Bring Back That Loving Feeling

Perhaps it's a character flaw, but, normally, I would have ignored a book entitled: Stop Calling Him Honey and Start Having Sex: How Changing Your Everyday Habits Will Make You Hot for Each Other All Over Again.

Written by a journalist and a ballerina, its title smacked of frivolity; it was lacking in serious purpose. Besides, it explicitly addressed women, ergo...

I would have been wrong to ignore the book. Much of it is positively brilliant.

I ordered it because Dr. Helen Smith recommended it on her blog. She was intrigued by the book's concept and she made it sound intriguing to me. Better yet, when I read her post I thought that it was my kind of book. Link here.

The book's concept lies in its title. It is counterintuitive, to say the least. It does not make a lot of sense. As a rule, this is a good sign tht the book contains more than a few kernels of truth.

Better than that, following the advice in the book is free. So, you almost need a very good reason not to try it.

The book seems frivolous, even gimmicky, and besides, it was not written by accredited professionals.

As it happens, the best treatment program for addiction was not created by accredited professionals but by a couple of drunks whose sole criterion for success was whether or not it helped keep them off of alcohol.

I do not mean to disparage professionals, but we err if we ignore the opinions of lay people who are trying to find something that works.

The book has a limited scope, so let's limit our discussion to the specific instance it addresses: a once lusty marriage has lost that loving feeling.

The question is simple and direct. Others have addressed it in more pompous tones. In fact, there are industries dedicated to helping married couples bring back that loving feeling.

Our culture has industries devoted to helping you to recover your lust for your spouse. Often the solutions they prescribe are costly.

Maggie Arana and Julienne Davis have a solution that will cost you nothing. Therefore, just as AA threatened the psychiatric profession-- at least until it invented rehab-- this new approach to desire is likely to provoke a negative and dismissive reaction.

What does the culture advise? First, champagne, a bed of rose petals, chocolates, scented candles, lingerie, weekends in the Poconos... I could continue, but you get the picture.

Nothing is really wrong with this, though if you have a child or two or three running around the house, it is not likely that you will be able to turn your bedroom into a boudoir.

Beyond that, the approach lacks subtlety.  If a man comes home from work and finds a scene that screams sensuality, he might find himself slightly put off by the obviousness of it all.

Be that as it may, if this approach works, great.

Some advisers go to the other extreme and counsel spontaneity. They want you to have sex whenever and wherever the spirit moves you. They want you to be so filled with desire that you cannot even wait the two minutes it will take to retire to the bedroom.

So, they prescribe sex, right here, right now, on the kitchen counter, in a deserted baseball field, under the boardwalk, or in an airplane restroom.

As I say, if it works for you, great.

Psychotherapists have also worked at helping couples recover their lost desire. Freud began it, and he was the most pessimistic about it. Since he posited that we can only desire what is forbidden, he thought that marriage, where sex is not only not forbidden, but is prescribed, was the graveyard of desire.

Human experience would tend to contradict this theory, but Freud would have been undeterred. He would simply have told you to figure out how you can make your spouse a forbidden object of lust.

Later therapists have assumed that couples could improve their sex lives by practicing free and open communication, by breaking down of barriers between spouses.

In theory, it sounds good. In practice, it does not look quite so good.

Arana and Davis do not much concern themselves with theories. They try to examine the way these are translated into behaviors, as in: spouses watching each other perform intimate bathroom functions. Doesn't that meet the requirements of free and open communication, not keeping any secrets from each other, not hiding anything.

The author consider this to be a bad habit. If you want to bring back that loving feeling, they advise you to: "close the bathroom door." Intimacy has its limits; each person must have a zone of privacy, even secrets. You cannot feel sexual desire for someone after you have been watching them move their bowels.

It's possible to be too close, and if you are too close, you will want each other less.

The crux of the book, its central concept, the one that I am inclined to call brilliant, lies in the title. The authors declare that you should stop using terms of endearment and go back to calling your spouse by his or her proper name.

Arana and Davis do not recommend soulful conversations. They do not seem to believe that empathy is going to rekindle your lust. Their prescription: change one small, but critically important, habit.

Now, if you have spent too much time using terms of endearment, it may well be that calling people by their proper names might feel strange, even threatening. But it is still a great idea. That just means that you might have to work at it. Arana and Davis insist that the rewards are worth the pain.

Among the more common terms of endearment are: honey, sweetie, darling, dear, pumpkin, snookums, pookie, baby, and so on.

In French, commonly considered the language of love, the most common term of endearment is: mon chou. Which means: my cabbage.

When it comes to romance, you have to hand it to the French.

But why would proper names be so important, and why should this seemingly innocuous verbal action carry such an erotic charge.

As opposed to terms of endearment, proper names are not gender neutral. At the least, they make each spouse feel recognized as man or woman. Two neutered organisms are not very likely to feel lust for each other.

Proper names are more personal and unique than terms of endearment. As one of the commenters on Dr. Helen's site mentioned, when you call someone "honey" this protects you from exclaiming the wrong name at the wrong time.

However much a spouse will be appalled by your use of the wrong name-- which is something we all know-- wouldn't the same spouse be thrilled to be called by their own name?

Now, Jack and Jill are people. Honey is a condiment. Do you really want to make love to a condiment? If you are concerned about the man who mistook his wife for a hat, wouldn't you be just a little worried about the wife who mistook her husband for a condiment? How do you think he feels about it?

In fact, using proper names is great advice in many other situations, especially if you want to build your friendships and mange your relationships.

It is common knowledge among people who work in sales and customer relations that you should always address your clients by their names-- first or last, depending on THEIR stated preference.

Whether you are addressing her as Jill or Ms. Jones, you will find that if you use names in talking to people your interactions will be smoothed out. People will be happier to talk with you, to work with you, and to be friends with you, if you respect them enough to call them by their names.

And if you do not respect other people, I promise you that they will not respect you, and that you will end up not respecting yourself.

If you do not use names, people will assume that they are not very important. Otherwise how could you have forgotten their names.

Meantime, as I was reading this book, I started thinking about one of the most puzzling aspects of the hookup culture: the anonymity of initial hookup.

Of course, if you do not know the other person's name, you also do not really know who they are, they do not know who you are, and neither of you knows who is doing what to whom?

I know that it's controversial, but random, anonymous sexual encounters, no matter how pleasurable, will always feel somewhat empty... because you cannot know who is doing what to whom.

Actually, I was reminded of a passage from Tom Wolfe's book: Hooking Up, published ten years ago.

Recalling that American teenagers often resort to baseball terminology to talk about their sexual exploits, Wolfe mentions that first base used to mean kissing and that home run was "conception-based intercourse."

Next, Wolfe describes the way the metaphor has changed to accommodate the hookup culture: "... in the era of hooking-up, 'first base' meant deep kissing..., groping, and fondling; 'second base' meant oral sex; 'third base' meant going all the way; and 'home plate' meant learning each other's names."

You name identifies you. It says who you are. It is all that stands between you and anonymity, that is, between you and social oblivion.

One should never underestimate how much people are motivated by the idea of having and keeping a good name. And one should never underestimate the fact that if they will sometimes prefer infamy over  anonymity.

Names are special for another reason. They are the only parts of language that are not translated. Whether they are the names of people or places, they remain the same across linguistic barriers.

Hong is Hong Kong in Hong Kong. And it is called Hong Kong in New York and London, even if the correct translation of the Chinese terms would render it: fragrant harbor.

When someone calls you by your name, it touches you in a way that honey, sweetie, biscuit, and toodle-puss do not. And if you want to bring back that loving feeling, to reach out and touch your spouse, first try the touching gesture of calling him or her by his or her proper name.

One final note. The topic of proper naming has largely been neglected by psychology. Philosophers have done a better job of framing and issues surrounding the functioning of proper names in language and in life.

Opinions on the role of proper names are clearly divided, and very, very interesting. Unfortunately, the debate is very difficult to follow. Take that as a warning, but, for what it's worth, my favorite philosophical book on the topic is Saul Kripke's: Naming and Necessity.

[A warm welcome to those of you who have found this post via Instapundit or Dr. Helen. As always, I am grateful to Prof. Glenn Reynolds and Dr. Helen Smith for linking me.]