I took an unintentionally long break from Substack because I turned 40 in May and it rocked me emotionally - in some ways that I saw coming, and some that I didn’t. More to come on that at some point.
This season of my life has felt like this video (which never ceases to make me cry laughing):
Every time I get up, life slaps me in the face with a fly-by fish. And I get pulled back down into the emotional waves again.
So with that, today’s post is a short, dipping my toe in, re-entry to writing.
I’m in the middle of writing a longer piece about desire, and these are some of the things I’m currently pondering -
At her conference in May, Esther Perel said that twenty years ago, when she wrote her foundational book Mating in Captivity, she was trying to answer the question: How do we maintain desire in long term relationships?
Today she is asking - how do we ignite desire at all?
You can’t desire what you can’t feel. Aliveness doesn’t arrive in a depleted body. (Esther Perel)
Desire is sovereign - you can make people have sex; you can’t force them to desire. Desire is owning the want. (Esther Perel)
There’s a philosophical premise, attributed to C.S. Lewis called the Argument from Desire: it’s the idea that innate human longings are proof in themselves that real objects exist that are capable of satisfying those desires. i.e. the fact that we feel thirst, is proof enough that water exists.
So - if we desire something, based on this theory, that is proof alone that there is something or someone that exists that is capable of satisfying that desire.
The etymology of desire is composed of the prefix de- (meaning “from”) and the noun sidus (meaning “star” or “heavenly body”). Historically, linguists interpreted this combination to mean “to await what the stars will bring.” (How magical is that?!)
Stick with me here as I connect some dots about how we’re trying to manipulate desire -
GLP1 drugs (like Ozempic) act on the central nervous system to decrease the desire for food by interfering with dopamine driven reward signaling. Some people on the drugs are reporting a decreased desire for anything.
The first male libido drug, Viagra, which was FDA approved in 1998, works by increasing blood flow to the penis.
In 2019, the FDA approved the first ever on demand drug for female libido (Vyleesi). It works on the central nervous system by decreasing serotonin (which is inhibitory to sexual desire) and increasing dopamine (excitatory to desire) in the brain effectively modulating a women’s desire to have sex (source).
Interesting - we increase women’s desire for sex through the brain and men’s desire for sex through the penis…
Anecdotally - the active ingredient in Vyleesi is a peptide called PT 141. Suzanne Somers credits this peptide with having sex twice daily at the age of 73.
So to recap - we want to decrease dopamine when we’re trying to restrict our eating. And then we want to increase our dopamine when we want to desire sex. Seems like we’re having trouble selectively regulating? and many roads are leading back to a dopamine regulation problem?
Content Consumption
I read this love story about two women falling in love in 1980s Paris and it made me really want to go to Monet’s home and garden in Giverny.
I absolutely inhaled this book about a group of women in Mississippi in the 1920s. It’s over 600 pages and I wish it was double that - I never wanted to leave the characters.
I always love listening to Annie Lalla’s perspective on soulmates and love
Is Off Campus the greatest romance TV series ever created? I think so.
In Case You Missed It
Why Ibiza is the geographic representation of vitality, eroticism, life force energy.
A step by step exercise to finding your purpose, what energizes you, qualities to look for in a partner and qualities to cultivate in yourself for partnership
If you have thoughts on desire, I would love to hear them! You can submit anonymously here.
You can also DM me on the Substack app; I’d love to hear what’s on your mind.
Was mich an deinen Notizen nicht loslässt: Wir regulieren Dopamin nach Bedarf. Runter beim Essen, hoch beim Sex. Als wäre Begehren ein Schalter, den man umlegen kann. Aber Begehren braucht Spannung, Ungewissheit, manchmal Unbehagen. Wenn wir das chemisch glätten, bleibt vielleicht die Funktion. Aber verschwindet das Verlangen selbst?
Yay