Having a crush is like static electricity.
It’s that initial contact, that friction between two objects, that starts the process. As my feet drag across the rug, as I’m interacting with that object of my focused attention, I’m winding up, building the charge. Without movement across a space, that energy could never build. But that potential energy is not released until I touch the Other, the conductor. And then I feel the zing, the spark. The electricity when two charged objects collide.
If I were single, and my crush were as well, after we played in that distance between us for a while — yo-yo-ing in and out of that space where that person is familiar and yet still largely unknown, building the sexual tension — maybe we’d crash together spectacularly, the conductor releasing that pent-up charge in a rush of heat and an explosion of built-up sexual energy.
But as I’m married to a man I adore, this possibility of infidelity, of exploring an unfamiliar physical terrain, only exists in my mind. The risk to what we have together is too great. And honestly, I don’t think I’d want to make that leap IRL even if the encounter was guaranteed consequence-free. Yet, the fact that I’m wholly committed to my spouse doesn’t negate this feeling of attraction and the longing that certain persons elicit in me. So what’s a gal to do?
Last week in Part 1 of this post, I shared about “That thing that I thought happened” — when I thought I heard my husband use another’s man’s name while whispering a filthy sexual scenario in my ear during sex. Eek! (If you haven’t gotten a chance to read all about, be sure to check it out.)
I also talked about what it looks like when PM uses a sexual fantasy of mine involving me with another man to help get me off and how it’s impacted our sex life. (Spoiler alert, if you haven’t been following my blog: it’s been like throwing lighter fluid on that shit.) Finally, I shared last week about our decision to keep anonymous other persons for whom we may feel attraction.
Discussing with one another what had been a previously unspoken rule — to not reveal to each other the identity of our crushes/sexual attractions –– alleviated a lot of my feelings of confusion and worry at the thought that we had somehow gone too far in utilizing the erotic imagination in our love making.
However, some misgivings remained with me. I found myself, not for the first time, wondering why I am crushing on another man, who incidentally, in this present case, is married and has a family, to the point where he appears in fantasies that sexually arouse me. PM and I have a close relationship and passionate sex life that many people would envy. Why then do I still at times become so fascinated with another person that they feature in my erotic imagination?
I've talked before about the book Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, Esther Perel's groundbreaking work on intimacy and sex in previous posts (for which see, "To fuck or make love?" and "Can I be happily married and still want a side piece?"). And I believe that her approach, where she advocates for making space for eroticism in domesticity, has significant insights into the questions and misgivings I have surrounding my attraction to other people, sexual fantasy, and maintaining a happy marriage and home with PM.
The feelings that having a crush or an attraction to another person elicit in us belong to the domain of the fundamental human need that Esther Perel identifies as the "erotic." It is that basic longing in all human beings for adventure, novelty, uncertainty, and risk. These are the elements that make the honeymoon period of a relationship so exciting and passionate. Twenty years with PM and I still remember vividly that aching need to touch and be touched in those early weeks and months.
But we also have a basic need for rootedness, the familiar, stability, and predictability –– all of which nurture intimacy and love. Ironically, the closeness and love we cultivate in a long-term relationship like marriage can easily smother the energy and passion we once felt for the other person. The intimacy and togetherness we so desired to have with our beloved has now stolen all the mystery, and as a result, the passion, out of our relationship.
I’m so comfortable with PM that every night I don my thread-worn, oversized tshirt and joggers. He doesn’t complain, but it doesn’t mean my evening attire is doing anything for him either.
Among her many liberating perspectives on our need as humans for eroticism, Esther Perel talks about two issues that cast some light on my questions about crushes and fantasy and what the heck I should do about them, if anything.
First, Perel assures me that my erotic fantasies say more about me and my issues, my deep personal needs and fears, than they do about PM and are not necessarily indicative of any a desire to actually see those fantasies brought to life in reality. I need to let go of any guilt and shame that I’ve heaped on myself because of how my erotic needs, fears, and insecurities happen to manifest themselves in fantasy.
Perel tells us that sexual fantasies don’t work like other fantasies. ”They’re complex psychic creations whose symbolic content mustn‘t be translated into literal intent“ (163).
One of her patients worries about an elaborate cowboy fantasy she has in which she is offered by her dream “husband” as a sexual offering to hired ranch hands. In this fantasy she complies even though she feels humiliated. The cowboys are instructed by her “husband” to give her pleasure beyond her imagining. Reflecting on the fantasy, the patient worries that this scenario indicates masochism and a desire to be so passive as to lack any autonomy.
Instead, after hearing about her patient’s relationship with her real life husband, whose gentle and passive approach to sex had led her desire for him to fizzle-out over their years together, Perel sees in this dreamscape an expression of this woman’s need for vulnerability, care and attention. While in real life, this woman’s past experiences made her uncomfortable with feelings and expressions of need or dependency, Perel explains, “In the refuge of her mind she transforms passivity into erotic delight; power becomes an expression of care, and risk is reunited with safety” (165). Her fantasy does not reflect any actual yearning on this woman's part to be offered up to a bunch of cowboys for sexual pleasure. (But boy does that sound hot, when I put it that way!)
Erotic fantasy should not be taken at face value. Agonizing over how the men that frequent my fantasy reel are the same or different from PM, or how these sexual scenarios correlate to my actual sex life, or on what having these fantasies at all mean for my relationship, misses the point. My sexual fantasies are a non-linear expression of my need as a human for the erotic. They are a unique, creative expression of myself as an individual and allow me a safe-space to play. As Perel puts it, "Our fantasies allow us to negate and undo the limits imposed on us by our conscience, by our culture, and by our self-image" (156).
In real life, I struggle with self-esteem and self-confidence. In my erotic imagination, I am irresistible, a master of seduction. In real life, I am the product of over-bearing, sexually-repressed, and emotionally-distant parents who drilled into me that women must be guardians of their chastity and later, in marriage, of fidelity. In sexual fantasy, I am a free-spirit, a rule-breaker, a temptress that revels in making men lose control of themselves. In real life, I got married at age 21 to the man to whom I lost my virginity. In my steamy dreamscapes, I experience a host of unfamiliar scenarios and different men who revel in my sexual prowess.
And even though I'm focusing on my own erotic landscape in this post, I recognize that the same is true for PM’s sexual fantasies. They do not mean that he would rather be with someone else.
I admittedly have an easier time recognizing the truth of this for my own fantasies than for his, but I realize that my difficulty is a product of my own insecurities and fears of inadequacy. As much as I’d like to hold a double standard here, I must seek to respect his own deeply felt needs. If I can see and accept this truth about my own erotic imagination, and if I want PM to accept the existence of this expression of my freedom and autonomy, then I must work hard to do the same for him. (I’ll save more of my thoughts and feelings about PM’s erotic imagination for another time.)
Whereas in the past I have felt guilt and shame about thoughts of other men and fantasies involving them, I’m beginning to be more self-accepting. I don’t have to fear that this is a signal that something is broken between PM and me. Quite the contrary, letting go of insecurities and shame about my erotic imagination has, in turn, led to a greater openness between us and created new avenues to explore pleasure with one another.
When I am able to view these fantasy relationships or encounters as a complicated reflection of past experiences and deep-set needs, fears, and desires –– and not as a sex wish list that wants realization –– the erotic imagination can become a tool for better understanding myself and a safe space for exploring the varied landscape of my wants and needs.
In addition to shedding light on the nature of the erotic imagination, Esther Perel helped me better understand and appreciate my tendency for crushes. She doesn't use the term "crush," instead she talks about "the third."
"At the boundary of every couple," she tell us, "lives the third. He's the high school sweetheart whose hands you still remember, the pretty cashier, the handsome fourth-grade teacher you flirt with when you pick up your son at school. The smiling stranger on the subway is the third. So, too, are the stripper, the porn star, and the sex worker, whether touched or untouched" (187-8). In fact, it is the existence of the third, its implicit threat, that compels us to become a couple in the first place, that drives us toward monogamy. I choose you and reject the others. The need to claim you as mine exists because of the third.
"The third is the manifestation of our desire for what lies outside the fence" (188). And it exists alongside every couple, even if we’d rather not acknowledge it.
I remember reading an analogy somewhere that pretending we don’t notice attractive people around us is akin to walking into a bakery and not noticing the smell of the pastries and breads being baked. And of course, with my appreciation of the smell, I can't help but think about how delicious they probably are. I’d be a robot if I never noticed or appreciated other people around me.
"The third points to other possibilities, choices we didn't make, and in this way it's bound up with our freedom" (189). This freedom that we each have is the freedom to desire someone else. And it doesn’t go away because I put I ring on my finger.
When I married PM and vowed to have and to hold from this day forward, this commitment to monogamy provided a sense of certainty and stability. My spouse belongs to me and no one else.
And yet my sexuality (and all its varied manifestations) does not belong to PM, nor does his belong to me. Yes, we've made a commitment to one another to keep our physical acts of sexuality within the confines of our marriage. However, my sexuality –– my erotic thoughts, imaginings, feelings, all of it –– belongs to me, and that can never be owned by another person. Love may be about having and a desire for oneness, but we can never really, fully have. Yes, I choose PM now, but there is always the possibility that I will choose someone else. The third is the embodiment of that possibility.
And this is scary as hell. I want to lock down my spouse. And I don't just want his physical presence in my life, but I want transpose my face on all the faces in his erotic imaginings. I want to impose rules and boundaries to try assuage my fears, who he can see and under what circumstances.
But I know that this type of behavior will have the opposite effect of what I seek. I want PM to passionately desire only me, but Perel tells us, "The more we choke each other's freedom, the harder it is for desire to breathe within a committed relationship" (199). I also know that should he try to impose arbitrary rules on me in an attempt to corral my erotic self, it would only serve to fuel feelings of restlessness and frustration. It would only make the grass look greener on the other side.
I confided in a mutual friend about my crush a few weeks ago. It was in the context of “that thing that I thought happened,” and she was the one who encouraged me to ask PM about it. She, in turn, felt safe to share more about her sexual frustrations of late. And we talked about the crushes we’ve had over the course of our married lives, and how, whether requited or not, these attractions have almost universally had the effect of reconnecting us with passionate feelings and desire.
There are people in our lives that activate our erotic imagination. It may be someone I meet at a weekend conference, a friend of a friend, and I find myself obsessing about this person for that short time. I can’t help but track their movements with my eyes as they circulate. I look forward to a bit of flirty banter when a bunch of us meet up for drinks in the evenings. When I go back to my hotel room later, maybe I’ll replay the night in my head and rewrite certain moments that lead to him coming back to my room with me — a weekend-fling fantasy of sharing fertive glances and accidental-but-not-really-accidental brushing of shoulders or knees during the day leading up to hungry, desperate fuck sessions after hours, all of which is uncomplicated and consequence-free as we both ultimately go home to our spouses, girlfriends, whatever, without having to see each other until next year’s conference.
Or maybe it’s that friend for whom I feel something a little more than just platonic love. I feel anticipation at the thought of seeing him, of making eye contact as I converse with him. Maybe my throat clenches just a little when I see him interact with another woman or his significant other. When I hand him that cup of coffee, our fingers brush and my breath catches. Like the sun, I bask in the warmth of his attention, and I feel thrill when we can share a private joke or smirk together at something going on around us.
There’s a delicious tension in the gap between myself and my crush, between myself and "the third" — all those things that are unfamiliar about that person, all the unknowns — and the longing to bridge that gap. And underlying it all is the excitement that is inherent in imagining all the possibilities that could be with that other person. According to Perel, all of these things belong to the sphere the “erotic.” Love is having, she tells us. Wanting is the domain of desire.
A crush and my erotic imagination remind me that I am more than a wife or a mother. I’m a woman, a human being with sexual desires and needs and fantasies. And I still hold in me the ability to be excited. To be seduced. To be drawn across a space in a desire to be close, to touch. To revel in attention. It’s easy to forget all these things about myself when I’m stuck in the rut of daily life with my spouse, and those feelings seem to be only a distant memory.
Perel gives a mystical meaning of eroticism “as a quality of aliveness” (xviii). And isn't that what we feel when we crush on someone, when we feel the pull of attraction toward another person? We are reconnected with this quality of aliveness that is the erotic.
The trick is to harness the power inherent in my attraction to someone else and make my spouse the conductor of that sexual aliveness. To allow myself to get fired up over my crush but bring that fire home to my main squeeze.
Because if having a crush is analogous to the creation of static electricity, the trigger necessary to unleash the zap of that current lies, not in any specific conductor, but in me. It’s ultimately the contact between two oppositely charged individuals, between myself and the Other, that creates the spark. That initial build-up, that sexual energy, begins in my own erotic imagination, but in the end, I am the one who chooses where and with whom I will allow it to manifest itself. I choose where the energy will be directed through action, what I will touch that will ignite a blaze.
This notion of "the third" and how PM and I might invite (metaphorically, as we have no real desire at this point to do so literally) this specter into our relationship in a quest for passion intrigues me, and next time I want to explore it a little further. I want to consider how PM and I can work at acknowledging our separateness –– that we each have fantasies and desires that don't necessarily include one another –– and what this looks like in our relationship. And I look forward to taking a peek into ethical non-monogamy and swinging as ways that some couples attempt to acknowledge the third.
Until next time, stay kinky 😉
Wish I was eating some kitty