This is the third post of my Sexuality is a River series and my second post applying the analogy of a river to Morin’s theories of eroticism. You can find the first post in the series here: Sexuality Is a River. That post describes the perspective I write from and some caveats about what this analogy does and does not apply to.

What is Erotic and Why Section II

What is Erotic and Why? Part I sets up Morin’s theory of eroticism which provides context for the final three Cornerstones of Eroticism which you will find below. If you want to just keep reading, the important thing to know about the theory so far is that there are some characteristic patterns that describe why we find things erotic. Recognizing those patterns, can help us remove shame about our turn-ons. Below you will find three more of those patterns. I highly recommend Morin’s book which you can find here.

Violating Prohibitions: Breaking the Dam

When there is no place for a person’s sexuality to flow (or when the allowed expressions aren’t the ones desired) because of restrictive sexual mores of the community or religion people often find that breaking those taboos is itself a source of erotic energy. For people who support or even reinforce the sexual mores in other roles in their lives, the obstacle and therefore the erotic payoff can be even higher. It is in this cornerstone, that the power of the metaphor really lives for me. What happens if there is nowhere for a river to flow? It doesn’t just stop. It builds pressure. The reservoir behind the dam gains volume. Though downstream it may appear that there is a desert and the sexuality has stopped flowing, the river is waiting to express itself again. Then, whether there is a tempting stimulus (a downpour) or an expression opportunity that just catches the person off guard (an earthquake that cracks the dam) suddenly all of the force of the river previously held in abeyance by the dam, rushes forward flooding the river valley.

When breaking taboos is expressed in ways consistent with the sexual health principles, it can feel like a liberation. For example, a person from a previously restrictive background might feel empowered to engage in sexual behavior, they might become proud of their sexual expression, or they might feel an increased sense of self-esteem as they shed restrictive limitations on who they are or who they can love.

Sometimes, like all of the other cornerstones, breaking taboos can show up in some ways that don’t align with the sexual health principles. Sometimes for example, having broken a taboo the person feels shame and the fear of losing community connections. This shame and fear leads to commitments to not engage in the behavior again. The paradox of this of course is that it rebuilds the dam and the river begins building up force again. The shame which rebuilds the dam can fuel a compulsive and potentially destructive cycle. Please note how I phrased this last sentence. It is the shame, not the breaking of taboo itself that fuels the compulsive behavior. When clients come to me with this challenge, normalizing their desire for sexual expression and pointing out the nature of the expression-shame-avoidance-arousal cycle often helps them decrease the compulsive nature of their behavior in just a session or two. While there may be more work to do, the core treatment element was removing the idea that the river shouldn’t flow. It will flow somewhere and in treatment I help clients develop their plans for where they do and don’t want it to flow.

Searching for Power: The Whirlpool

A third cornerstone of eroticism that Morin’s research identified is Searching for Power. That is, in fantasy or behavior, the person eroticizes a power differential between them and their sexual partner(s). For some people, they desire a feeling of power and control relative to their sexual partners. They are freed to be more erotic when their partner is submissive, inexperienced, or worshipful for example. Other people have erotic rivers that flow in the opposite direction. They more easily access their eroticism through having a powerful, sexy, experienced, or dominant partner. In one case the freedom to sexual expression is found through the force of your eroticism, in the other the eroticism of the other sweeps you into it. Using the concept of the river, these powerful currents can sweep the participants past any self-consciousness or fears. Flowing in opposite directions but always towards each other, these erotic currents create a whirlpool. The opposing currents bring the people rushing towards each other for an erotic consummation that leaves everyone feeling a little dizzy.

In alignment with the sexual health principles, this whirlpool could look like a protective and a nurturing partner, a consensually kinky dominant-submissive couple, or a high-powered roleplay between a “nurse” and “patient”. There are many other possible expressions and honestly, the details don’t matter that much. The thing to remember about that the erotic charge is intensified through partners occupying polarities.

When searching for power takes place out of alignment with the sexual health principles several complications can arise. I’ll offer one example, but keep in mind that the content of the example is less important that maintaining sexual health can allow this cornerstone to flow abundantly and happily. One challenging expression of the searching for power cornerstone takes place when one or the other person engages in taking the stance of the polarity without the engagement or participation of the other partner. When one person sets their current in the direction of another person, for example trying to be dominant when the partner hasn’t agreed to it explicitly, the person receiving the energy might feel violated and the one sending the energy might feel shocked, guilty, or ashamed when their energy is rebuffed. Therapy can help in this case too. I help clients navigate sexual negotiations, clear invitations, and finding and choosing partners who have matching erotic styles. Therapy can help clients who eroticize power dynamics without judgment.

Overcoming Ambivalence: Rapids

Sometimes a person doesn’t quite know where they want their erotic energy to flow. My favorite example of this is that person that you find attractive despite yourself. One part of you wants them, another part of you abhors the idea of being with them. The erotic river flows towards them and the next thought redirects the energy elsewhere. In my analogy, this is the erotic rapids. Coursing through narrow canyon passages, directed and redirected around boulders and obstacles, the river churns up a froth and noise that can become a massive feature of the erotic landscape. There are more everyday examples of the eroticization of ambivalence too. For example, there are times when I recommend that a client try a new sexual behavior to aid them with their therapeutic goals. In the process of trying something new sexually many people feel some reservation. They might think, “If I do this does it make me a slut?” or “If I try this will I be able to stop?” physiologically the anxiety and the excitement mingle together to create a potent form of sexual energy. When the person then finally dives in and tries the form of expression they were ambivalent about, the newness, the emotional release of the unknown, can leave them feeling like they just shot the rapids of a river and emerged charged with adrenaline and a little more alive for the experience.

In alignment with the sexual health principles, overcoming ambivalence could lead a client to have an expansive and varied sexual repertoire as they tackle one ambivalent behavior after another. For other clients, there’s a particular behavior they do rarely and about which they are always ambivalent but it remains a treasured feature of their erotic life which adds excitement and charge no matter how many times they try it. We certainly wouldn’t be surprised if someone wanted to go river rafting frequently and found a favorite river on which to do so.

When out of alignment with the sexual health principles, overcoming ambivalence could lead a person to feeling erotically charged with a pathway they don’t actually want to follow but uncertain about how to resolve the erotic tension. If they try to stop, they increase one side of the ambivalence dynamic and actually increase the temptation of the undesired expression. Therapy can help in those cases by helping the client notice and become more clear about what is desired within the ambivalence. What is it about that person at work that you want? Are they expressing your feelings about the company? Are they vocal about their needs in a way you aren’t? Does disrespecting them make it easier for you to think about sharing your more wild and uninhibited fantasies because you won’t value their opinion if they are turned off anyway? We can also look for the ways that because of the associated erotic charge, maybe the client is avoiding looking at important aspects of the erotic focus. For example, maybe once you examine the reasons for hesitating, there really isn’t a reason to not indulge this desire. Or maybe when you really examine the partner that you are feeling erotic ambivalence about, you will see that aside from one erotic characteristic, you don’t actually have any interest in them. You mentally thank them for showing that characteristic to you and then go looking for a more suitable partner who has that characteristic along with others that are important to you. But again, we focus on understanding and acceptance above all. The fact of the ambivalence, the fact of the desire itself is not a reason for shame and it is not pathological in itself.

Conclusion

Introducing the Cornerstone of Eroticism from Morin’s “The Erotic Mind” has taken two entries but I hope that it has done for you a little bit of what I have found useful for my clients in therapy. That is, I hope it has given you a lens for understanding that the way that your sexual river flows probably isn’t that unique. The core nature of your eroticism is not pathological in itself. I have hope that if you are finding the expressions of those energies problematic in your life, that therapy with a sex-positive therapist skilled in working with sexual issues (like me) can help you navigate the waters of your sexuality more skillfully while continuing to allow it freedom to seek expression.

Blog Posts in this Series:

Sexuality is a River

What is Erotic and Why? Part I

This is the second blog post in my series describing what I understand about the subjective experience of sexuality using the analogy of a river. You can find my first post in the series here: Sexuality Is a River. That post describes the perspective I write from and some caveats about what this analogy applies to and what it does not.

What is Erotic and Why? Section I

Let’s imagine a river starting in the mountains. As it begins to gather volume from tributaries and more rainfall, it picks a path downward based on a very simple principle: it follows the lowest ground, the path of least resistance. There are no human value systems involved in how the water flows. Even if guided or directed by human intervention, the water is still just following the physics of fluid-dynamics and gravity. Children scan the environment and learn about sexuality from their culture and their own bodies. How do we or how do we not express sexuality here? What options are available to me? What feels good? How do other people respond to my good feelings? Children navigate this maze of personal, interpersonal, and cultural feedback, and their rivers find a path for expression. Once discovered, their neurons reinforce the pathways, the early neurological river bed, that help establish that person’s erotic map, the branches, forks, deltas, and flood plains that their sexuality river traverses as it follows its ever-winding path down toward the lowest ground.

When my clients are frustrated about the specific destinations of their eroticism, I invite them to consider what it is about that destination that they find so problematic. Often, the problem is not that the river harms someone or the client, even indirectly, but the shame they feel because they believe rivers shouldn’t flow that way. They believe that eroticism shouldn’t seek expression in this or that particular fetish, interest, or behavior. From my perspective, their sexuality follows known patterns like a river follows the laws of physics. There are some characteristic patterns we know about in how sexual rivers flow. So, as strange as your sexuality may feel, it probably has very common features that we’ll recognize if we look at and understand the flow of sexuality rivers in general.

The force of eroticism that makes us giddy with excitement, flushed, and breathing hard comes when our river, in its downward stroll toward expression, reaches some obstacle. In the language of sexuality, author Jack Morin, the Core Erotic Equation is Attraction + Obstacle = Excitement. That is, when the river flows downward but is blocked, it builds enough force to overcome the obstacle. The force will burst the dam, the rapids will rush over the rocks, and the water will burst from its containment. Sexuality, like flowing water, will build the force that it needs to overcome obstacles raised to prevent expression. And once sexuality has found a path past the obstacle, it will flow more powerfully toward and through that avenue. That is, the obstacle becomes the very thing that sexuality seeks out and fetishizes and desires because your sexuality knows now how to surmount that obstacle. It knows that sexual expression can be found in that direction, so it flows in that direction over and over again. Morin’s book is excellent, and even if it is aging a bit, I still recommend it highly as the best explanation of what is erotic and why that I know of (Morin’s book on GoodReads).

Longing and Anticipation: The Waterfall

Morin goes further with this idea. Through his research, he was able to identify 4 Cornerstones of Eroticism. That is, these are four common ways that sexuality seeks expression through attraction and obstacle pairings. The first of these is Longing and Anticipation. I like to think of this as a waterfall. In the longing-and-anticipation dynamic, a person is thinking about the sexual expression they desire. They are unable to engage in that expression because of obstacles such as distance, parental vigilance, or a choice over time. From the moment of attraction to the moment of expression, the person imagines just what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. They don’t just want it, but they build a multi-dimensional sensory, cognitive, and emotional narrative around that sexual expression. The water leaps from the edge of the cliff, and from that moment it is no longer limited by earth below, free-falling, it is weightless. The fantasy can build force without the limitations or details of reality. Propelled out of the rock face by the speed at which it was flowing in the riverbed above, it plays with the wind and the light in a dramatic, romantic fashion until it joyfully, forcefully, and with spectacular noise and power crashes into the rocks below. Whatever the reality, when the longed-for expression arrives, it is the consummation and catharsis of a prior build-up of erotic force, just like the force the water built by falling from above.

In a healthy expression, this longing and anticipation are either mutual or at least accepted. Both people have agreed to cultivate and allow the sexual energy to be built this way. Love letters, sexting, phone sex, and building mutual fantasies could all be positive erotic examples of the longing and anticipation form of the sexual river flowing.

As romantic as longing and anticipation can be, when the erotic energy in the sexual river is not managed well, it may find expression through longing and anticipation that can feel like going out-of-control over a waterfall. For the recipient of that attention, it can feel more like being pummeled at the bottom of the waterfall by the pressure of a fire hose than receiving a rainbow-laced shower. When erotic energy is expressed in this way, it might look like obsessive behavior, stalking, repeated contact despite requests to stop, or an internal fantasy life in one person that is not shared or may even be feared by others. These challenges can be helped with therapy.

Since this is the first time I’ve looked concretely at challenging aspects of sexuality, I want to take a moment return to the positive perspective embedded in this metaphor. If I’m working with a client who feels their arousal around longing and anticipation has gotten out of control, they often feel shame and want it to stop. This metaphor offers a way out of the judgmental process that clients can easily fall into. That is, there is nothing wrong with longing and anticipation. Waterfalls are just fine. The client’s process of creativity and anticipation, which they enjoy and which helps them connect to their eroticism in its essence, is just fine. But where are they going to place that waterfall? How much energy are they going to put into it? And which partners love waterfalls and which ones don’t? These questions allow clients to free themselves from feeling that they are flawed in some essential way while also recognizing the value they have in being a more skillful manager of their sexual waterway.

Conclusion

As you may be able to tell, I place a lot of value in Morin’s framework. Clinically, I have found it very useful for helping my clients understand and accept their sexuality without shame while also working towards health. Here I have only presented the first of Morin’s Four Cornerstones of Eroticism. I will have to leave the remaining three cornerstones, Violating Prohibitions, Searching for Power, and Overcoming Ambivalence, to a subsequent post.

Once I’ve taught clients about their sexuality, they often say, “They should teach this in schools.”

This is a phrase that I hear repeatedly as a therapist. Most often this phrase comes after I have explained a principle of relationships or sexuality. It is one of the reasons that sex therapists use the PLISSIT model for therapy (which stands for Permission giving, Limited Information, Specific Suggestions, and Intensive Therapy). The PLISSIT model includes giving people information about their sexuality because that alone may be enough to resolve the problems. Even when people get accurate, value neutral information about sexuality in school, the information that we get is usually medical information but not about the subjective experiences of sexual desire, arousal, and attraction.

I’ve decided to try to write out the core principles that I have learned about sexuality. I’m going to be frank about the source and nature of these principles. Some of these principles have science behind them and where I am aware of that, I will provide citations. However, other principles here have come more through my repeated experience of providing therapy to individuals and couples about a wide range of sexual issues as well as my experience navigating and learning from the nature of my sexuality. In that sense, I have a skewed sample of people who have problems with their sexuality (people without problems with their sexuality don’t come in for sex therapy). My personal experience is also biased. As a bisexual, polyamorous, cis-presenting, white, Midwestern, male-bodied person I have an experience of my sexuality that may inform these principles in ways that won’t generalize to people with gender identities and biological sexes different from my own. Not to mention the many other biographical details that have informed my personal sexual journey. Please take these principles for what they are worth to you and discard anything that is not of service to you. They are not necessarily truths, but my truth for now. I’m going to begin with a broad metaphor for sexuality that I will use throughout this series.

I want to add a final caveat about the limits of this analogy. This analogy is not intended to help people understand sexual predation. People who engage in those behaviors work with different kinds of therapists than me. I do not know enough about those behaviors to use analogies to explain them. Moreover, what I do know about nonconsensual sexual behavior it is that the causes are less about sex than about power and violence so this analogy wouldn’t explain them. So, when I’m talking about sexuality finding expression past obstacles in this series keep in mind that I’m not talking about rape, sexual assault, or other forms of nonconsensual behavior. When a person does that it isn’t about sexual expression anymore, that is violence.

Sexuality is a River

This metaphor seems to work well for helping people understand some important elements of the nature of sexuality. Like most rivers, sexuality flows more vigorously during some seasons of life and at others, the force of the river decreases. For people who identify as sexual, the river or the potential for that river is always present. It is a constant potential energy that is a part of our experience. We identify things that are sexually relevant in the environment, we have a sense of our own sexual nature, we notice the sexual nature of others, and at least sometimes, our sexuality seeks expression. In the language of the metaphor I’m using, sexual expression is the process of the water flowing downhill. Just as rivers flow, sexuality seeks expression.

This metaphor gives us a lot of analogies for playing with how sexuality behaves. For people with out-of-control sexual behavior (see another post about treating out-of-control sexual behavior here) the river floods parts of their lives in undesirable ways. For others, the river creates fertile ground for cultivating nourishing of crops like connection, pleasure, and stress relief (see a post about sexual generativity here). Some people try to dam their rivers by limiting certain sexual behaviors. For some who do this, they are able to sublimate their sexual energy and use it for other purposes. In the language of the metaphor, they create hydroelectric power with their dam. Others find that the flow of the river is greater than their dam can sustain and the river threatens to spill over in uncontrolled ways. By comparing the flow of sexuality to the river, we can remove shame. A river is a force of nature. We can manage it with dams, dikes, locks, and spillways, we can utilize it for industrial purposes, entertainment, crops, and transportation but we are not in any of these uses ever really in control of the river; we are in relationship with the river. We cannot simply will the river to behave a different way. We must attend to understand and accept how it actually behaves in order to have a hope of living with it harmoniously and safely.

We do not shame nature when it behaves in ways that were unexpected or unusual. We notice that this has happened and then we make adjustments to how we relate to the river knowing what we have learned about its capacities. Similarly, when sexuality comes with an interest in something that is unexpected or expresses itself somewhere not desired by self or others, shame does nothing to resolve the challenging expression. The nature and capacities of the river do not change with shame. That your sexuality has the capacity to find that thing attractive is now know. That it might express itself in that way in this person, is now understood. This is the nature of your sexual river. We can ask, why it flooded. We can inquire about whether it is possible for this river to flow other ways. We can even identify that we don’t want the river to flow that way (in a future post I will discuss erotic conflicts). But neither these questions nor their answers will change the nature of the river. To say that it shouldn’t flow that way will not stop it from flowing that way anymore with a sexual river than an actual one.

This is not to say that we do not have choices about the flow of our sexual river. In my experience as a person and as a clinician, we can in fact divert and direct our rivers to some degree but we must do so respectful of the nature of the river or our efforts will fail. This capacity to direct our sexuality is limited though. We cannot change our sexual orientations and a future post will describe why not using the same analogy. We also cannot will our sexuality to not exist. However, if a person has not satisfied their sexual desires for a long time, they might seek sexual expression through an avenue they wouldn’t normally choose and might later regret like an affair. To prevent them from making that choice of expression in the future (i.e., have an affair), we might suggest that they not create the conditions led to that expression (i.e., maintain regular pleasurable sexual expression through desirable outlets). Using the river analogy, if the river overflowed in way that was not desirable, try to find ways of allowing the flow of the river to continue so that the force does not build, waiting for an opportunity for expression.

Over several subsequent posts, I will continue to identify new principles and to use the analogy of the river to articulate what I hope are some valuable principles about sexuality.

In attempting to help clients figure out how to decrease relationship reactivity during their relationships, I’ve come up with a metaphor that helps people begin practicing a more confident and peaceful responses. Before I get to that, I’ll describe high reactivity through the same metaphor. Imagine that your partner has started a conversation with a bit of a barb in it. Maybe they walk into the kitchen while you are about your business and say, “Why are you doing that?” The extra emphasis on “that” belies contempt for the way you are doing it beneath the seemingly innocuous question. Maybe just to add a bit of flair to this description, we can even imagine that your partner has added that particular quirk to their head that you know suggests a degree of insult to the question. This partner of yours, having lobbed the opening salvo has just breathed fire in your direction and you are the armor-clad knight in the line of fire.

High Reactivity: Fighting the Dragon

Some people will take the dragon’s singeing assault as an invitation to begin the conflict and reply with an equally snide, “What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m making dinner! If you don’t like the way I’m doing it, you can do it yourself!” Maybe your reactivity isn’t that extreme. Maybe you just reply in a tight clipped tone, “I’m making dinner. Why?” The dragon, being in their own mind a knight just like you, hears that defensive “why?” as your first flaming breath weapon and this sets them on defense. Maybe the conflict escalates from there by small measures until, by the time you are eating the dinner and she asks how your mother is doing, the conflict opens up into full scale competitive volcanic eruptions.

High Reactivity: Running Away from the Dragon

The fair knight so burned, retreats from the field of battle. Maybe after your partner asks you why you are doing it “that” way you avoid the conflict by internalizing the criticism you hear. The wound is just another of those small wounds that leaves you seething beneath the surface. You might think to yourself, “What would I say back to the them anyway?” and your thoughts might continue, “They’re always going on like that.” So you decide that there’s nothing I can do about them. you’ll just nurse these third-degree emotional burns for later passive-aggressive eye-rolling at a later date. Even though you didn’t openly create a conflict, you have engaged in high reactivity. You withdrew and fostered resentments [LINK] which decrease intimacy and increase the risk for future conflict

How to Befriend the Dragon

There are two steps to befriending the dragon, protecting yourself with a fire-proof tower shield and asking to be friends with the dragon.

Lower Reactivity: Fire-Proof Shield

That first moment of criticism, blame, or dismissal must be met with some method of protecting one’s self from the flame. Here are a couple of my favorites with a specific example of how it would apply in the example of the partner who comes into the kitchen asking about why you are doing it like “that”.

• Confidence in your good nature: Your internal dialogue might deflect the implied criticism by just reminding yourself, “I’m doing good work here and I’m pretty sure that I know how to do it.”
• Confidence in your partner’s good nature: You might deflect your partner’s irritating tone by reminding yourself that “They love me and that whatever the source of that tone, it probably isn’t my kitchen skills.”
• Contextualizing this issue in a larger frame of reference: Sometimes, especially if fire-breathing is rare in your relationship, you can remember that in the grand scheme of your lives together this moment of criticism is relatively minor and infrequent.

One way or another, if you can avoid personalizing the criticism and demonizing your partner, you can keep cool despite the fire breathing dragon and then ask for a parley.

Lower Reactivity: Asking to be Friends

So, your partner breathed fire at you for a second. Your next response helps determine whether the nascent conflict escalates or deescalates. Here are some of my favorite ways to make friends out of dragons, again with illustrative examples from the kitchen:

• Curiosity: With a gentle tone you reply, “Just making dinner. Why do you ask?”
• Empathy: With a gentle tone you reply, “I’m just making dinner. What’s going on for you?”
• Naming the Challenge: With a gentle tone, “I’m just making dinner. Is there something wrong? It sounded like you might be critical of something I’m doing?”
• Take off your armor: Without anger but with vulnerability you say, “Hey, I’m a little vulnerable today and I’m not sure if you meant to but it sounded like you were being critical of me. Can you be gentle with me?”
• Name the burn: Gently you say, “I’m trying to make dinner but when you come in and use that tone, I feel deflated because my need for encouragement isn’t met. Can you say that again a little softer?” [Bonus points to you dear reader if you recognize this as an example of non-violent communication]
• Identify the impulse to fight: Gently you say, “When you come in and ask me what I’m doing with that tone, I find myself inclined to be defensive or to fight back. I don’t want to fight because I love you. Could you ask that question in a way that helps me be more gentle with you in response?”
• Do over: Playfully you say, :That tone was a little heated. Want a do over?”

There are probably an infinite number of other ways to befriend the dragon and sometimes using the metaphor helps you find a new. So rather than simply ending this entry I’m going to leave you with some work. Below is a bullet list of concepts from within the metaphor, try to imagine yourself what that metaphor might look like if applied to real life:

• Bring the dragon flowers.
• We all know dragons can’t breath fire when they laugh  or smile right? How could you make your dragon smile?
• Give the dragon a glass of water to douse the flames.
• Remove a thorn from the dragon’s paw.

If this tool is compelling, check out my book for men about consent, relationships, and hotter sex.