Are long-term love and eroticism ever compatible?
I think that they’re not inherently incompatible. But why is it so difficult? There is in the experience of love an experience of security, of predictability, of safety, a kind of grounding and anchoring. And eroticism thrives on something very different. It thrives on the unknown and the mysterious, on the unexpected. It’s not what you want in a long-term, secure relationship. Is that true across all societies? I think that some societies have it more and some have it much less, depending on how much the society experiences seduction and sensuality and flirtation as part of its ecology. Where does the United States fall on that spectrum? People don’t play much in the United States. Flirting, where you play with the possibilities, goes against the goal-oriented, pragmatic approach Americans often take — which is, if you go out, you go out to score. But there’s sex all around us — in music, on TV, in film. Are you saying we’re not an erotic culture? Animals have sex. Sex is an instinc
