Sexual attraction lives only if the partners ask themselves questions after many years: “Why did I choose you?”, “Why did you choose me?”, says sex therapist and psychoanalyst Alain Eril.
“For fifteen years I have been working with couples who come to me, concerned about the lack of attraction. First of all, they complain about the lack of sexual desire, but very quickly we understand that this is not only the case: interest in each other disappears in other areas of their lives, everything fades and loses its sharpness. There is always an element of boredom in this extinct desire. Of course, we are used to thinking that life kills love, but it is not life that kills it, but boredom. Ordinariness can be seductive: you can also erotically vacuum or put dishes in the dishwasher … This is not what destroys the couple, the couple is destroyed by boredom, insipidity, stiffness, loss of flexibility. And if we listen carefully to those who come to therapy, we will understand that desire is gone due to lack of risk, uncertainty, vulnerability … All that remains is a heavy burden of boredom from the monotony that penetrates into relationships and germinates in them like a cancerous tumor.
- What really turns you on?
- How confident are you in your sexuality?
Deep love and passion cannot exist at the same time. If the other seems to us understandable from A to Z, how can he remain a mystery? And what will the attraction then feed on? Attraction needs a secret, vulnerability, this is what allows you to maintain a constant interest in a relationship, a desire to know the other.
Attraction is a kind of motor of love. If we ask ourselves again and again the question “Who are you, my chosen one?”, We can say that the relationship is alive. But couples often replace living relationships with evidence, stability … If there is nothing more to hide, then there is nothing to look for? If we can bring mystery into our relationships, then the other will become the one who constantly eludes us, and since he eludes, we now miss him. And in this lack, desire is born.
- About how we will continue to live
- All ages of female sexuality
Deep love can be dangerous for sex drive. She can even dissolve it in herself… The couples I work with, despite the lack of desire, do not want to leave. They live together for 15-20 years, love each other, but have not made love for 5-6 years. And at the same time, they continue to feel like a couple. But can you keep calling them a couple if they no longer sleep together? What then is this love? Asexual, devoid of attraction?
This is not an easy question, there is no recipe that will always work, that would allow a couple to naturally feel sexual attraction again. The fact is that the couple, immersed in the experience of love, so idealized this feeling that the attraction gradually fades away. The proof of their love is what they experienced together. But at the same time, sexual desire loses its taste, disappears, we stop thinking about it. Working with couples, I encourage them to ask where they might find sexual attraction. And it turns out that we find sexual attraction not in sexuality itself.