Mating in Captivity (14 page)

Can our modern-day relationships ever be strong enough to withstand the siren song of unlimited pleasure? When we are constantly exhorted to replace the old with the new, when sexual images forever portray youth and beauty (since nobody ages but you), when online sex caters to your most idiosyncratic whim, can we reasonably expect to remain contented with the same person for fifty years? The jury is still out. We’re promised immediate fulfillment, and it’s there for the taking by everyone but us. And all this reinforces the profound disconnect between what we’re encouraged to want and what we’re allowed to have. Puritanism and hedonism collide.

Let’s not be fooled into thinking that this saturation reflects enlightened sexual attitudes.
The blatant marketing of sexual images
may be more excessive than progressive, and it has at its roots profit and the freedom of the market rather than freedom of thought. In short, it’s more about opening your wallet than opening your mind. Perhaps this is why our culture’s underlying “city on a hill” morality remains unsoiled by all the graphic images that flicker on our screens: the central idea that sex is dirty remains unchallenged.

Nowhere is our profound discomfort with sex more apparent than in the way we approach teenage sexuality. A sizable group of Americans believe that limiting access to birth control and sex education will steer our teenagers away from the temptations of the flesh. Campaigns like “Not Me, Not Now” encourage abstinence as a means of avoiding teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, and our public health policies reflect the idea that adolescent sexuality is deviant behavior that should be prevented. No
matter how liberated the media may appear, to many Americans sexuality is considered deeply dangerous—a risk factor.

Europeans, in contrast, view adolescent sexuality as a normal developmental stage on the way to healthy adult sexuality. Sex is not a problem; being irresponsible about sex is. Hence the European counter-slogan to “Not Me, Not Now” is “Safe Sex or No Sex.”
It’s also worth noting that in Europe
, teenagers engage in sexual activity an average of two years later than their American counterparts, and the rate at which teenagers give birth is a staggering eight times less. How is it that American society, with such a clear bias against teen sex, produces such a statistical embarrassment?

Taboo-ridden sexuality and excess-driven sexuality converge in a troubling way. Both lead us to want to dissociate psychically from the physical act of sex. A society that sees sex as soiled does not make sex go away. Instead, this kind of anxious atmosphere breeds guilt and shame in its more extreme version, or a generalized discomfort in its more ubiquitous expression. Sex is divorced from emotional and social continuity. What is missing is a sexuality that is integrated, in which pleasure flourishes in a context of relatedness. I’m not talking only about deep love; I’m also talking about basic care and appreciation for another person.

Ratu is a twenty-two-year-old college student at an Ivy League university. She is the daughter of a doctor and a computer programmer, both Indian immigrants, whose years of hard work have paid off in an upmarket lifestyle. Ratu spent twelve years in the highly competitive public schools of New York City, and now hopes to follow her mother into medicine. I met Ratu’s mother at a friend’s going-away party. When I told her the subject of my book, she urged me
to interview her daughter. “What I hear from my daughter? It is just unbelievable. So bleak, the way these children treat each other. You really want to know what is going on? You should talk to her. I cannot get my head around it.”

I knew I had to meet Ratu, and I did. Bright and articulate, she was like a spokesperson for one of those generations with a letter attached to it—X or Y or whatever they’re up to now. She gave me an illuminating description of the sexual scene on campus.

“We don’t really have time to date. So the quick fix is the Friday or Saturday night hookup. You go to a party or you go to a bar; everyone gets drunk, really drunk, and everyone pairs off. It’s over and done with by the time Monday rolls around, after everyone has shared hookup stories over lunch. ‘Hookup’ is sort of a broad term that covers everything from just fooling around to oral sex to full-on sex.

“The ideal college relationship is the ‘friends-with-benefits’ scenario. You have a close male friend who you have a lot of fun with and with whom there is a bit of sexual tension. It starts one night when you’re both drunk and run into each other at a bar or something. You go home together, have sex (great or not so great, it doesn’t matter) and then pretend it didn’t happen. The next week this is repeated with the same person, and so on and so forth, until you feel as though you don’t need the pretense of going out and getting drunk. Instead you just call him when you feel like hooking up or if you’re just bored.”

This is what Ratu and her friends unapologetically refer to as the booty call. There is an emotional downside, even to this stunningly abbreviated form of coupling. “There comes a point,” Ratu says, “when one party gets more involved than the other and it’s time for the uncomfortable talk. Ground rules are established: this is simply a friends-with-benefits scenario, nothing more, nothing less; and if he or she isn’t OK with that, then it’s over. And then you
move on to another friend. We try very hard not to let our emotions get in the way,” says Ratu without a trace of irony.

What’s interesting for me in Ratu’s description is that there’s no arc to this narrative—no ascending plot, no unfolding, no climax, no closure. In fact, there’s no
story
to the story at all. Sex is separated from the story that brought it into being. “There is a deliberate attempt to keep emotions out of sex, and not just for the boys,” Ratu elaborates. “The girls as well as the boys speak of love on one hand and sex on the other, as though they have nothing to do with each other.” She pauses, “Though I suspect that a lot of my girlfriends would rather be in relationships, whether or not they want to admit it.”

Far be it from me to disparage the liberating expression of casual or recreational sex. An erotic encounter can span a range of interpersonal intensities without being disaffiliated. But this particular type of sexual activity seems less an expression of liberation than an acting out of underlying anxiety. To my surprise, Ratu agreed with this idea completely. “The drinking and the sex, of course they go together. They’re both things we know we’re not supposed to be doing.”

As I listened to Ratu, I wondered how this new sociology of sex would manifest itself later in their committed relationships. “What about love and marriage?” I asked her. “Does that ever come up?”

“We see commitment as a life sentence. I know especially for many of my male friends it’s a terrifying thought. They can’t imagine having the same sexual partner for more than a week, let alone ten years.” Then Ratu says more seriously, “For the women it’s different. They can see the appeal. Some really seem to want it, though a lot of us take on the stereotypical male fear and see monogamy as a restriction. Commitment means sacrificing your own goals and ambitions for something that you can’t control and that you could
potentially fail at. At least that’s how we think of it now. Relationships are a loss of independence. When you let another person in, romantically, you make less room for yourself.”

“So relationships are about what you lose, not what you gain?” I ask.

“Exactly.”

“And romance?”

“Hah. There was none in high school. The few couples here at college stand out as almost weird, like they’re married or something.”

I am intrigued by Ratu’s portrayal of relationships. It had always seemed to me that coupling (or at least the dream of romance) enlarges us, and is about what you can discover with someone. At least, I was convinced of that at her age. Ratu and her friends seem to find more security in an MBA than in the power of a sustaining, loving bond. Why do they feel this way?

One reason might be that having embraced the cultural mandate of self-reliance, they are apprehensive about relationships. “If you add love to sex you make yourself extremely vulnerable,” she tells me. “I think that might be the heart of the issue for my whole generation, this lack of trust. We were taught to rely on ourselves, not to depend on others.” It’s an unromantic attitude, but perhaps a wise one, given the precariousness of modern marriage. Gender equality is made manifest in all its irony: both men and women now have the right to be terrified of commitment. Better to engage in risky sex than to succumb to the risks of the heart.

Nothing is more useless than predicting the future for someone who’s not interested in hearing it; but sometimes I can’t resist, so I ventured an insight with Ratu. “You’re making me think that maybe this is why so many of the couples I see have such a hard time having hot sex with the one they love. It’s not just your generation. This entire culture is profoundly uncomfortable with vulnerability and dependency. Good intimate sex requires both.”

“Maybe,” Ratu says. “But who said good sex has to be intimate? What if ‘good’ means throw me against the wall, ravish me, and leave before I wake up in the morning? It’s the spontaneity I love. It’s the excitement that comes with the spontaneity and the multiple partners and the dream dates where nothing goes wrong because after brunch the next day you say good-bye and don’t stick around long enough to see each other’s flaws. I go through periods of being addicted to that excitement, but I also go through periods when I recognize how superficial it all is and I want a deeper connection with someone. I have had boyfriends, and it’s nice, though it does get a little boring. Hopefully somewhere in there I’ll find a healthy balance—if I haven’t already spoiled myself to the point of dissatisfaction with long-term relationships.”

Far from being the last word on free love, all this bravado belies an underlying unease. I wonder to what extent this kind of hit-and-run sex is actually a defense against sexual discomfort, in much the same way that taboo-ridden avoidance is a defense. It’s the flip side of the coin: same anxiety, different response. They get drunk, have sex, then
pretend it never happened
. It’s a way of doing it without being in it. It all just happens; no one has to own it. Perhaps these pretend libertines are not nearly as removed from the Puritan legacy as their Saturday night romps would lead us to believe. Their furtive encounters are not exactly a celebration of the pleasures of the flesh. If there wasn’t at least a shred of moral dissonance in their desire for sex, they might not need to get hammered in order to have it. If they were more comfortable with sex, they would actually place themselves in the heart of it and would want to remember it.

For Ratu, the excitement born of spontaneity is ensured as long as she changes partners frequently enough. But what will happen to her when she’s left with only one? I may never meet Ratu again, but many of the people who come to see me remind me of her. They have found that their history of sexual nomadism is no help in
meeting the challenge of sustaining sexual vitality with one person over time. They view sex before marriage and sex after marriage as entirely different realities. Single sex isn’t supposed to prepare you for committed sex. If anything, it’s seen as the last hurrah before a lifetime of sexual decline.

A healthy sense of erotic entitlement is built on a relaxed, generous, and unencumbered attitude toward the pleasures of the body—something our puritan culture continues to grapple with. I witness the fallout of this ambivalence in my practice every day. Much of my work with couples involves addressing the shame and anxiety that surround people’s sexuality, causing them to want to withdraw from their lovers for fear of being judged and rejected. I give permission, reduce anxiety, normalize fantasies and desires, and challenge the distortions of poor body image. Together we excavate the secrets and the silence that accompanied their sexual upbringing, and confront the cultural and familial messages that block erotic expression. Therapy is a process of expanding sexuality by shedding inhibitions, encouraging physicality, and negotiating boundaries. Couples learn to dance step by step, and it takes as long as it takes.

I met Maria when she was at the tail end of a heartbreak. She’d just spent two years on the west coast with a man she thought she was going to marry, only to come home a disillusioned wreck. Her friends decided it was time for her to meet a nice man, a mensch. Enough of these himbos (for those of you unfamiliar with this new term, himbos are male bimbos sought by successful women). The friends organized a dinner party with a mission: a tasteful cover-up for a first date. It worked.

For Maria, dating Nico was a reeducation in the art of love, a
slow unfolding that was remarkably worry-free. She didn’t fall in love; she grew to love him. But a year after meeting him, she’s in my office, asking, “How important is sex, anyway? I keep going back and forth. I know you can’t build a life on passion. I’ve tried that. My grandma used to say, ‘What are you going to live on, love? Hah! You’ve got a lot to learn.’ My mother’s no better. Her line is, ‘Sweetheart, passion is doomed. Take my word for it, what you need is to find someone you can live with. Someone who’s like you, who shares your values. You know, money doesn’t hurt, either.’ I love Nico. I’ve never felt so secure, so trusting. And after years of being out there dating more than my share of jerks, I’m finally free to think about other things in my life. But I just don’t know. I don’t think we click sexually. It’s an issue. Or is it? Everyone says that the sex fades anyway, no matter how steamy it is in the beginning, so how important is it, really?”

“You tell me,” I prompt her.

“You know what I tell myself? ‘Girl, you had your fun. It’s time to grow up. He’s a great guy. Get over yourself.’”

Three years after Maria asked me the question, “How important is sex, anyway?” she’s back again. Evidently, she hasn’t yet found her answer. In the beginning she was so taken up by the thrill of security that she was able to postpone dealing with her lack of sexual responsiveness to Nico. She held out some hope that the problem would take care of itself, that one day the block would lift and everything would fall into place. Nico, for his part, is a patient man. He wasn’t going to push, even though he is clearly less than jolly about their anemic sex life. Not pushing the issue is his way of forestalling rejection. In our sessions Maria had always displayed an approach-avoidance attitude to the topic of sex. On the few occasions that she brought it up directly, it was always at the end of the hour, when there was no time left for discussion. One week I decided to keep my foot on the gas and rev up the conversation.