The “Art!” Part of Lasting Sexual Connections
there's a bonus pixel Emily at the bottom of this post
Here’s another question from book tour that I didn't feel like I could answer in the moment:
“What is the ‘art’ of lasting sexual connections?”
(It wasn’t until the next day that I realized this question was asked because the subtitle of Come Together is “the science (and art!) of creating lasting sexual connections.” Facepalm 🤦♀️)
Let me say here and now something that I realized too late is not clear in the book: The most literal reason “art” is in the subtitle is because my marital euphemism, who went to art school and spent years making a webcomic, drew the illustrations in Come Together. The more metaphorical reason is that couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long-term collaborate to co-create a context that makes it easy for their brains to experience pleasure, which, from my point of view as the science-loving daughter and sister of artists, means they’re creating a work of art.
So the “art” part is the connection itself, because connections are made. They don’t spontaneously happen, just as sculptures and paintings and plays and songs don’t spontaneously happen. They may begin with a spark of inspiration—inspiration, a word that literally means a taking in of breath—but they do not become what they are until you play with the inspiration, work with it, explore it, and make something by choice. That reality is built into every sentence of Come Together.
And something I’ve been learning, as I talk to people about the book, is that there are still a lot of people (not gonna lie, it seems like it’s a lot of straight cis women) who believe that connection – not just sexual desire, but a feeling of engagement and attunement with a long-term sex partner, both during sex and in their day to day lives - should just happen, spontaneously and without method or intention, or else “the connection just isn’t there.”
Which is very much like saying that you had a spark of inspiration, spent half an hour writing your novel, and then the spark fizzled out, and so now you believe you can’t write a novel.
I spend a lot of time in Come Together clarifying the difference between desire (“wanting”) and pleasure (“liking”) and proposing that desire is a red herring, while pleasure is the true measure of sexual wellbeing. Center pleasure and the rest will take care of itself. People resist this idea because we’ve all been trained to believe that “spark” or spontaneous desire is the measure of sexual wellbeing and without it, there’s no reason to have sex.
I think believing that “the connection should just happen” is the relationship equivalent of believing that spontaneous desire is the only/primary/best reason to have sex.
When I was in high school my mom told me that “Some days you wake up and decide to stay married.” Which I think is true is most marriages (but let the record show she made that marriage last far beyond its best-by date. I come by my overfunctioning honestly.) Being in a better marriage than my parents’ (thanks, years of therapy!), I’m more likely to wake up and wonder what we’ll co-create today. We make our connection again every day. It’s like an endless RPG or improv scene or writing and rewriting a story or shaping and reshaping a sculpture.
There are lots of things in our lives that we don’t get to choose, but we do get to choose how we treat each other in the face of whatever happens in a day. Every day, we get to shape and reshape the thing between us. That’s the art part. And we’re never done.
I hope that helps, especially if somebody told you that connection should “just happen” and you’re relying on that spark of connection to motivate you to stay with someone or treat them with empathy and admiration.
Anyway, I was thinking about this because Debbie Millman interviewed me and asked about me being the science black sheep in a family full of artists. You can give it a listen if you like: apple podcasts • soundcloud • website
-Emily
(Still here? Seeing as Debbie has a pixel portrait and this post is about art, here’s a pixel Emily from way back when we did a guest comic for Oh Joy Sex Toy together a while back! I spent a very long time in the pixel mines. –Mysterious Euphemistic Copy Editor)
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Signed copies of Come As You Are and Come Together can be obtained from my amazing local bookseller, Book Moon Books.
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