Infidelity & Other Valentine Thoughts, Part II
Dangerous Methods Trailer
When last we met, The Nobby Works was dutifully stuffing the hot, juicy topic of illicit sex into the maw of erudition. Spicy infidelity was on the verge of being swallowed, digested and excreted out the other end as so much psycho babble. But that's how the Nobby works. Nob is less interested in the steam and seaminess of sex than in the fact that affairs have endured for so very long despite the stern moral rebukes, broken homes, and searing tales of loves and lives lost in their wake. Because the foundation of this blog is the writing of Norman O. Brown rather than Tina Brown, I’m inclined to think upon the subject of sex as more complicated than the mere scratching of an itch.
How complicated you may ask. Well, in Love’s Body, Nobby quotes Northrup Frye favorably as saying: "the 'sin' in the sex act is not that of love but that of parentage. It is the father and mother, not the lover and beloved, who disappear from the Highest Paradise...." Brown in Love’s Body and his other masterwork Life Against Death is pretty much a Freudian when it comes to viewing sex through the prism of parent-child relations, though it’s a far less icky perspective than comedians and charlatans would have us believe. As Brown channels Freud, even the most wholesome mating of an all-American couple poses a threat to “the natural order” and causes disruption to one degree or another. Meet the Fockers may be a heavy-handed Hollywood pun, but it does convey a primal reality. Upon meeting the intended mates of our children, we are meeting our replacements…the fuckers, as it were, of our kids. And we know subconsciously, if not consciously, that in that act of sex they will achieve a level of intimacy with our children that’s beyond us. And our children know instinctively that in that act of sex they are achieving the independence from their parents that they’ve been struggling for since at least pre-pubescence.
Like Freud, Brown sees sex as an act of rebellion…and much of its pleasure and joy comes not just from the physical sensation, but from the psychic liberation it provides. In Dangerous Methods, David Cronenberg’s outstanding film about the relationship between Freud and Jung, Keira Knightley plays Sabina Spielrein--at first a patient, then a student and finally a disciple of the two pioneers of psychoanalysis. When we first meet her, she’s a certified hysteric, a common affliction among women of those very sexually repressive times. (Important historic note: as modernity turned away from sexual repression, hysteria as “a woman’s disease” virtually disappeared.) As Jung guides her through Freud’s “talking cure,” she reveals that her father used to take her off to a private room and spank her. The great discovery of her psychoanalysis (and she's really Jung's partner in it) is that her hysteria stems not from the fact that her father spanked her, but that she enjoyed it sexually and felt hysteria-inducing guilt for enjoying it.
Though John H. Richardson’s Esquire piece that launched this two-part Nobby post focused on infidelity, the reality is that the sexual prison he discusses can become manifest in many kinds of taboo sex—spanking, fetishes, pornography, etc.—none of which requires infidelity to one’s mate. But infidelity still presents the biggest conundrum because the number of people affected by one’s infidelity increases exponentially as does the need to rebel through sex. The need to reaffirm one’s personal liberation does not dissipate after declaring independence from the parents. That temporary euphoria is most graphically illustrated in this chartfrom an earlier post. What happens is that the keys to the sexual prison inevitably fall into the hands of the mate who previously helped free you.
So, what’s a love’s body to do?
Well, marshmallows might help. The famous marshmallow test has been conducted on kids from 3-5 years old for 40 years now with increasingly reliable and surprising results. Put a marshmallow in front of a child and give the child the choice: eat the marshmallow immediately or wait 15 minutes and receive a second marshmallow as a reward. The test has shown consistently that the kids who demonstrate the ability to delay gratification have greater success later in life. And delaying gratification can be a learned behavior.
So imagine, if you will, an intimate relationship which is not about denying gratification, but delaying it—which is not in denial about the ephemeral nature of passion, but embraces a broader view of love that includes the reality of human nature. Imagine a relationship where you hold the keys to liberation rather than prison for your mate.
This Valentine’s Day why not show how much you dare to care with a marshmallow?
When last we met, The Nobby Works was dutifully stuffing the hot, juicy topic of illicit sex into the maw of erudition. Spicy infidelity was on the verge of being swallowed, digested and excreted out the other end as so much psycho babble. But that's how the Nobby works. Nob is less interested in the steam and seaminess of sex than in the fact that affairs have endured for so very long despite the stern moral rebukes, broken homes, and searing tales of loves and lives lost in their wake. Because the foundation of this blog is the writing of Norman O. Brown rather than Tina Brown, I’m inclined to think upon the subject of sex as more complicated than the mere scratching of an itch.
How complicated you may ask. Well, in Love’s Body, Nobby quotes Northrup Frye favorably as saying: "the 'sin' in the sex act is not that of love but that of parentage. It is the father and mother, not the lover and beloved, who disappear from the Highest Paradise...." Brown in Love’s Body and his other masterwork Life Against Death is pretty much a Freudian when it comes to viewing sex through the prism of parent-child relations, though it’s a far less icky perspective than comedians and charlatans would have us believe. As Brown channels Freud, even the most wholesome mating of an all-American couple poses a threat to “the natural order” and causes disruption to one degree or another. Meet the Fockers may be a heavy-handed Hollywood pun, but it does convey a primal reality. Upon meeting the intended mates of our children, we are meeting our replacements…the fuckers, as it were, of our kids. And we know subconsciously, if not consciously, that in that act of sex they will achieve a level of intimacy with our children that’s beyond us. And our children know instinctively that in that act of sex they are achieving the independence from their parents that they’ve been struggling for since at least pre-pubescence.
Like Freud, Brown sees sex as an act of rebellion…and much of its pleasure and joy comes not just from the physical sensation, but from the psychic liberation it provides. In Dangerous Methods, David Cronenberg’s outstanding film about the relationship between Freud and Jung, Keira Knightley plays Sabina Spielrein--at first a patient, then a student and finally a disciple of the two pioneers of psychoanalysis. When we first meet her, she’s a certified hysteric, a common affliction among women of those very sexually repressive times. (Important historic note: as modernity turned away from sexual repression, hysteria as “a woman’s disease” virtually disappeared.) As Jung guides her through Freud’s “talking cure,” she reveals that her father used to take her off to a private room and spank her. The great discovery of her psychoanalysis (and she's really Jung's partner in it) is that her hysteria stems not from the fact that her father spanked her, but that she enjoyed it sexually and felt hysteria-inducing guilt for enjoying it.
Though John H. Richardson’s Esquire piece that launched this two-part Nobby post focused on infidelity, the reality is that the sexual prison he discusses can become manifest in many kinds of taboo sex—spanking, fetishes, pornography, etc.—none of which requires infidelity to one’s mate. But infidelity still presents the biggest conundrum because the number of people affected by one’s infidelity increases exponentially as does the need to rebel through sex. The need to reaffirm one’s personal liberation does not dissipate after declaring independence from the parents. That temporary euphoria is most graphically illustrated in this chartfrom an earlier post. What happens is that the keys to the sexual prison inevitably fall into the hands of the mate who previously helped free you.
So, what’s a love’s body to do?
Well, marshmallows might help. The famous marshmallow test has been conducted on kids from 3-5 years old for 40 years now with increasingly reliable and surprising results. Put a marshmallow in front of a child and give the child the choice: eat the marshmallow immediately or wait 15 minutes and receive a second marshmallow as a reward. The test has shown consistently that the kids who demonstrate the ability to delay gratification have greater success later in life. And delaying gratification can be a learned behavior.
So imagine, if you will, an intimate relationship which is not about denying gratification, but delaying it—which is not in denial about the ephemeral nature of passion, but embraces a broader view of love that includes the reality of human nature. Imagine a relationship where you hold the keys to liberation rather than prison for your mate.
This Valentine’s Day why not show how much you dare to care with a marshmallow?
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