Transforming Sexuality
Changing the Context of Conquest
Diana
Alstad and
Joel
Kramer
Diana: These times feel very
unique for men and women. On the one hand, there
is a chance for intimacy and understanding that
can transform old modes into a new way of approaching
life. Awareness of sex role conditioning, more
space for women to define and support themselves,
and men's increasing need and willingness to
share some of their burdens and responsibilities,
may offer us an opportunity to move out of the
proverbial battle of the sexes. On the other
hand, as you look around, there seems to be
crisis everywhere, in couples and families,
and tension, broken relationships, pain, and
conflict.
Joel: The very crisis is a
sign that old structures are breaking down,
making a new way possible and indeed necessary.
How can a species survive if its two parts are
locked in conflict? If we are to survive, a
new balance between men and women will have
to be created. Right now the amount of energy
locked in male-female problems is enormous,
preventing us from facing other vital challenges
freshly.
Diana: There is such pain
and confusion because the problems we're facing
are unprecedented and can only be solved through
a transformation in the way we approach relationships.
If men and women could learn how to be open
and supportive with each other, we could meet
this challenge and bring about a needed harmony.
Our present problems are linked not only to
obvious areas of tension, such as unequal power,
but also to the very ways in which we attract
each other. Love and sexuality are out of kilter.
People who are "good for you" or "friends"
are often not the ones who turn you on sexually;
in fact, it seems hard to find a lover and a
friend in the same person.
Joel: One of the main problems
is that we don't seem willing to let go of the
pleasures and seeming advantages of traditional
ways of relating. If we look more closely at
what attracts men and women, we can see that
much of it is not related to love at all - nor
to respect, care, and understanding.
Diana: Let's go into what
sexual attraction is all about, where it comes
from, and what keeps it going. Why does the
great passion of a new romance later get lost
in conflict, hurt, boredom, or merely comfort?
The very nature of sexual desire and what we
think of as "romance" often sets people
up for failure before they have had a chance
to create their own unique relationship.
Joel: Understanding how and
why this occurs can change the way you approach
relationship, and transform its internal dynamic.
As we talk about this, it's important to keep
in mind we're discussing a model or cultural
prototype whose elements can be found in most
relationships at some level, at some point.
Part of what ignites sexual desire are conditionings
which have both mechanical and self-centered
aspects. Far from reducing sex to this, our
interest is in freeing sexuality as much as
possible from these deep programmings. The only
way to free yourself is first to realize that
you are operating "on automatic."
Making unconscious programming conscious removes
some of its power to move and determine you.
Diana: We're talking about
patterns and tendencies, realizing that a model
cannot exhaust the variety and complexity of
encounters. People do break out of patterns
and go beyond them, and it's easier to do so
if each person can learn to recognize these
tendencies in him or herself - to see them,
not to judge or try to get rid of them.
Joel: Throughout history different
groups - from Freud to feminism - have tried
to analyze and understand sexuality and its
conflicts. But by and large, men and women have
not joined hands, without blame or self-justification,
to look at how the "male-female dance"
works and what each sex brings to it. Usually
when they discuss the subject, each side tries
to show how their own sex has it "worse"
and the other is to blame. This attitude, due
to anger and resentment between the sexes, is
understandable, but it is important to recognize
that it's not conducive to objectivity.
Diana: A big problem with
romance and sexual desire is they are usually
based on images that prevent you from seeing
the other person as he or she is. It is the
image that attracts you. Since the images are
fairly one-dimensional, they don't hold up well
over time or when the real "nitty-gritty"
of living together starts. The less you face
everyday issues, the longer romance lasts -
hence the popularity of affairs, flings, et
cetera. It's a shock when the pressures of reality
start breaking down the images. If not much
else was there, there's no support to hold the
relationship together while it shifts to a new
foundation. When images crack, a stronger glue
is needed, such as care, openness, and common
interests. Another element that makes communication
difficult is that old saying, "Opposites
attract." Each sex is attracted to what
it lacks. A different age or lifestyle, a foreigner
or different class or background can accentuate
the difference by its seeming mystery.
Joel:
Traditionally, beauty and power fed these images.
Over the centuries, women's physical attributes
are what have attracted men sexually. Women,
on the other hand, have tended to respond more
to men's power than to their looks. This power
expresses itself in many ways: physical strength;
dominance over other males; wealth; ability
to mold the external environment through politics,
art, and science; and even sometimes power in
the relationship. (Though this is often a source
of great conflict). Each sex subtly, or not
so subtly, rewards the other for developing
those qualities which attract it, and in so
doing helps determine the ideals of masculinity
and femininity.
Diana: At the same time men
and women put each other down for those very
differences: women for being "vain, overly
emotional, weak and dependent" and men
for being "competitive, domineering, aggressive,
closed." This is just one of the many binds
each sex puts the other in, one of the many
ways each manages to feel superior to the other.
The women's movement has been very critical
of traditional sexuality based on beauty and
power. Suspicious of romance, many feminists
turned instead to friendship as a basis for
love and became interested in how to infuse
it with passion or sexuality. Friendship seemed
closer to the new ideals, which involved getting
rid of power plays and sex roles, so that there
could be more equality and sharing. But the
conditionings linked to sexual desire run very
deep and don't change overnight merely because
you don't like what's happening and postulate
new values. In fact, these new values often
make it even harder for you to look at how you
function, because you will be judging, censoring,
or disliking yourself according to the new ideals.
You don't really give yourself a chance to understand,
to see more clearly how and why you are that
way and what you are getting out of it.
Joel: No action is feedback-free:
Everything we do fuels something - some pleasure,
fear, security, or habit. Often our newly acquired
values are reactions against aspects in ourselves
which we don't like. But reactions don't free
us, since we act out our conditioning in a new
disguise. A real change of values comes from
a deep place that is not reactive.
Diana: In spite of heightened
awareness in the last ten years, I think men are
still sexually turned on to beauty and women to
power in very deep ways. What's new is that people
are no longer satisfied with this way of relating
and, out of their dissatisfaction, are experimenting
more with their lives.
Joel: Another aspect of romance
that people don't usually want to look at, even
though it brings great conflict, is what role
"conquest" plays in this. You know,
it's what those "love" stories are
about in novels and movies - the thing that
comes before "The End," where they
tack on "And they lived happily ever after."
The "ever after" is, of course, real
life. The stories stop just when their life
together begins, because people are more interested
in the romantic element that contains conquest
and images. This is how I see it working: The
lust or desire a man feels for a woman is not
unlike the excitement of "the hunt."
He sees something and he wants it, wants to
possess it, take it, win it. And then, after
getting it, he's no longer turned on in the
same way, so he moves on to something else -
another woman, business, or golf.
Diana: At first when the woman
feels the power of his desire, this male energy
being totally focused into her can turn her
on tremendously, if the man interests her. It's
hard not to feel flattered and special as the
cause of this surge in him. This is a traditional
source of female power. She might play hard
to get if she has learned how to make the hunt
more interesting. Yet, the game is itself often
a source of great ambivalence, as power comes
from withholding and passion from surrender.
Playing hard to get often does in fact attract
the man more.
Joel: Yes, it's more exciting
to hunt tigers than rabbits. The woman, being
the focal point of his desire, naturally assumes
that she is the cause as well as the object
of it; but the energy of that desire stems more
from the play of it than from her as a person.
He may not realize this either, and so he is
not really lying to her, for these mechanisms
often operate at unconscious levels. When involved
in conquest, he is in one psychological space;
afterwards he is in another. In fact, many men
feel bad when they see this trend in themselves
and understand how self-centered it is.
Diana: Both sexes are taught
to play "conquest and surrender" from
an early age. Girls learn very young, often
from the way their fathers treat them, that
men respond more to cutesy coyness than to directness.
So they are rewarded for being manipulative
and later criticized for it. This puts the woman
in the double bind: She's forced to be gamy
to keep the man's attention, but he puts her
down severely for being a "tease"
when she "leads him on without coming through."
(This can be used to justify rape, because a
tease deserves it, the logic goes.)
Joel: Men learn young that
what counts in the world is what other men think
of them, and that women can be useful insofar
as they bolster adequacy or impress other men.
It's important to see how much the need for
adequacy affects men's relationships and sexuality.
In romantic literature conquest referred mainly
to sexual conquest, because it was assumed that
when a woman gave herself sexually, she gave
herself totally. The so-called sexual revolution,
however, has shaken this up, now that playing
hard to get is in many circles considered old-fashioned.
Since sexuality is no longer symbolic of total
commitment, much of the hunt has shifted its
focus from the sexual act to winning the total
being, the heart and mind, of the other person.
There is still much play in the sexual field,
but the serious hunt is at a deeper level and
plays itself out in many ways, with sexuality
as just one aspect of it. Conquest can even
be played out in the confines of marriage or
a couple relationship, until one person wins
the other totally.
Diana: Conquest can string
itself out for years now, because people are
more reluctant to get involved. They may not
be as hard to get sexually, but fear of being
trapped and missing out makes the field of emotional
conquest more challenging.
Joel: One way conquest works
is that there's more power in denial than in
giving in to the other - this holds true for
both the man and the woman. So much of the power
in relationship is linked to who wants whom
more, which can shift back and forth. This leaves
little room for love. When you open up to loving
someone, you become vulnerable, which gives
the other person a certain amount of control
over you. But since men are conditioned to want
to be in control, and women are attracted to
men's strength, which they also associate with
control, there's a tendency for both men and
women to mistake love and vulnerability for
weakness. In conquest the one who opens to love
is often punished, for that very opening may
cause the other to withdraw. If a woman wins
a man's heart, he can seem less strong and interest
her less, too. Now women are more into hunting,
while some men are trying to open emotionally,
so the dynamics are shifting.
Diana: Traditionally a woman's
choice of man largely determined the life she
would lead. Perhaps one reason women have been
attracted to power is that they have not shared
equally in institutional power; therefore they
looked to men for survival and the quality of
their lives. Self-interest can unconsciously
condition one to act in ways that bring security
and protection. Material dependency necessarily
creates psychic dependency. If women were sharing
material power, then they wouldn't need to hook
onto men to survive. Naturally, all of this
influences sexuality.
Joel: What is needed, of course,
is a sharing of institutional power. What is
also needed is for both men and women to develop
an inner strength based on feelings of real
adequacy, rather than relying on external sources
of power to bolster themselves. Anything
that comes to you externally can be taken away.
Institutional power does not satisfy internal
adequacy, and consequently you can never really
get enough of it to feel secure. Real strength,
which comes from one's capacity to meet challenges
freshly, cannot be taken away.
Diana: It's easy to mistake
external power for inner strength. Another problem
is that in centering around a man, women tend
to set their own development aside. Current
reactions against this and against traditional
sex roles have contributed their share to the
confusion. As a result, each sex is putting
the other one into new binds. Women's new message
to men is "Be more open and emotional;
give up some power and share it with me so we
can have an equal relationship." Sometimes
when the man lets go of traditional male ego
supports and opens up more, paradoxically, the
woman may lose sexual interest in him. I have
often heard women say, "I have a problem.
My husband has opened up to me in new ways;
he is sharing his fears and weaknesses, and
he has become a real friend now. I love him,
but I'm not turned on to him sexually anymore,
and I don't know what to do about it. We're
both very upset."
Joel: Images of male power
are associated with being invulnerable - being
"cocksure." When a man gets in touch
with emotions and fears and lets go of old self-images,
at first he doesn't have anything to replace
them with.
Diana: In this transition
he does seem floundering and lost. It's hard
to be turned on by someone who isn't feeling
good about himself. The man needs time to develop
an identity based on inner sources of strength
and adequacy.
Joel: The man's new message
to the woman is."Be more independent -
I don't want to support you or have you be so
clinging and emotionally dependent." Yet
a large part of him is still into having her
center her life around him, for that feeds his
adequacy, his desire for control, and gives
him power and security. There is a freedom in
having the women stronger and more independent,
but he's used to the old pleasures of having
her dependent on him. So men's double message
to women is: "Be strong and independent,
but still center around me."
The major problem is that both sexes are asking
the other to change without being fully cognizant
that they, too, must change. This means women
getting stronger and more independent. A further
necessity is for each sex to find this integration
in the other attractive, which involves changing
the way desire has been conditioned in us. Since
the roots of attraction are so deeply conditioned,
acknowledging this problem is not sufficient
to change things unless the understanding is
total - not merely intellectual, but also emotional.
Real understanding, real "seeing"
comes from the mind and the heart; only this
kind of understanding can bring transformation.
Diana: In conquest, the two
people are fundamentally not turning on to each
other as much as to their own sense of power.
Power is the ability to command attention and
get what you want. So much of this is self-centered,
on both sides. It's as if two egos or images
were posturing in front of each other, using
the energy they generate for their own adequacy
needs. The pleasure and gratification involved
are enormous. Momentarily, when you're feeling
your power to attract, it does make you feel
good. Using each other this way, however, doesn't
give any sense of support and actually continues
to promote inadequacy, which generates the need
to conquer or withhold again in order to feel
adequate.
Joel: It works like a feedback
loop. The more you get, the more you need, because
all that is being fed is image; neither one's
real sense of adequacy is being satisfied.
Diana: There's a seesaw quality
to it. Have you ever noticed how often when
one is feeling good, the other is feeling bad
or one-down, and then it can switch? It's not
a coincidence that when one is up, the other
is down. It's difficult for both parties to
feel adequate at the same time, because in conquest
adequacy is linked to power, and when one has
it, the other doesn't.
Joel: There's tremendous energy
and excitement when two people first connect.
The particular quality of that initial sexual
flash has an in-built decline, since part of
the hit is based on newness. Someone once remarked
to me that the second night resembles the hundredth
more than than the first night. The first time
two people really connect (which may not literally
be the first night), there is the quintessence
of this extreme sexual energy, which is so powerful
that one may remember it for a lifetime.
Diana: This intensity can
actually create problems, because there is so
much pleasure in it that people link it with
the very essence of what sexuality is about
and easily mistake its power for love. If you
build an image of love with that at the core,
naturally when that falls through, you become
disillusioned about love. The passion of romance
becomes a model to measure relationships with.
It lingers in memory, making people feel something
is wrong or missing when this particular kind
of intensity is not there.
Joel: Sex is good when it's
"that," but it is "that"
only within the whole context of conquest. Sexuality,
like everything else, always occurs within a
context. If you are attached to this particular
expression of sexuality, it is necessary to
keep the context of the relationship the same.
This, of course, is not possible, for every
relationship changes, either by growing or by
becoming more rigid and habitbound. Trying to
keep the context the same does not in fact result
in keeping it the same, but actually insures
that the relationship will move toward greater
rigidity. This attempt to hold passion ends
by destroying it.
Diana: Conquest sexuality,
by its very nature, creates hurt and ambivalence.
People want to eliminate the pain and keep the
pleasure, not seeing that in order for this
to occur, the whole package must change, including
the source and nature of the pleasure. The problems
are not merely incidental - they are the other
side of the coin. Sexual conquest and the quality
of energy it generates come together in a total
package. Change the context in which it occurs,
and the sex also changes in its nature.
Joel: If the source of the
relationship is coming from a different place,
then the sexuality and what attracts are entirely
different, too. The problem is that we, from
early ages, are taught to approach sexuality
out of storybook and Hollywood romanticism,
which offers merely glossy versions of conquest.
We hunger for this excitement, and if we find
it, the intensity further conditions the way
we think about sexuality. Memories create the
desire to recapture the same highs.
Diana: How you look at things
influences everything you do. Sexuality is not
only in the body, but in the mind. So much of
being turned on or turned off has to do with
the way the mind is looking at the relationship,
the partner, the world. The conquest syndrome
determines the way men and women think about
and act toward each other - their ideals and
expectations. Conquest is a headset that reduces
what could be a rich and varied fabric of relating
- a source of learning for both sexes - to a
narrow range of possibilities, with the main
focus on sex. Its particular approach to sex
further limits the capacity of creative expression
and traps men and women in a mold. It also creates
a lot of antagonisms, with each sex feeling
used, suspicious, and resentful, which makes
communication difficult. No wonder it's hard
for men and women to open up with each other
and break out of patterns.
Joel: Conquest usually involves
an initiating male and a receptive female. Even
when it's the woman who starts the dance by
playing seductive, she usually waits for the
man to take the sexual initiative. If she always
leaves this first step to him, he can begin
to feel it as a pressure. This can lock the
man in a performance role in which he is so
concerned with his images of adequacy that he
can't be spontaneous and let go. Performance,
comparison, and adequacy fears keep him from
getting involved at deep, emotional levels,
and the sexuality gets locked in fixed patterns
which eventually dull it.
Diana: For the woman to take
the initiative means facing the fear of rejection.
Even within a relationship, when you make sexual
overtures, you take the risk the other person
will not be open to you at that moment. Constantly
living with the possibility of rejection as
part of the initiator's role is one reason men
armor themselves and are less open emotionally.
Joel: It's important for
a man to learn to allow a woman to turn him
on. A man may think he would love women to come
on to him, but when they do, this strikes against
the chords of male conditioning. The normal
male headset is that the man is in control and
he does "it" when he wants. His own
need, his internal push, is his driver. He's
not ordinarily open to the woman turning him
on out of her need. A woman who directly initiates
is felt as a challenge to his adequacy - implying
she's not satisfied or that she wants control.
This way of reacting to her, much of it unconscious,
reinforces the women's fear of rejection. The
man is ambivalent, caught between wanting to
stay in control and a desire for more spontaneity
without having to "perform."
Diana: It seems that much
of the male sex drive has more to do with the
man's physiological rhythm or superficial attraction
to a woman than with emotions or being sensitive
to where the woman is at. The woman initially
feels flattered at being the chosen one, but
in time she feels taken for granted, and the
mechanical aspects of his desire become evident
to her.
Joel: You could talk about
people getting addicted to conquest like being
addicted to drugs or a hit of any sort of intense
stimulation. Your nervous system, your sexuality
gets hooked into needing a certain level of
intensity. An easy way to get intensity is through
one-night stands. Conquest can also be played
over and over within a relationship, in more
subtle ways - through withholding affection,
arguing, flirtations, or external dalliances
which add the stimulation of jealousy. Quarreling
can jack up the emotions and interest, and then
surrendering to sex afterwards revives the conquest
drama. When either isn't getting enough attention,
he or she can begin to withhold, making the
other win them again. But since the quality
of passion in repeated conquest of the same
person is dimmer than it was initially, going
to others can seem more appealing. A new person
turning on to you touches back into that initial
raw desire. A woman might find, for example,
that if another man wants her, her husband's
interest rekindles. Being afraid to lose her,
he feeds more energy into her, trying to capture
her again. There is no way for her not to like
this. This works the same for men, too.
Diana: If a relationship is
based on romance, there is bound to be great
fear involved at its core - fear that another
person will generate the now lost extremes that
you can't seem to recapture together. This fear
can become part of the excitement in the relationship,
since jealousy revives old feelings associated
with the suspense of conquest: Who will be chosen?
Joel: Over a lifetime, conquest
sexuality may develop in different directions.
You can lose interest in conquest after you
have run the number so many times that the very
repetitiveness of its patterns gets dull. Even
repeated newness gets old. Fast openings usually
lead to fast closings, and this reinforces mistrust.
Sexuality can open you too soon, before the
relationship has built the supports to handle
intimacy. Trust only grows in time - trust that
the other cares about you and will take you
into account.
Diana: Using the other for
your own adequacy feels empty over the years,
bringing cynicism and closing you to love. The
conflicts that conquest sex generates over a
lifetime can cause interest in sexuality to
wane or even disappear. The fear of losing one's
sexuality, stemming from disinterest, can drive
men and women to further conquests, in a desperate
attempt to prove they are as sexual as they
used to be. Sexual problems such as difficulty
with orgasm, impotence, and frigidity could
well be linked with these conflicts.
Joel: One way people regenerate
interest in sex is by making the stimulus hit
stronger. This is why a lot of sexuality eventually
hooks into taboo - things that at certain levels
are frowned on or forbidden. Social taboo, or
anything generally considered "kinky"
- or perverse, can be used to rekindle sexual
interest after one has become jaded with self-centered
sex.
Diana: Generally, when people
are looking for a relationship, what they're
interested in is who is turning them on the
most at any given moment. The spectacular pleasures
of sexuality are ephemeral, however, and in
and of themselves are not a good foundation
for the kinds of merging that intimacy over
time can bring. At first the quality of sexuality
influences the rest of the relationship to a
very great degree, but this soon reverses and
then it's the other aspects that influence the
sexuality. You can bury bad feelings initially
through sex, but eventually this doesn't work.
The intensities that come in a mature relationship
are of a different order and have another flavor.
Here the energy is coming from a place of true
intertwining.
Joel: What you are talking
about is really a movement from youth to adulthood.
There is great reluctance to move into this
new space, just as there is reluctance to grow
up. The beginning of;a relationship is a period
of grace, where through the highs of openings
and discoveries, a special energy permeates
everything. Youth is also like a period of grace,
offering tremendous energy that seems boundless.
You can mistreat your body without paying many
dues, so you can be more careless and carefree.
Growing up means you have to be more careful,
since health isn't just a given. But if you
hone yourself as you age, you can actually gain
energy and have more focus than in youth.
Diana: The same is true with
relationships. The beginning is a time of innocence,
but as a relationship matures, habits replace
the sense of discovery; ways of relating become
old, confined, and highly patterned. To keep
a relationship new and alive, you have to put
energy into it, for without attention, awareness,
and care, habits will end by stultifying it.
Newness is the key to passion - for each person
to be new in themselves and in the relationship.
In the first blush of a young relationship,
the two people are totally involved, immersed,
in each other. Gradually, as they reenter the
stream of life, other things - careers, children,
friends - take over and the relationship becomes
a context for living. Each person following
his or her path out in the world can bring to
the relationship rich sources of newness - people,
ideas, and interests.
Joel: "Newness"
doesn't necessarily dissipate over time; on
the contrary, it may reemerge as two people
get to know each other in depth. There can be
great excitement and learning in that process.
In fact, continuity allows certain depths of
passion that only come from getting to know
a person, for it takes time to develop intimacy
and trust.
Diana: Newness also comes
from working through problems: instead of trying
to ignore or get rid of them, you can use them
as an occasion to learn about yourself and the
other person. Communication is the doorway for
newness to enter. Communication is a dance that
involves listening to the other person and trying
to understand their needs and where they're
coming from - which does not necessarily imply
doing what they want. It does involve being
more interested in understanding than in either
blaming or convincing the other that it's their
fault and that if only they would change, everything
would be all right.
Joel: Approaching sexuality
out of a willingness to explore, rather than
expectations of how it should be, allows passion
to live. Instead of diminishing, this kind of
relationship builds in time.
Diana: As a relationship matures
and communication gets deeper and more refined,
merging can occur. Magic returns in this new
space of discovery and adventure. The sexual
energy generated by this intertwining is more
subtle, but no less powerful or sensual than
conquest sexuality. When a man and woman merge
instead of being locked in power plays, they
get to a point of integration in which they
transform each other; the differences between
them become a source of expansion rather than
antagonism.
Joel: What we are talking
about is another way of looking at and approaching
relationships and sexuality, in which the major
interest is in exploring and growing together.
We all hunger for solutions, but rather than
defining or laying out a new way to be, we must
all be pioneers if we're going to create a new
way to live together. No real solution can come
until both men and women truly see the nature
of the problem, which lives in each of us and
which also only lives in relationship. "Seeing"
the problem brings forth change; seeing the
patterns changes you. As long as men and women
are hooked into romance, they can never meet
each other totally. If we are to open opportunities
to meet as human beings, we must leave the whole
context of conquest. It takes equals to create
the possibility of mature love.
