Love life is hard. It is difficult to find the object of our dreams–and even harder to keep it. This is the motive behind so many tragedies, love stories, operas, and poetry works. Tristan and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, Cleopatra and Marcus Antony–they are all poignant Love stories gone sour. The list in literature and film is large; in real life and in psychiatric practice, it is endless. Love has undoubtedly been the source of the greatest joy in people’s lives as well as the deepest cause of our suffering since immemorial times.
The Big Questions about Love Life that remain unanswered
So, the conundrums of love life beg the question: Why is it so difficult to find the right person to love for life? Why is Love so difficult for most people when it should actually be the most natural thing in the world? And, why is it only Humans that have to go through love tragedies and need a psychotherapist or a psychoanalyst to help them get through the jungle of snags and ambivalent feelings in erotic relationships?
There is no question about the fact that Human Beings are the only kind of animal on this planet whose sexuality is completely messed up. Because Human Sexuality is so complicated, it follows that our Erotic love life will be necessarily painful and full of hurt. It is this fact that led to the creation of Psychoanalysis. If love life were not so difficult, psychoanalysis would be unnecessary.
The differences between Human and Animal Sexuality
Sexuality in Humans is NOT instinctive like it is in animals. Animals are driven by sexual instincts; humans only have sexual drives. In animals, the sexual script is already written by nature in their instincts. It is like if animals were born with the genetic book of sexual instructions under their paws. They do not need to read the Kinsey Report or Masters and Johnson’s work to orient themselves in these matters. Because of this fact, animals do not need to learn how to mate, they KNOW how to do it–and they do it right, at the right time–and the right age.
So, why is it that we, the most intelligent animal on the planet, cannot get this sexual matter straight? Why can’t we succeed in Love matters where lower animals without our higher level of intelligence do? Why is it that sexual perversions (strange modalities of sexual activities that do not have reproduction as an end) are only present in Humans?
Again, in this post, I cannot go in depth as to all the reasons why this is the case in Humans. This endeavor would require volumes, and probably, I would still not be able to exhaust the subject. But, there are a few hints that I can offer you here that may help you understand your love life better and therefore decrease your love pains if you apply this knowledge wisely.
Why should you read this post and this series
Mind you that this knowledge that I am going to offer you here, and in the posts to come, takes years and thousands of dollars of personal analysis and hard study to acquire. It is true, however, that taken like this, briefly as short formulas or as memes for love difficulties in a short post–they may seem very hard to grasp new ideas. These concepts are hard to get and may seem at first alien to you; but it is nevertheless a beginning; and we have to start somewhere.
I will start by helping you understand a few psychoanalytic concepts that are essential in the process of understanding love matters. First of all, I will share with you here some essential psychoanalytic knowledge that is foreign to American and English speaking audiences in general. I mean, I will share with you the mostly unknown contributions of eminent French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan on this matter. Lacan was the most important theoretician of psychoanalysis in the XX century after Freud death–and along with Freud–he was one of the most important contributors to a theory of human Sexuality and Love.
The three essential words you need to learn to differentiate to improve your love life
The first thing you need to know to get your bearings in this matter is these three essential words and we need to examine these subtle differences in more detail to begin to understand love matters:
There is a difference between:
I have to define each one of these terms for you here.
NEED represents the biological needs of the body.
We speak of the “need” for air, water, food, or shelter. But, when it comes to sexuality–even if oftentimes you will hear many authors speaking about “meeting your sexual needs”–the reality is that sexual “needs” are not so simple to “meet”as the other bodily needs. There is an instinctive element in human sexuality alright (that I mentioned as Freud’s Sexual Drive and described as being at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of “needs”), but then everything becomes complicated by the fact that Human Beings are Speaking Beings. Once we acquire Language, the Instinctive Sexual Drive becomes Affected (perverted) by our acquisition of Language.
The acquisition of language in humans is our greatest achievement. It is this ability of ours that separates us from animals. It is language also that which allows us to be thinking beings, i.e., Rational Beings. And yet, it is that very cognitive advantage what complicates our entire lives in every aspect. And yet, it is that cognitive trait–our ability to speak–that causes the inextricable love conundrums and impasses we all have to deal with in our love lives.
A clear and rather tragic-comical example of this fact happened after the end of World War II. At that time, many American GIs met and married European non English speaking women. They brought them back home with them to America. And initially they seemed to get along with them quite alright. However, in a few years, once their wives learned English, most of these marriages ended in divorce!!!
If communication theorists were right, this would have been exactly the opposite case of what took place. As, when the wives learned to communicate “better” with their American husbands, their relationships should have flowed much smoother and they should have gotten along better assuring the existence of the relationship. But, that was exactly NOT THE CASE. Once they learned they language conflict markedly increased!
It is because we speak–according to Lacan–that we mess up our sexual and love lives.
This assertion seems like a contradiction to everything you have probably heard about Love and Sex and and the importance of Communication. At first it appears as totally counter-intuitive. According to Lacan–we have sex and love problems because we are “Parle-etres” (Speaking Beings). Well, in this blog you will hear and learn a complete different take on everything you have heard before on Love and Sex matters so far. This new knowledge will arm you with a superior know-how that most people around you in our culture ignore. Hopefully, this “know-how” will save you love pains and hurts.
It is important to understand, however, that Lacan did not say that we should not try to communicate with the people we love. He did not completely disparage of Human communication. But, he actually pointed out that HUMAN COMMUNICATION–because it is a function of Language–IS ALWAYS FAILING. It always MISSES THE TARGET TO SOME EXTENT.
BECAUSE OF THE NATURE OF HUMAN LANGUAGE THE PERFECT COMMUNICATION FROM HIS PERSPECTIVE IS IMPOSSIBLE.
So, let’s continue with our definition of concepts:
DEMAND is the act of asking something from someone in speech. When, for instance, you ask for a glass of water from your significant other at night when he/she is tired and coming to bed, that is a “demand.” In French, this word connotation is less strong than it is in English. In French, DEMAND (As Lacan puts it) is better translated by the English word “Request.”So Demand is to request something, to ask for something from someone.
The wife asked for the water while the husband was in the kitchen: It is a good example of a human demand
DESIRE is the most complicated term to understand in the Lacanian perspective. And this is the centerpiece of Lacanian teachings and of his views on sexual and love affairs. Lacan follows the Philosopher Baruch Spinoza who in the XVII century stated that “Desire is the very essence of man.”
Desire is an exclusively Human trait and it is very complicated and different than mere animal “needs.”
For example, if you are hungry, you have a need for food. A certain amount of calories are required by your body at that moment and it sends a signal to your brain that translates in your psyche into “I am hungry.” That need can be met in a hundred different ways. But, in terms of DESIRE, it is not the same for YOU as an individual SUBJECT if they put a (medical) line into your vein with the exact amounts of glucose, amino-acids, salts and water (which would certainly meet your calorie ‘needs”), as it is for you to eat your favorite dish prepared YOUR WAY at your favorite restaurant. In the first case, your biological needs will have been met. In the second, your personal Desires–which are much harder to satisfy–are involved; and the specifics to reach their satisfaction will be much more difficult to actualize.
Now the “YOUR WAY” is completely unique and specific for each and every individual on this planet. And there are today over 7 billion souls on this planet of ours. So, as you can imagine, while human “needs” can be standardized, human “desires” and subjects cannot.
DESIRE IS THEN SPECIFIC FOR EACH HUMAN SUBJECT.
THE WORD “SUBJECT” IS THE BASIS FOR THE WORD “SUBJECTIVITY.”
Subjectivity is seeing things YOUR WAY. Thus, in Lacanian jargon, individuals are regarded as SUBJECTS because the entire emphasis in his therapeutic approach is put on their individual SUBJECTIVITY.
As a result of this realization, there are no possible blanket statements that can be made in the area of Sexual Life and Love Life that will apply to everybody, let alone to every individual circumstance.
So, when it comes to these Love matters, we find ourselves outside of the field of Science and in the field of Psychoanalysis.
Science studies generalities that can be manipulated numerically and statistically to generate Universal Laws. Then the scientists come up with standardization curves and statistical predictions. Whereas, Psychoanalysis studies the specific individuality of each Subject. It is a CASE BY CASE APPROACH TO THE ISSUE OF THE SUBJECTIVE DESIRE OF INDIVIDUALS.
So Rule Number ONE to get and take home: DESIRE and LOVE are NOT THE SAME THING.
It is essential that you grasp this pivotal difference if you want to understand the problems you find yourself in in this central area of your emotional life. I have defined LOVE in a previous post, and I remit you to that previous post for that definition. So, I will center here on the issue of DESIRE and the centrality this takes in Humans Sexual life and Love life.
It is also important to discriminate DESIRE–which is unconscious and operates behind the scene creating a multiplicity of WISHES–from mere WANTS–that are predominantly conscious. Wants can have multiple origins. They can originate from conscious or unconscious motions. They can be the result of our needs, our perceptions in opposition to others, our whims, and our ideals. The Ideals, in turn, tend to come from outside of ourselves. We acquire them growing up and they are a part of our EGO IDEAL. Our Desire, on the contrary, comes from Inside of ourselves, and it is Intuitive–it represents our Inner Voice.
WANTS are usually conscious while Wishes stem from the source of The Unconscious Desire–or the “Discourse of the Other” as Lacan would put it.
“Wants” are connected with Desire–but not always in a direct way. For instance, when you say:”I want an Ice-cream” if your are a biologist or a neuroscientist, you may put the situation in terms of “Need.” The biology- oriented psychiatrist will say that the body is “craving” sugar, fats and carbohydrates.” And these substances, in turn, make the brain secrete Serotonin, Dopamine, and feel good Endorphins. The psychologist (Cognitive or otherwise) may put it as a Conscious desire (or wish) for Ice-Cream. But if you take a deeper psychoanalytic perspective, you may stop to wonder what is really going on behind the conscious scene in that “Want” of yours.
If you ask a child, do you want Ice-cream? and she says “No, I don’t’;” and then, you ask her sister, and she says, “yes, I do;” and when she gladly starts to eat her ice-cream, the younger one who initially had said “No”says in a loud demanding way: “I WANT ICE CREAM TOO;” or what it is worse, she just snatches the ice-cream cone from her sister to eat it avidly, THEN you are in the PRESENCE OF HUMAN DESIRE.
So, this is a great example of how Human desire works. It is based on the perceived Desire of Others. Lacan put it this way, he said: “Human Desire is the Desire of the Other’.
The moment that Desire is Unconscious and it is the DESIRE OF THE OTHER, we are in TROUBLE. This structural fact of Human Desire is what really complicates all love matters.
This is so, as when we deal with sexual and love matters, we are no longer in the simpler sphere of Needs and Wants (which is how all these matters are addressed in most of our American scientific psychology, and even in some psychoanalytical and cognitive schools in the US, and all that governs the field of ethology [the psychology of animals]), but we are now in a totally different REALM: THE REALM OF HUMAN DESIRE.
LOVE AND SEXUAL LIFE IS EXTREMELY COMPLICATED BECAUSE IT BELONGS TO THE REALM OF DESIRE. AND THIS REALM IS ALWAYS CONVOLUTED, TWISTED, KINKY–AND TRANS-PERSONAL.
I need to stop here. I will continue examining the interplay of wants, demands and desire–and how they affect your love life–in my next post
See you there
Dr T