The last weeks of the academic year are notoriously hard, so I feel entitled to indulge in my top-secret hobby of reading trashy books. The university bookstore offered a sale on Between the Sheets: Nine 20th Century Women Writers and Their Famous Literary Partnerships, a book that salivates over the sex lives of famous female writers. Yes, I’m human and nihil humanum, etc.
The book is providing me with a bunch of laughs because of the desperate and painfully earnest way in which its author struggles with understanding how human sexuality works. Here is one hilarious example. The author discusses a long and passionate relationship between Katherine Mansfield and John Murry that was almost entirely devoid of actual sex:
Why should this be the case? As we have seen, neither Mansfield nor Murry were sexually inexperienced by the time they got together. Why should Murry have felt such apparent fear of sex with Mansfield, and why should Mansfield have been so reticent with him?
The author proceeds to offer a series of explanations, ranging from Mansfield’s desire to conceal her previous sex life from Murry to her possible bisexuality. Of course, none of these explanations make any sense. Finally, she asks almost desperately:
Is real desire still possible, even when physical intimacy is absent?
It always embarrasses me to see such depths of sexual ignorance in adults. Of course, it is more than possible for two experienced people to burn with profound desire for each other and still have the most horrible and unfulfilling sex ever. Desire doesn’t guarantee good sex. It is a curious reality of the human condition that, besides desire, you need something else to make sex work. That something is sexual compatibility. And if the compatibility isn’t there, that is not a sign that something is wrong with the passion.
This is the main problem that people face when they get married without having sex first. They believe that if passion and love are there, then compatibility must surely follow. And it just doesn’t. Compatibility can’t be conjured, manufactured, or bought in therapy sessions. It exists outside of our will. For the sexually secure individuals, there is nothing threatening in that realization.
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