Women are trained to meet expectations, so it is difficult for them to understand what pleases or comforts them. Philosopher Michela Marzano sees a way out in a gentle attitude towards himself and his need for pleasure.
Psychologies: How often do women manage to experience pleasure?
Mikela Marcano: Most of them do it badly, because their upbringing makes them afraid of pleasure. Since childhood, they learn to control themselves in order to conform to other people’s ideas, so their desire to enjoy is restrained by the views of others. Women often do not know what gives them pleasure and do not know how to take care of themselves. For example, when they are upset, it is difficult for them to find something that will calm them down. When confused, they often turn to others for advice and do not trust themselves.
- Are you prone to guilt?
It seems that men have a more natural attitude towards pleasure, that they know their body and know how to use it.
M. M .: Yes, this is usually the case. A woman’s attitude towards pleasure is not instinctive. Her sensuality depends on the idea of who she «should be», usually imposed by her parents. Most women spend a lot of time, sometimes a lifetime, trying to live up to this image and lose sight of themselves. Men are less likely to fall into this trap. They do not need to seem like someone, and from childhood they get used to contact with themselves, so a lot comes naturally to them. They instinctively know what they can do, what they cannot do, and especially what they want to do in order to feel pleasure. Girls and adult women often simply forbid themselves to think about it, preferring to fight for first place (in class, among friends and colleagues). Then it takes them several years of psychotherapy, yoga or qigong to get back to themselves. I see it very well. Even after twenty years of psychoanalysis, I know worse than my husband what can make me happy. He wants a cake and he knows for sure that this is exactly what he needs, while I spend hours asking myself what I want and can not always find the answer. Today I learned to ask myself this question, but it never happens by itself. And I always take time to answer it.
But women do a lot with their bodies, why do they poorly understand their feelings?
M. M .: They are not concerned with their body, but with the way it looks! They go to the hairdresser, dress in fashion, diet, use creams because they want recognition. It seems to them that they can only desire something if they themselves are desired, as if their pleasure depended on what others think of them. They have absorbed this view from the outside, and their internal observer is much more severe than the external one. Appearance is a fortress that separates women from their own body and what it feels. But such a situation gives rise not only to difficulties: if a woman manages to look the way she would like to look in the eyes of others, she experiences a kind of satisfaction. She tells herself that thanks to her victims she was on top. But from the point of view of physiological well-being, the gain is zero.
- I trust no one
That is, the pleasure of women is associated primarily with their self-image?
M. M .: Exactly. Women are so subservient to this rational view that they forget about feelings. Their body is a mental construct. At one time I thought that we in our forties were prisoners of stereotypes that caused anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders.1. I thought the next generation was freer. But today’s young girls tell me that they, too, have a sense of guilt associated with the idea of who they «should be» mixed with pleasure. They are strict with themselves, do not forgive themselves for their shortcomings.
And the feeling of guilt — can it be that it increases pleasure?
M. M .: When the feeling of guilt makes us work hard on ourselves and in the end we achieve the perfection that we have appointed ourselves, we certainly experience a certain satisfaction. But this is not the same as enjoyment. Such satisfaction is a rational experience. And at some point, when we run out of strength, the body makes us pay for it with exhaustion, disease, physical suffering. Whereas sensual enjoyment is just the opposite of this way of functioning. It opens the way to harmony, to serene wholeness. To experience pleasure means to feel good in your body. Be light and direct in relation to yourself and your need for pleasure. That is why I advocate for a softer attitude of women towards themselves. We should learn to mother ourselves and stop thinking that we have to earn love. Just be.
1 Michela Marzano wrote the autobiographical novel Light as a Butterfly, the story of an anorexic woman (M. Marzano «Légère comme un papillon», Livre de poche, 2013).