On Sexual Compatibility in Long-Term Relationships

“I think that people find partners that have greater or lesser compatibility with and that may happen in the sexual arena. Of course the person you have greater sexual compatibility with may not be the same person you have emotional compatibility with. The two sometimes exist separately.

I liken it a lot with musicians who can enter a groove together.

You may have people who play music together and just click, they have a similar way of playing, they are attuned to each other, they appreciate each other's style, they respond to the sensitivity of the other. They like each others fingers and touch, they have a good sense of how the other person moves that speaks to them and moves them.

But it’s not something that is static. You can start off playing with somebody and after a while you can realize, we have really gotten to know each other and anticipate the other better and have a sense of where the other one likes to go, and that becomes a further compatibility.

It’s always something that grows, so it can grow from a lot to more, or from less to more. But I do think there are people who don’t have it. I have worked with couples who are wonderful, and great together, but not sexually. They really do not have a good fit. They want very different things, they’re drawn to very different things, and the choice that they made to be together was not a sexual choice, it was a relational or emotional choice, a life partner choice.

And they find themselves in a complicated predicament because they realize that they are with the person with whom they can really make a life together but it’s not necessarily the person with whom they are going to have a good erotic connection with.”

How Communication Can Get in Desire’s Way

“Talking has become the definition of intimacy. And it’s a certain kind of talking that is very Western, in which I talk to you about myself and you are going to be an empathic, validating listener who is going to reflect back to me and in that moment I will feel that I matter and I will transcend my existential aloneness. In this way love becomes this panacea against a life of increasing isolation and a bulwark against the vicissitudes of everyday. That is a very Western way of talking about intimacy and it’s also a definition where people are more alone. They may be more free, but they’re also more alone.

Communication is crucial, but people communicate in multiple ways that don’t always have to do with talking. And when we come to the realm of intimacy or sexuality maybe we could say that the first mother tongue we have is our bodies: our touch, our gestures, our eyes. In the domain of intimacy we can say that we, at least, have to be bilingual, if not multi-lingual. If the definition and need for intimacy has become paramount in our relationships, the way we conceive of it has drastically narrowed. No, I think we must communicate, but we can communicate in many ways, and when it comes to sexuality the body is a prime language for communicating love, tenderness, connection, dependency, infantile wishes, sexuality, all of it.

We must communicate, that’s a given. But there’s this notion that talking is no longer an option, it’s a mandate. It’s a mandate to share. And the notion that that kind of sharing will actually lead you to desire is an assumption, it sometimes does. But sometimes there’s so many other ways that people feel close or turned on or interested or intrigued or excited.”