by Gary Borjesson
Note: Since it is February, and since the world can surely use more love, I offer this as a little Valentine’s gift, dedicated to romantic love. Its inspiration is Stephen Mitchell’s book, Can Love Last? This is not a book review but an invitation to reflect on romantic love, with Mitchell as our guide.
In my early twenties I fell in love with a woman who couldn’t color inside the lines. Brilliant, sensitive, and adventurous, but unreliable, addicted, and self-destructive. Around that time I was also in love with an amazing woman who was healthier and more reliable, if also (like me) less dangerously exciting. I felt conflicted: Should I embrace a more romantic and adventurous life, or choose something safer and more sustainable? My gut told me that choosing adventure in this case would end in heartbreak and bad habits. My heart was split between wanting safety and wanting danger. My head didn’t know what to think.
Many of us face a similar bind, whether to choose safety or adventure. Whether to plan ahead or live more spontaneously and passionately. Whether to hit the open road or put down roots. In his fascinating and wise book, Can Love Last? the fate of romance over time, psychoanalyst Stephen Mitchell addresses this bind, and offers a way through. The way begins by recognizing that romantic love is actually constituted through the tension between “the ordinary and transcendent, safety and adventure, the familiar and the novel, that runs through human experience.”
So, how do we make true love? In Mitchell’s grand vision, it’s not about siding with passion or security, it’s about about bringing them into the living conversation that is romantic love. In the final chapter of Can Love Last Mitchell sums up his argument
deeper more authentic commitments in love entail not a devotion to stasis but a dedication to process in the face of uncertainty. Genuine passion, in contrast to its degraded forms, is not split off from a longing for security and predictability, but is in a continual dialectical relationship with that longing.
Mitchell’s way of putting it would have appealed to my 22-year-old self, who would soon be going off to grad school in philosophy. Back then, however, I didn’t have the maturity or self-awareness to put this wisdom into practice—even if I could have appreciated the theory. Nevertheless, for those who want to make love that lasts, Mitchell’s book offers insight and inspiration. Many practical suggestions can also be gleaned.
In a recent session, a patient in a committed relationship worried that she was starting to hate things about her boyfriend, and that’s typically a sign that “the relationship is falling part.” I suggested that she consider welcoming her hate as a sign of increasing intimacy. (That surprised her!) Yet, as Mitchell writes, “A love that has endured episodic aggression has a depth and resilience obtainable in no other way. Because of love’s profound risks, hatred is its inevitable accompaniment, and, paradoxically, the survival of romance depends not on skill in avoiding aggression but on the capacity to contain it alongside love.” It’s weirdly reassuring to recognize that hating and fighting can be as much a way of making love as sex is. (This is another thing I wish my 22-year-old self had known.) This practical knowledge can transform relationships.
No exploration of romantic love can ignore sex. Mitchell doesn’t offer specific advice for a better sex life, but, philosophically minded as he is, he trusts that good theory can lead to better practice. Let’s start with Mitchell’s wry observation that “most of us still believe that our self is reflected and expressed in our sexuality, a belief that makes the pursuit of romance, within or outside long-standing relationships, a popular life’s work.” I don’t know about you, but I still relate to this. Sex is a deep theme of romantic love, for reasons we’ll see. But first let’s get more context.
Until his death in 2000, Mitchell was a founder and leading theorist of ‘relational psychoanalysis.’ Relational psychoanalysis sees our personalities as emerging through engagement with others. To see relationships as the central force making us who we are marks an ontological shift from Freud’s influential ‘ego psychology,’ which sees personality development as a largely individual matter. For Freud, the central forces lie within, as instincts, id, ego, and superego.
Mitchell’s relational perspective is obviously well-suited to his study of romantic love. Recall that romantic love itself emerges from the “dialectical relationship” between the longing for passion and security. He deftly weaves together ideas from science, philosophy, psychology, and even the blues. Case studies drawn from his decades of practice as a psychoanalyst bring the ideas and argument to life. Indeed—and now we’re circling back to sex—many of his patients are reckoning (as I was) with some sort of split related to passion vs. security. One patient loves and adores his beautiful wife, but has zero interest in sex with her. This bothers him, but it also bothers her!
Ironically, as the ensuing analysis reveals, the reasons for his lack of interest underscore a key theme running through Mitchell’s book. While security in all its guises seems to weaken or kill romantic love over time, in fact it serves as “a protective degradation, a defense against the vulnerability inherent in romantic love.” In other words, lovers are often unwitting co-conspirators in neutering romance so as to limit its destabilizing dangers. Thus we go looking for sex outside the relationship, or in pornography, in order to avoid bringing disruptive Eros into the home, worried (rightly) that it might undermine our secure attachment.
“One of the most significant features of sexual desire,” writes Mitchell, “is that it puts us in the position of needing another….Pornography offers the wonderful combination of stimulation in the context of simulation—risk-free desire. It is like shooting fish in a barrel. You can’t miss.” (No wonder we’re not having more sex with each other.) Self-pleasure, or sex with someone outside the committed relationship, provides an escape not just from the disruptive effects of desire, but from the vulnerability of needing others, and by extension, of being disappointed by them, or hating them.
Mitchell’s book abounds with thought-provoking reflections on sex, fantasy, aggression, guilt, self-pity, commitment, and more. To give you a taste of his range, in a variation on the theme of sex and vulnerability, he notes that “the density of nerve endings on our genitalia, fitted out by evolution to motivate intimate contact with others and procreation (that’s clinical speak for “getting off”) paradoxically leads to the sense that our felt experience of sex is deeply interior and private.” Sex and orgasm can lead to a powerful sense of union with your partner, while at the same time remaining an intensely private felt experience.
I can’t resist mentioning one other variation on the theme of sex and vulnerability. It’s a common joke that women can fake their pleasure, so much so that their partners can be left feeling insecure, asking the question (that few have ever asked a man), ‘Did you come?’ It’s in this context that Mitchell tells us about psychoanalyst Leslie Farber’s view that men are more sexually insecure and jealous partly because their sexual response is more visible than women’s. Erections and orgasms (or the lack of them) cannot be disguised, and this literally leaves men exposed (wearing their desire on their sleeve, so to speak) in ways that women are not.
Mitchell’s book offers something unusual, practical wisdom on the subject of romantic love. When they’re as sensitive and thoughtful as Mitchell or Esther Perel, psychotherapists are among the few professionals who can meaningfully address issues of romantic love as they arise in all the messy specificity of our personal lives. They do so guided by a theoretical frame that can in turn help patients and readers clarify their own experience. (Or listeners—check out Perel’s excellent podcast, Where Should We Begin? for a master class in couples and sex therapy. By the way, she credits Mitchell’s work as a formative influence.)
Let me close with some more quasi-practical advice for making love last. It’s at the heart of Mitchell’s book, and goes back at least to Socrates: if you want good love, get to know yourself and cultivate awareness of how you relate to others; otherwise, you’re at the mercy of your instincts, reactions, and habits. As Mitchell notes, “Knowing oneself is a complicated business, because knowing one version of oneself can be a defense against knowing and being surprised by other versions of oneself.”
Putting it this way can make it sound as if one needs therapy to suss out one’s defenses—what’s with my hate, or why do I lack interest in sex with my partner?—in order to make love last. Obviously, that’s not true. What I think is true, however, is that we come to know ourselves and develop our capacity to love only with help from others. To be is to be in relation. The good news is that, if we’re lucky, those others can be our lovers and friends—as well as the occasional paid professional!
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