocrity.'"  

Esther is a cross-cultural psychologist who specializes in relationships - and by default, sex as well. No group hacks the human brain quite like psychologists do, and Esther herself might be the master of approaching relationships with a strategy that's just as scientific as it is intuitive. This particular TED Talk is not an instruction manual; it is not a list of steps that will reinvigorate your sex life with your beloved. Instead, it's a reintroduction to the concept of novelty entirely: What it is, how we experience it, where we find it, and how it impacts desire. It's also a call to self-exploration, for we often limit our erotic selves by failing to recognize how complex and multifaceted we are as individuals.

To begin problem-solving, we must start with the universal Step 1: Throw out everything you know. To approach your life with a fresh perspective, you must start with a blank slate. 

Let me illustrate what I mean:

I've found committed sex to be much more inherently erotic than casual sex, which didn't initially make much sense in the context of what we've come to learn about our sexual nature. Instead of the eroticism dwindling with the intimacy like I expected, it's growing every day, and oddly, so am I. At first I found this thoroughly confusing - during my casual, one-off-sex days of yore, my definition for novelty was newness. New men, new bodies, new surprises. To wonder what a person would be like in bed and to discover them for the first time was my only framework for the cycle of desire and fulfillment. In short, my sense of desire was defined explicitly by things outside myself.

Casual sex is certainly fun (and I imagine it always will be) but it's a surface-level experience. Casual sex is cotton candy: Light, airy, immediately satisfying but quickly consumed. It's Discovery Lite: spontaneous, carefree, and one dimensional. The biggest problem with perspective is that you never really know how limiting your vantage point may be until you abandon it. 

"But novelty isn't about new positions," Esther says during the talk. "It isn't a repertoire of techniques. Novelty is: What parts of you do you bring out? What parts of you are just being seen?" 

Perhaps the most damaging thing we can do in our erotic lives is fail to understand how adaptable the way we're wired truly is. Sex with the same person repeatedly has an overlooked perk that can change the way we think about copulating as a whole: It allows us to dive deeper into the human psyche, go further into all those unexplored layers of who we are than we likely ever have before. This kind of sex is richer, dirtier, more subversive, more illuminating, and more engrossing than it's casual counterpart. It's not easy work; many of us avoid the mystery of what's below because we are afraid or ashamed of what we will find there. Some of us simply don't understand that there's uncharted territory within our own minds to be explored. 

"So where do you go in sex?" Esther asks. "What parts of you do you connect to? What do you seek to express there? Is it a place for transcendence and spiritual union? Is it a place for naughtiness and is it a place to be safely aggressive? Is it a place where you can finally surrender and not have to take responsibility for everything? Is it a place where you can express your infantile wishes? What comes out there?"

To unveil these parts of ourselves to someone we love is a daunting task often obscured by bashfulness or a more pervasive fear of loss. The rewards of working to overcome those obstacles are worthwhile beyond belief, though. It's how we find the state of mind that Esther describes, a place where we can rescind responsibility, a place to seek, acknowledge, and express the aggression, dominance, submission, and many other qualities we all have but have learned to mute or bury, particularly in the presence of people we love. It would seem that creating that space in your relationship separate from the selflessness and devotion of love is how we can forge a continuously erotic bond. 

If casual sex is cotton candy, then committed sex is dark chocolate, rich like red wine and filled with a complex layering of distinct flavors that make each bite different from the last. If casual sex relies on the novelty of the external, then relationship sex calls for us to seek the kind of mystery and newness we find inside ourselves. Esther covers several other ways to reconcile desire and love within a relationship in her TED Talk, all of which deserve your attention, but it's this concept of sex as a state of mind that has stuck with me since I first listened to her speech. Perhaps the most powerful part to me was a well-timed quote from Proust: 

“Mystery is not about traveling to new places, but about looking with new eyes.”