Perhaps the Victorians had it right. The flesh is weak but the mind is strong. Or is it? I am reading a fabulous novel called “The Crimson Petal and the White.” The book was written in recent years but is set in Victorian England and the male author, Michel Faber, has a surprisingly good grasp on both male and female psychology and sexuality. (Note: It is a hefty work of 800 pages but the well-written snippets of porn will keep you glued while the story unfolds.)
I’m telling you about this novel because one of the huge themes concerns secrets and miscommunications in adult relationships. In Victorian England, whether the man-of-the-house is tangling with his wife or his prostitute, he does not communicate much at all and his women are expected to pay attention to the smallest of nuances to interpret his moods and his needs.
Not a whole lot has changed today. While we are a country of people who fiercely defend their freedom of speech, crucial words are often void from our most intimate relationships. And that is the very place where they are so vital to our survival. I suspect that fear of being rejected for our honesty may be the obvious factor in our communication flaws. But the underpinnings of wordless love have as much to do with unconscious motivations and carnal urges.
What I mean by unconscious motivations are the early life conflicts that we continue to march into in adult life as we attempt to process what was done to us as tender children. The men whose infidelity may be a complex bid for the love of their distant father whose own infidelities created secret male bonds. The woman who becomes aroused by men who can’t love and resemble an uncaring mother of dim memory. The many complicated webs of our psyche are as varied as there are faces. We each possess a unique (and constantly shaping) blueprint for love and sexual interaction.
As for carnal urges, this is where the Victorian sexual repression makes some sense in light of our current battles over our sexual freedom. The Victorians knowingly or unknowingly knew that exposing of any sexual material, be it a naked ankle or a forbidden word, could create a terrible struggle between animal instincts and mental strength. The flesh is weak, as they used to say. Today, as I pump weights at the gym and my ipod uploads my brain with the suggestive pleading lyrics of Nelly Furtado and Timbaland negotiating a hook up in “Promiscuous Girl,” I wonder about all the real promiscuous boys and girls out there. 
When they hear lyrics that say, “Chivalry is dead but you’re still kind of cute,” do they really feel free and powerful? Is the lack of chivalry (defined by princeton.edu as “courtesy towards women”) helped women feel more equal?
Obviously not, because the song’s female voice also draws a line in the sexual negotiation by saying, “I’m a big girl. I can handle myself. But if I get lonely, I’m a need your help. Pay attention to me, I don’t talk for my health.”
Sexual taboos may have disappeared, but basic biology has not changed. Women are wired to connect. Being in relationships make us stronger. Men are wired to mate and provide for and protect offspring. But the sexual revolution seems to have made many men and women deny their own biology. Women tell me they “don’t get too attached” it’s not worth it. Men do not associate sex with a relationship or even a relationship with parenthood. I overheard one grown man in my hotel lobby yesterday advise another, “You don’t have to get married to have children.”
So here we are. Women acting like men and getting hurt and emotionally shut down. Men behaving like animals instead of the chivalrous men of Victorian England. The pendulum may have swung to it’s fullest extend. It will never swing back all the way, however. As the women in “The Crimson Petal and the White” show us, repression in deed and word is a killer for women. The hero’s wife literally goes mad and his prostitute spends her private time writing a violent novel about gruesome murders of men.
When the pendulum swings back to center the answer will not only be words and communication. It will be a strong mind that exercises boundaries and grows a deep capacity for empathy and understanding for the other gender. No one will win if we hide our souls or ignore our biology, especially the children who inevitably pop out of many non-chivalrous unions. Feel yourself first. Then think. Then talk about it. Then have sex.
Tags: Michel Faber, Nelly Furtado, The Crimson Petal and the White, Timbaland