Why are we less likely to experience real, vivid, poignant desire today? We asked the sexologist to explain what most often prevents us from trusting each other and our impulses.
Psychologies: Our contemporaries are increasingly complaining about the lack of sexual desire. What do you think is the reason?
Yuri Prokopenko: One of the reasons is our detachment from each other. After all, desire is directed to another person, it appears when we meet him, we feel his attraction. And we do not meet, we live each by itself. In traditional culture, for example, there were round dances and dances, when all participants enter into a single rhythm, move harmoniously, touch each other, adapt. Or pair dances — there are quite complex figures that were supposed to be clearly performed. This is a kind of compatibility test. If we feel good dancing together, then we can try a closer relationship. And in modern dances, no one adapts to anyone, everyone is on their own. This is a solo dance. We are not in tune with each other.
You said, «one of the reasons.» And what else?
Yu.P.: Rationalization of emotions. We often do not even notice that we are trying to abolish feelings, using knowledge and reflection instead. A hundred years ago, a lady could complain: “I love one, while I like the other, and the third is in love with me, what should I do …” Today, a woman says: “I don’t have an orgasm. What posture should I take? We substitute concepts, and instead of talking about love, we are trying to master the technique of sex.
Is the desire to learn a bad thing?
Yu.P.: The desire to learn is wonderful in itself, but it is important to understand what we are learning. That which is rational can be described, and then learned from the description. But emotional perception cannot be learned in the same way, it can be taught only by your body, by your example. Remember the fairy tale about Princess Nesmeyana — here’s how to make her laugh? It’s impossible to explain, you can only try.
We have a technogenic civilization, and it is impossible to build it or live in it on emotions alone. And we gradually get used to the fact that instructions are attached to everything, even to ourselves. We have a request for guidance. Five Steps to Health. We do it once, we do it twice, we get a guaranteed result. «Seven steps to a good mood.» Instead of experiencing and finding my feelings and myself in these experiences, I suggest to myself: here I must want, here I cry, and here I must be in love … Of course, as a result, all living emotions perish, and desire too.
But how can they … revive?
Yu.P.: In order to be free in the manifestation of emotions, one must be free from the rational. As soon as we set ourselves a clear goal, we stop feeling and begin to evaluate ourselves, our partner, chances, and these are all intellectual actions. And desire disappears. Work begins.
That is, in order for a desire to arise, one must stop thinking about it?
Yu.P.: Yes. Stop checking if it’s here. Stop dreaming about an erection. Let go of these thoughts. You can agree with your partner that this time you will only have affection, tenderness, communication, and there will be no penetration as such. And — to caress, caress, talk to each other, laugh together, tell different stories, dance, wallow on the couch, walk down the street, hold hands, recognize each other. Because if you don’t want to talk and don’t want to find out, then there will be no desire. Do not need! After all, we are not mechanisms: I pressed the “start” button, and everything happened at any time and with anyone. We are alive, we choose, one suits us, and the other does not. We need to become interested and interested in ourselves — but not to interest us so that we «have», but disinterestedly, without a deliberate goal. Then anxiety recedes: “What if it doesn’t work out?” — after all, we don’t know in advance what will happen to us: maybe this, or maybe that. We are free, we monitor our feelings and the feelings of a partner and respond to them depending on the situation, and do not follow the instruction “do it once, do it twice”. And do not worry that we are doing something “wrong”. Because there is no standard, no sample, our case is unique, our partner is unique, like this moment in which we ended up together.
Does hormone levels affect desire?
Yu.P.: No. A man of 80 has a much lower level of hormones than he has at 40 and even more so at 25. But if he has a partner tuned in to him, he can have sexual relations with her. And when a woman says that she is not aroused, it is almost always a relationship problem with a partner: either she cannot relax, or he does not suit her at all. Other psychological problems may also interfere. Stress, depression, low self-esteem, prejudices, fears. And hormones have nothing to do with it.
Do you conduct Tantra yoga classes for couples — do they help to return the desire?
Yu.P.: They can help. Someone in tantra yoga finds a new meaning of life for himself, but someone leaves after the first lesson: «not mine, not suitable.» And some are engaged in a year or two, they begin to feel differently, to communicate differently. At the heart of Tantra yoga is the idea of a single vital energy that manifests itself in different ways in a man and a woman and which they can exchange. In the classroom, we learn to understand each other, practically without using words, to treat each other with participation and care. We often behave either as if there is no one around, and take into account only our own desires, or, conversely, we adapt to the other and feel left out, and the partner feels insincerity and tension in our behavior.
What do these classes look like?
Yu.P.: All exercises are performed in clothes, and what we attribute to intimate life does not happen there. This is not about intimate contacts, but about communication skills with the opposite sex. But everyone has their own idea of the intimate sphere. Some find the thought of touching another person unbearable. There are those who avoid shaking hands. How will they feel in tantra yoga classes? Maybe they will want to do only individual exercises or leave altogether.
But it may turn out that this is what they lacked all their lives.