字幕表 動画を再生する
-
It could, on the surface, be an argument about almost anything: what time to leave for the
-
airport, who forgot to post the tax form, where to send the children to school… But,
-
in reality, in disguise, unmentioned and unmentionable, it is typically the very same argument, the
-
no-sex argument, the single greatest argument that ever afflicts committed couples, the
-
argument which has powered more furious oblique exchanges among lovers than any other, the
-
argument that right now, explains why one person is angrily refusing to speak to another
-
over a bowl of Udon noodles in a restaurant in downtown Yokohama and another is screaming
-
in an apartment on an upper floor of a block in the suburbs of Belo Horizonte, why a child
-
has acquired a step-parent and a person is crying over a bottle or at their therapist's
-
office. The real injury – you have ceased to want me and I can no longer bear myself
-
or you – can't be mentioned because it cuts us too deep; it threatens too much of
-
our dignity, it is bigger than we are. In the darkness late at night, time after time,
-
our hand moved towards theirs, tried to coax them into a caress and was turned down. They
-
held our fingers limply for a moment and then, as if we were the monster we now take ourselves
-
to be, curled away from us and disappeared into the warren of sleep. We have stopped
-
trying now. It may happen once in a blue moon, a few times a year, but we understand the
-
score well enough: we are not wanted. We feel like outcasts, the only ones to be rejected
-
in this way, the victims of a rare disease; nursing an emotional injury far too shaming
-
to mention to others let alone ourselves, the only ones not be having sex in a happy
-
sex-filled world. Our anger aggravates our injury and traps us in cycles of hostility.
-
Perhaps they don't want us in the night because we have been so vile in the day; but
-
so long as our hand goes unwanted, we can never muster the courage to be anything but
-
vindictive in their presence. It hurts more than being single, when at least the neglect
-
was to be expected. This is a sentence without end. We can neither complain, nor let the
-
issue go. We feel compelled to fight by proxy about anything we can lay our hands on: the
-
washing powder and the walk to the park, the money for the dentist and the course of the
-
nation's politics, all because we so badly need to be held and to hold, to penetrate
-
or to be penetrated.
-
It is in a sense deeply strange, even silly that so much should hang on this issue, that
-
the future of families, the fate of children, the division of assets, the survival of a
-
friendship group, should depend on the right sort of frottage of a few centimetres of our
-
upper limbs. It's the tiniest thing and at the same time the very largest. The absence
-
of sex matters so much because sex itself is the supreme conciliator and salve of all
-
conflict, ill-feeling, loneliness and disinterest. It is almost impossible to make love and be
-
sad, indifferent or bitter. Furious perhaps, in a passionate and ardent way. But not – almost
-
always – truly elsewhere or beset by major grievance. The act forces presence, vulnerability,
-
honesty, tenderness, release. It matters inordinately because it is the ultimate proof that everything
-
is, despite everything, still OK. As ever, so much would change if only we could be helped
-
to find the words, if we could fight our way past our shame, if we didn't have to feel
-
so alone (this should be proof enough that we aren't); if we could point to the problem
-
without fury, without humiliation, without defensiveness; if we could simply name our
-
desperation without becoming desperate, if the one who didn't want it could explain
-
in terms that made sense and were bearable and the one who felt cast aside could explain
-
without surrendering to vindictiveness or despair. We would ideally, alongside physics
-
and geography, learn the basics of all this in our last year at high school, learn how
-
to spot and assuage the no-sex argument with an in-depth course and regular refreshments
-
throughout our lives. It is the paradigm of all arguments. Those who can get over it can
-
get over pretty much any dispute; those who cannot must squabble to the grave. Were our
-
species to learn how to do this, the world would be suddenly and decisively calmer: there
-
would be infinitely fewer fights, alcoholic outbursts, divorces, affairs, rages, denunciations,
-
recriminations, civil wars, armed conflicts and nuclear conflagrations. At the first signs
-
of no-sex arguments, couples would know how carefully to locate the words that could address
-
their sorrow. There would not always be an answer but there would always be the right
-
sort of conversation – and, on a good day, the endurance of love.
-
Our Pillow Talk cards help prompt us to share our intimate desires.
-
To find out more click the link on your screen now.