seven
desire ACTUALLY, IT’S NOT A DRIVE
It’s a basic fact of their relationship that Olivia wants sex more often than Patrick does, so she ends up initiating most of the time. But Olivia’s experience of being the target of Patrick’s placebo-powered rampant lust the previous night had given her a powerful insight: It had felt good to be open to sex, without feeling driven to have sex. It had felt good to allow sexual desire to pull her gradually and gently toward sex, rather than feeling like it was pushing her.
So as the next step in their experiment, they tried flipping their usual dynamic on its head. They set a “date night” and then didn’t do anything to prepare; they just showed up that night in their usual states of mind—Olivia ready to go, Patrick not disinterested, but not actively interested either.
And they made Olivia follow her partner’s lead, while Patrick started to explore what kinds of things he could do to shift himself into active interest. They spent a lot of time “preheating the oven”: kissing and talking and massaging—and, surprisingly, a little adventure, moving from the bedroom to the kitchen to feed each other. When Patrick was in charge with full permission to do whatever occurred to him, they tried new things and played together. They learned a lot about what context worked for Patrick, because he had to create that context, had to ask for what felt right.
They learned a surprising thing about Olivia, too: When she stayed still enough to move at Patrick’s pace rather than her own naturally faster pace, the gradual buildup and the sustained arousal and the necessity of holding herself back created a context that wasn’t just as good as the context that worked for her. It was unbelievably better.
Olivia emailed me: “One of the rules we set was I had to ask for permission before I had an orgasm. And he did not always say yes when I asked. Um, we’ll be doing that again.”
In other words: Creating a great sex-positive context for the lower-desire partner resulted in a context that was mind-blowingly, almost painfully erotic for the higher-desire partner.
This chapter is about why and how that works.
Imagine a world where everyone has desert plants in their gardens— aloe plants and dragon trees and fiddlenecks and yuccas—and everyone knows how to tend them: lots of sun, very little water.
And imagine that you happen to have a tomato plant in your garden.
Everybody “knows,” in this desert world, that plants need very little water, so you water your tomato plant sparingly . . . and it slowly dies. You wonder, “Maybe I’m watering it too often? Maybe there’s not enough sun?”
And you continue to water and watch, and you wonder, “Why is it dying?
I’m doing what I’m supposed to do!”
A tiny shift in knowledge—the bare fact that tomato plants are better adapted to a subtropical climate than to a desert, so they thrive on more water—can change how you tend your garden . . . which can bring your tomato plant back to life.
Now, if someone comes along and offers this bare fact, there still will be those who say, “Plants don’t need lots of water, that’s part of what it means to be a healthy plant!” Others will say, “Tomato plants are crazy—broken! —to need all that water!” Some will search for a remedy for the tomato plant, to make it more like an aloe. And there will be tomato gardeners who simply can’t let go of the idea that they’re supposed to be able to produce abundant fruit on almost no water at all, and they will do anything to have a tomato plant that thrives in the desert.
But you try it. You give your tomato plant more water.
And you go from “Why is it dying?” to “Wow!” as you’re rewarded with abundant fruit and lush, fragrant greens. All because of a tiny shift in knowledge.
This chapter is about one such tiny shift in knowledge, which can move your relationship with your sexual wellbeing from “Why is it dying?” to 1“Wow!” And it’s this: responsive desire.
Responsive, in contrast to spontaneous desire.
The standard narrative of sexual desire is that it just appears—you’re sitting at lunch or walking down the street, maybe you see a sexy person or think a sexy thought, and pow! you’re saying to yourself, “I would like