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SURVIVING THE PANDEMIC: “Don’t pick up the rope.”
By
Published: Apr 28, 2020
Category:
Pandemic: Dispatches and Essentials
As I was thinking about the apparent strain some/many couples are having with mutual 24/7 presence, I recalled a passage in Married Sex, my 2015 novel, that resonated with a lot of readers. It’s a conversation between law partners. V is 75, the queen of New York divorce lawyers; she’s seen it all. David is 45. He and his wife Blair have made a terrible mistake. She’s moved out, blaming him. Now it seems she may return to the marriage. V has advice:
“Don’t pick up the rope.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“If Blair brings it up, you can’t respond with a smart remark. You can’t disagree with her about it. You cannot have thirty seconds of dialogue about this. If you must, make a brief apology, but say nothing more. It’s this simple: Don’t… pick… up… the… rope. Because there is always someone at the other end. And once you have the rope in your hand, you’re in a tug-of-war. And you’ll lose. Even if you win, you’ll lose.”
“Very difficult.”
“All but impossible,” V said. “But nothing else works.”
“Don’t pick up the rope” — that line I overheard in a bookstore in Aspen decades ago was going to be grist for a short piece about blowing off 80% of what comes my way each day now. Like: state governors declaring restaurants open for business so restaurant owners can’t collect insurance and workers can’t collect unemployment — outrageous and cruel, and exactly what you’d expect from a “recovery” that applies to corporations and grinds everyone else into the dirt. I can’t think of one damn thing I can do to stop it. So: note it, file it, let it go.
My eye moved down the page, and I was stopped by another line: “Making love with your wife is like striking out the pitcher.” (For readers who have avoided knowing the least thing about baseball, major league pitchers are not paid for their prowess in batting. As a rule, their bats never make contact with the ball.) And I thought: for many locked-down couples, that may be how sex is now: necessary, but disappointing. Desperation sex.
No survey has been taken by this writer. No personal revelations follow. But I saw this excellent New York Times video with Esther Perel. And that took me back to my pieces about two of her books — Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence and The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity — and a long-ago interview that became the foundation of our friendship. It feels applicable still, so…
JK: Bill Maher says that when you’re married, you need a cue to have sex.
EP: There is no sex without a cue. People who date have their cues at home, before they meet. You think about where to go, what to eat, what to do and say. Sometimes the cue is short — just before we reach the bar — but sex is never just spontaneous. Spontaneity is a myth.
JK: The Daters may not know that. The Marrieds do. And I’m sure a great many of them believe that marital sex is a loop, a movie they’ve lived before — and they get nostalgic for the yes, yes, yes of dating.
EP: In dating, if you say no, your lover goes on to the next person. In marriage, if you say no, the person stays. The attraction of dating is that you don’t take yes for granted — you’re fully engaged, there’s seductiveness, tension. In committed sex, in marriage, people don’t feel the need to seduce or to build anticipation — that’s an effort they think they no longer need to do now that they have conquered their partner. If they’re in the mood, their partner should be too.
JK: Let’s get practical. What’s the way to exciting sex in marriage?
EP: You must elicit the other person’s desire. And not just five minutes before. You know what happens to sex in marriage? Instead of inviting desire, you monitor it. Especially men: You let her sleep late, you take the kids to the park, and all that time you’re thinking, “Tonight I’ll get some.” That doesn’t work.
JK: Let’s get mental. How does a soccer mom change from a drudge in an apron to a hottie? Drugs? Alcohol?
EP: You take off your apron. You shift identity. The mom doesn’t become sexy; the woman does. You have to retrieve the woman from the mother. And she may need to separate to do that: a bath, a walk. She must cordon off an erotic space.
JK: Women are that different from men?
EP: Women — and men — need to understand that a woman’s transition is often much longer. The caretaker must leave the place of orientation to the needs of others to the place where she focuses on herself. That’s why these rituals are important — they redirect her attention. She needs to know that sex does not mean taking care of her husband.
JK: Porn — help or hindrance?
EP: Depends. For her, far less often. To work, it must put her in touch with her own erotic self.
JK: Viagra — help or hindrance?
EP: A help at first, for some. But useless for 60 to 70 percent of men. And if you don’t look at context in the relationship — it’s of no use.
JK: Is there a magic bullet for couples that cherish monogamy and hot sex?
EP: I don’t have one.
JK: Okay, then, what are the elements of good sex?
EP: First, interest in the person — she can’t feel like an old sofa. And then it has to be sex worth wanting. That’s sex when you don’t know from the beginning how it’s going to end, sex that’s fun, playful, naughty, rebellious, complicitous — and accepted. That is, sex not focused on results. There’s something very full in knowing that your partner accepts you as is. That’s what’s different from dating.
JK: But here’s an irony. In your book, you say that intimacy can be the enemy of lust.
EP: Acceptance doesn’t mean predictability. Sex isn’t always for 11 at night — it’s also ‘meet at a hotel room at noon’. What you feel during dating can exist at home, if you don’t suffocate it.
JK: What do you tell patients who ask if monogamy is the only way?
EP: That’s for them to decide. It may not be for everyone. And maybe not all the time.
JK: I’m baffled. Unfaithful but committed — can that happen?
EP: Are we talking about sexual exclusivity — or emotional loyalty? People cheat on each other in a hundred different ways: indifference, emotional neglect, contempt, lack of respect, years of refusal of intimacy. Cheating doesn’t begin to describe the ways that people let each other down.
JK: Are you sanctioning affairs?
EP: No. Not that people need me to give them permission; they’ll have affairs if they want to. But affairs can be powerful detonators. They can invigorate a marriage that’s flat, jolt people out of years of complacency. Fear of loss rekindles desire, makes people have conversations they haven’t had in years, takes them out of their contrived illusion of safety.
JK: In fact, you have written, we never are safe. We don’t “have” our partner. We’re all on lease, with an option to renew.
EP: On some level we trade passion for security, that’s trading one illusion for another. It’s a matter of degree. We can’t live in constant fear, but we can’t live without any. The fear of loss is essential to love.
JK: My wife — she’s not my best friend?
EP: She’d better not be. Friendship has no tension — that’s the whole point. In desire, there must be some small amount of tension. And that tension comes with the unknown, the unpredictable. You can close yourself off at home and say, “Whew, at last I’m in a place where I don’t have to worry,” or you can keep yourself open to the mystery and elusiveness of your partner.
JK: Elusiveness? After years of marriage?
EP: You never know your partner as well as you think. Here’s an easy way to find this out: Each of you opens an email account that you use only to email the other. No daily management stuff allowed. Just two adults in conversation, often about sex: fantasies, questions, memories, no holds barred.
JK: Hotmail — literally! How do your patients respond to that idea?
EP: One guy kept asking his wife, during sex, “Tell me what you like.” She didn’t like the idea of evaluating during sex. She wasn’t hostile to the questions, they just had different styles. I suggested, “Write to him, tell him what sex means to you. Rebellion? Is it where you can be naughty? Do you want a spiritual connection? ” They had a lively correspondence….
JK: What about technique? What about favorite places?
EP: This has nothing to do with where he should put his hand. Sex is about where you can take me, not what you can do to me.
JOSH RITTER: 7 PM TONIGHT
Rosanne Cash is also going to join for a few songs. All tips to benefit Foodbank NYC. Click here.
TODAY’S POEM
“Allegro,” by Tomas Tranströmer
I play Haydn after a black day
and feel a simple warmth in my hands.
The keys are willing. Soft hammers strike.
The resonance green, lively and calm.
The music says freedom exists
and someone doesn’t pay the emperor tax.
I push down my hands in my Haydnpockets
and imitate a person looking on the world calmly.
I hoist the Haydnflag – it signifies:
“We don’t give in. But want peace.’
The music is a glass-house on the slope
where the stones fly, the stones roll.
And the stones roll right through
but each pane stays whole.
TODAY’S EMAIL, FROM AMAZON
JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story, economic relief may be available.
Hi Jesse,
The US government has authorized additional emergency economic relief for businesses.
As someone who manages JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story, we wanted to make sure you were aware of these programs.
Visit the Small Business Administration (SBA) to learn more about the Paycheck Protection Program and other assistance options.
NEW ESSENTIAL
You don’t have to be a seer to know there’s a lot of chicken and vegetable soup in your future. I start with Better Than Bouillon. (To buy the chicken base from Amazon, click here. To buy the vegetable base, click here. To buy the beef base, click here.)
ESSENTIALS AND DISPATCHES
Everything, all in one place.
UPDATE: EO Hand Soap is available again.
UPDATE: I spoke with a NYC lung specialist. He endorses Vitamin D, but warns you not to double/triple dose. In large doses, Vitamin D becomes toxic.
