What turns you on? Part Two.
In my last post, I talked about Jack Morin’s idea of the core erotic theme (CET): the notion that each person has a single dramatic concept that drives all of their erotic fantasies. According to Morin in his excellent book, The Erotic Mind, exploring one’s CET is one key to leading a richer, more satisfying sex life.
Morin wrote that our CET has roots in unresolved childhood struggles. According to him, the dramatic engine that drives our fantasies is an urge to resolve some frustration or problem that has stayed with us over the years. That’s how deep our childhood wounds are; decades into adulthood, we’re still trying to undo them.
Morin’s idea helps to explain why sex can be such a compulsion for many of us. Each time we pursue our CET, we’re scratching the deepest of itches.
The attraction equation is another of Morin’s ideas that helps us to understand our CET. The equation is: attraction + obstacles=excitement.
Some people, for example, might get turned on by being ignored by a lover, and trying to gain that lover’s attention. By trying to get attention from a lover who ignores us, we may be working to overcome a childhood obstacle to feeling loved. Every time we play this scenario out, we’re giving ourselves a chance to try to get the love that we want. If it’s too easy—if our lover does not ignore us but instead easily gives us the love we want—we are not given the chance to overcome our childhood struggle. We need the obstacle.
The concept of the CET makes me think of the similar urges behind entrepreneurial ambition and artistic creation—which may also be an attempt to heal some wound from childhood (see Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” for example)—and sex.
Understanding our CET helps us to nurture and tend to our turn-ons and to better understand ourselves. I agree with Morin—better understanding our turn-ons helps us to communicate them to our partners.
Communicating our turn-ons to a partner or partners is one wonderful form of intimacy. If you can turn to your partner to explore and satisfy your deepest sexual desires, you will feel closer to them.
One of the biggest challenges I face as a couples therapist is in helping some clients to overcome the shame they may feel about sharing their sexual desires. It’s such a vulnerable and scary thing to do, to tell your loved one about your erotic fantasies.
I often encourage clients who are looking to connect more sexually to ask one another “What turns you on?” or “What do you fantasize about when you masturbate?” It can be most effective for them to ask these questions when engaged in foreplay—my experience is that it can be easier to share when in the heat of the moment. Even then, though, it can be quite challenging for many of us to share our fantasies.