Aphrodite’s son and the god of carnal love and desire, Eros is associated with the ancient Greek ‘mystery religions’. Because of this, little is really known about the practices of Eros worship compared to other gods and goddesses, although he pops up in myths regularly. The word ‘Erotic’ is derived from his namesake and from the verb ‘Eros’, meaning “to join, tie, or fasten together.” Ancient Greece defined Eros as one of the four types of love, Eros being passionate, sexual or romantic love that drives humans to deep connection. Then, there is the myth of Eros and Psyche, which is pretty strange and non-consensual in parts. In Apuleius’ novel, The Golden Ass, an old woman tells the tale to a girl who is nervous about her upcoming marriage. It features arrows, razors, jewelled palaces, visiting hell, vicious mothers–in-law, lots of nearly jumping off towers, sorting out various lentils, and sex in the dark. Whilst it does have a happy(ish) ending, I would not find it reassuring ahead of imminent nuptials. (However, it’s definitely worth reading and surprisingly relevant to some of my former experiences.) I feel that, perhaps, the reason this myth is so important is that it gets co-opted by Christian mythology and turned into an educative allegory, eventually mutating into a saccharine graphic on a Valentine’s Day card.
Eros, or his Roman name, Cupid, has permeated pop culture and become a symbolic touchstone for how some express their love or desire. Whether it is singer Connie Francis’ Stupid Cupid, who won’t stop picking on her, or the Christian Gnostic text On the Origin of the World, which explains that the first rose is created from the blood of Psyche when she loses her virginity to Cupid (cute): Eros is present, even if we can’t define what erotic intelligence is made up of. But, of course, if anyone wants to take the word of the ancient Greeks and make it sexual, it’s Freud, who had a lot to say about Eros and what it means for us as people, out of its literal or allegorical sense. Freud identified two ‘drives’ or motivations that both coincide and conflict within ourselves and with other people: Eros and Thanatos. Thanatos, the drive for death and self-destruction can be left for another essay, and we can look at Eros: the drive of life, love, creativity, and sexuality, self-satisfaction, and species preservation. It is not merely the act of sex, but as Iggy Pop would say, a lust for life. When thinking about our relationships, erotic connection is an essential part of sexual and romantic ones. But all that is erotic is not sex – it’s also creativity and self-preservation – but having elements of the erotic is important in sex. As Amy O’Hana explains in her essay, Ontology of The Erotic: Toward an Applied Theory of Erotic Intelligence, “...contemporary uses of the word erotic most often refer to sexuality and intimate partner relationships, and the current dictionary definition equates erotic with sexuality, sexual desire, and/or romantic relationships. However, like thinkers throughout the ages, contemporary scholars continue to refer to Eros as a life-giving force (Gafni & Kincaid, 2017; Perel, 2017), indicating metaphysical attributes to this phenomenon.” So, does the metaphysical elevate Eros from the drive of the libido? Does it elevate it from just having sex and procreating, into a creative and sustaining life force? Our erotic intelligence must be more than libidinal, more than understanding of what turns us, or others, on.
Esther Perel’s book, Mating in Captivity, is a case study of various relationships and their attitudes toward sex, stability and the erotic. With regards to what erotic intelligence is, through Perel, it appears to be about maintaining autonomy within the relationship, and distance in order to reconnect: “erotic intelligence is about creating distance, then bringing that space to life.” Perel’s attitude, whilst she is a sophisticated thinker, seems to centre around quite straightforward things we would naturally do using what we would call ‘emotional intelligence’, like giving your lover space and not smothering them. Quite simply put, “When two become one—connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with. Thus, separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex.” This is not a dissimilar notion to psychoanalytic psychotherapist and essayist Adam Phillips’ statement in Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life. Phillips says: “If you want to be with somebody who gets you, you prefer collusion to desire, safety to excitement (sometimes good things to prefer, but not always the things most wanted). The wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as adults, to the grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers off the hook for their not meeting our every need.” I shan’t make any jokes about Freud’s frequency of blaming mothers, or how Phillips’ translations of Freud may have influenced his own work, but it’s the idea of safety and excitement being mutually exclusive that interests me. Returning to Perel, she explains that distance and mystery are necessary for desire, and as I have discussed with friends in the past, sometimes one needs to not shatter the illusion, or bring too much reality into a very real relationship. For example, my lover does not know about the intimate details of my bodily upkeep. This to me is not dishonest, but rather keeping up the pretense of this illusion, even though we live together. Or, when either of us travels for work, and are allowed the opportunity to miss each other, the uncertainty of what they are doing or if someone else is interested in them, can recreate the anxiety at the start of a relationship. Perel explains that “Eroticism resides in the ambiguous space between anxiety and fascination”, which can be seen through personal experience when you first embark on a relationship and the uncertainty provides that thrill and sexual desire, as though there is more to be discovered, if you get the opportunity to. The uncertainty of when you will see them next, what they are doing, how they are feeling, provides an uncertainty that in no way resembles a routine at this point in the relationship.
A frequent complaint of Perel’s clients is that the couple in question love each other intensely, but the sex for whatever reason, dwindles or stops completely. Perel feels that modernity has made our partner, and sometimes our children, the be all and end all, and that we expect all of our needs to be satisfied by one person. Perel writes in her chapter on reconciling the erotic and the domestic that, “Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did [...] we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?” Is this perhaps why we need to close the bathroom door, so to speak? Do we need to shatter some of our domestically blissful routine to provide the ‘space’ for our eroticism? Is knowing when to maintain our autonomy the key to our erotic intelligence? But surely, erotic intelligence can’t be entirely defined by independence and space. Is this what really leads us to our creativity and self-gratification? Perel continues by saying “If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected [...]But too often, as couples settle into the comforts of love, they cease to fan the flame of desire. They forget that fire needs air.” The fire of eroticism continuing to burn through a rejection of routine is not a unique or new metaphor. We’ve heard Johnny Cash sing about it, and Anaïs Nin writes in Delta of Venus saying that “The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.” Whilst an excess of opium or wine in one’s life can hardly be called a sensible attitude toward erotic intelligence, an excess of diversity seems to be key. A dear friend of mine told me that “the key to being interesting in life, is to be interested,” so is this the key to being erotically intelligent, and our ability to maintain interest and curiosity in our eroticism? Perhaps we need to reassess regularly what it means, for us and our partner or lover. It can sound a little like we are being told merely to ‘spice it up in the bedroom’ by adding new things, but to me, these pieces of advice read more like we are being encouraged to engage with an authentic curiosity, and to be as proactive as we are reactive.
I wonder if it would be reductive of me to say that perhaps our erotic intelligence can be best defined by having positive and engaging relationships with ourselves and others? If we maintain our own independence, curiosity, autonomy, hobbies, interests and space, we are ultimately more interesting to those that surround us. And, it does work. I remember messaging a friend saying that I must spend more time making art, because the person I want to love me loves artists. And if they don’t, I have become an artist through making art, which is my life’s ambition. This wasn’t a desire to become the perfect woman in their eyes, but in my own (so I won’t accept any ‘changing for your lover’ criticism, nor do I have the word count for the ‘what is the artist’ debate, thank you). As with all things, being interested, listening, and being curious must be paramount for our erotic intelligence, as it is with our libidinal intelligence. We listen, react, respond, apply pressure, adapt and surrender when having sex, all of which we could attribute to our greater understanding of Eros. I am not writing out the body, the metaphysical, or even the divine from an understanding of erotic intelligence. However, I am suggesting that it is possible to understand it without using the language of ancient mystics. If that lexical field works for you, if you wish to understand it using those metaphors, I highly commend you. (Perhaps it is my cynicism or dislike of that vernacular that will prevent me from truly ‘holding space’ for a sexual nirvana.) However, for me, I believe that our erotic intelligence is an innate and ongoing conversation, centred around curiosity and creativity, with yourself, and your partner (or, partners).
