Effort vs. Destiny in Long Term Relationships

By Gamal Hennessy

Many romantic relationships suffer from an expectation of fantasy. We understand that health, wealth and personal growth require effort over a long period of time. But our intimate relationships, especially when it comes to sexual expression, are often caught up in concepts like “soulmates”, “true love”, and “happily ever after”. Social psychologist Jessica Maxwell calls this phenomenon sexual destiny belief. She contrasts it with the idea of sexual growth and suggests one is superior to the other when it comes to improving our long term partnerships.

“Results suggest that those who are higher in sexual growth beliefs—who think sex takes work—are more satisfied in their sex lives and overall relationships. On the other hand, those who were stronger in sexual destiny beliefs, those who saw sexual problems as a sign that they and their partner weren’t truly soul mates, were more likely to lose faith in a relationship when sexual difficulties arose.”

— Jessica Maxwell: How Implicit Theories of Sexuality Shape Relationship Well Being

The implications are clear and they make perfect sense. If we’re willing to learn to improve our minds, or exercise to improve our bodies, or work to improve our finances, then it only makes sense that we need to improve our sexual expression too…

And building a better sex life with your partner is more fun than going to work anyway…

Have fun.

G

When it Comes to Dating, You Might Want to Get Out of the Cold

by Gamal Hennessy

A recent Match.com survey suggests "warm" or "hot" approaches (initial connections made through mutual friends, interests or online dating) beat "cold" approaches (initial connections made with strangers) by a factor of ten to one.

Singles in America and the Future of Love

“Fisher and her research partner found that 31% of singles met their last first date online, while 25% met through a friend, and 6% met in a bar or club.”

— Krista Tippett: On Being

The moral of the story is if you want a relationship in the 21st Century, you probably need to come in out of the cold.

Have fun.

Gamal

The Decline of Romantic Love in the Modern World

by Gamal Hennessy

The modern concept of love and romance is closer to a contract than an emotion.

Today, love is a commodity and we are all speculative investors. Consider this:

• Our depictions, expressions, songs, and concepts about relationships are closer to business terms than seductive language.
• Dating has been reduced to a process resembling due diligence instead of growing personal connection.
• Sex is often just an asset available for barter or trade.
• Attention is a scarce resource.
• The size and cost of our gifts are seen as more important than the sentiment attached to them.
• Marriage is a contractual merger or an aggressive acquisition.
• Certain behavior or personal traits are referred to as “deal breakers” by those in the “market”.
• Some women choose the features of their wedding rings before they consider a wedding partner.
• Many people consider the prestige that a person will add to their social status, instead of the joy they bring to living.
• The appearance of our relationships online are given more focus than the way lovers treat each other from day to day.

I will admit that these concepts might be more rational and more appropriate to the age of personal branding we currently live in. Romantic love may not have a place here. Unconditional love might be foolish; a waste of time and resources better spent making money, binge watching TV or trolling social media to get more followers.

But Love is not rational. Love is not fair. The lover surrenders himself to the loved one, in spite of all hardships, in spite of rejection, and in the face of impossibility.

Today, most people may never feel this type of love. Perhaps they simply won’t know what it is when they encounter it. Or they won’t admit to feeling it out of fear of appearing weak or being hurt. This is tragic for those who miss or reject romantic love, but for the hedonists fortunate enough to meet people who can inspire that unconditional surrender, we have glimpsed both heaven and hell. We have experienced something that makes life worth living.

Summarized from The Double Flame by Octavio Paz

After Fifty Shades of Gray, Why Is Erotica Still the Black Sheep of Fiction Genres?

By Gamal Hennessy

“Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand — a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods — or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.”

— Willa Cather

This Valentine’s Day marks the release of the Fifty Shades of Gray film. Based on one of the most controversial books over the past few years, it has been credited (or blamed for, depending on your perspective) a new exploration of sexual expression in the mainstream.  “Mommy porn” has become a viable subgenre of erotica, but In spite of the popularity of Fifty Shades and the deluge of BDSM erotica riding its long tail, erotic writing is still a repressed art form in America, snickered at or openly rejected by the masses.

Why?

The American Relationship to the Erotic

The lack of quality in the prose of Fifty Shades isn't the reason erotica gets rejected. It's our own collective agitation with the subject. According to Sallie Tisdale in her amazing book Talk Dirty to Me, We are trapped between our Judeo-Christian Protestant morality and our obsession with sex as a tool of commerce and power. We willingly exploit the concept that “sex sells” but reject any insightful public discussion about seduction or sexual expression. Our collective response to sincere sexuality is avoidance, disdain, ridicule, silence or backhanded suggestions of mental imbalance.

“American society is adolescent; there is no other word for our restlessness and finger shaking. We live in a world filled with the continual proliferation of sexual images outside context. Still, we find it almost unbearable to openly talk about sex. The result is cultural puberty: lewd, leering, intensely curious and ashamed and prudish all at once. ”

— Sallie Tisdale, Talk Dirty to Me

Thankfully, when I released A Taste of Honey, a book with a distinct erotic element, the negative reaction wasn’t aggressive, but it was disconcerting to discover the people in my life conform, to one extent or another, to the same attitudes towards sexual expression as the rest of society. This made sense to me over time. My circle of friends and family are functioning members of the community they live in. It is understandable that they share the general beliefs of the wider group. I had no reason to expect anything different but somehow I hoped it would be.

Controlling the Image

I don’t have illusions about the way people interact with each other. I know that each of us holds onto an image of every person in our lives. We project attributes, titles and values onto the people that we know and then assume those qualities will be fairly consistent over time. Any information that alters or upsets the image we create is resisted and rejected. If a revelation doesn’t conform to our defined social relationship then we don’t want to hear about it. By and large, most of your family, friends and co-workers don’t want to know anything about your sexual expression, because it upsets their image or you and falls outside the realm of acceptable information. Reading or writing erotica can be a revelation about your sexual expression and your sexual philosophy. It opens up a subject most people do not want to discuss or explore. In the 21st Century, only a total stranger online or an intimate confidant in bed is willing to learn about your sexual dispositions. No one else you know has any interest in the subject.

I’m not trying to invite everyone to know every sexual moment of everyone else’s life. Mystery and taboo are important aspects to the sexual experience. At the same time, my sexual expression is a large part of the definition of who I am as a person. To push that part of me away or to repress it would be rejecting a facet of my life that I’m not ashamed of. Inserting erotica into my work makes as much sense to me as including humor, wit or complexity. It is fundamental to my art and to my life. If I didn’t put it in because other people weren’t comfortable with it, then my writing wouldn’t be mine anymore. My life wouldn’t be mine anymore.

Pushing Boundaries through Art

Just before I started releasing my work, I read a book from Susie Bright called How to Write a Dirty Story. The book was quite good, in part, because it helped me see my role as a writer both in terms of erotica and in terms of other aspects of writing. Her advice, like Ms. Cather’s above, was to use my craft to push the boundaries of society and not just relax within the comfortable framework of acceptable commercial work. I have no interest in writing the most shocking, perverted or controversial book ever. Marquis de Sade already did that. My goal is much more insidious. I want to embed the erotic in other types of stories so deeply that one can’t be separated from the other. I want to construct scenes that are arousing not because of their graphic imagery, but because of their realistic intensity. My goal is to see the film version of A Taste of Honey become a blockbuster not just because of the sexual controversy it creates, but because of the quality of the story on the screen.

Have fun.

Gamal

The Darkest Side of Rejection

White male privilege, a warped sense of entitlement and a persistent rape culture has lead to a teenage boy trying to kill 3 Women "because he's a virgin"

I've argued in earlier posts for the importance of building seductive skills in society (See Love in the Time of Smartphones). There might not be any form of education or intervention we can use to prevent men suffering from autistic spectrum disorder from trying to kill, but the more we can do to reduce the anxiety of sexual frustration the fewer men will be compelled to turn to violence when faced with rejection.

The Hypocritical Motivation Behind Female on Female Slut Shaming

By Gamal Hennessy

The concept of slut shaming is often associated with an inequality between male and female sexual expression. Men are praised for high levels of sexual activity while women are maligned. The majority of this social warfare was thought to be a product of male bias, but a new study suggests slut shaming is a powerful social tool for women to use against other women.

Researchers observed and interviewed college-aged women in a campus setting. They found slut shaming to be a form of abuse women from affluent families used to disparage women from less fortunate social circumstances. Shame was about income, not sex although sexual expression was the target of the attack.

“Viewing women only as victims of men’s sexual dominance fails to hold women accountable for the roles they play in reproducing social inequalities. By engaging in ‘slut-shaming’ women at the top create more space for their own sexual experimentation, at the cost of women at the bottom of social hierarchies.”

— Elizabeth Armstrong, Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan

This isn’t a new phenomenon. The upper classes in societies throughout history have engaged in broad types of sexual expression and denied the same activity to lower social groups. Erotica and manuals of sexual techniques have been hidden away in private libraries. Only the rich could afford the services of concubines, courtesans or prostitutes. In modern eras, both the church and the state impose a sexually restrictive morality on the general population as they indulge in any and every sexual option imaginable.   

This systemic sexual repression is a form of class warfare designed to restrict upward mobility. Erotic capital, like financial, social and intellectual capital are transferable, giving a person with one type of capital the ability to trade it in for other types of social currency. (See Erotic Capital by Catherine Hakim) The difference between erotic capital and other forms is its distribution. Beauty, sex appeal and physical ability can’t be hoarded by certain classes and passed down through generations. In theory, anyone from any class can achieve a high degree of erotic capital. If society allowed free transfer of this currency, social mobility would suddenly be within reach of a wider section of society. Suppression of erotic capital through techniques like slut shaming reduces the utility of erotic capital for those who need it most.

Sexual intelligence and independence in sexual expression could be effective counter measures for this type of social warfare, but few women of any class have the training to develop those traits. (See Love in the Time of Smartphones) Until we treat sexual expression as a fundamental dynamic of society, tactics like slut shaming will continue to have a detrimental effect on everyone.

Have fun.

Gamal