LOVE IS WHERE YOU FIND IT

       Picture a man in his garage. He is polishing his vintage 1994 Ford Capri V4 as he has done every day many years. He has a soft cloth in his hand which he uses, not so much to polish his car, as caress it. He will touch the cowling with his cheek, smile and turn to kiss the silken paintwork. He is making love to his car. Indeed, we have caught him in the middle of what we might call automotive foreplay. It is the highpoint of his day. This scene is not derived from my perverted imagination. It was part of an episode of Taboo – on the Discovery Channel.

       In the same episode there was another man whose libido was released only when he was in skin contact with a fully inflated balloon. He wasn’t monogamously devoted to a single balloon, he had dozens of them in his lounge and he would play love-games with one and then another. As he blew up yet another balloon his hands would caress it as he would a beloved’s breast. He was unashamedly devoted to his fetish which, he said, gave him his greatest pleasure in life – and it harmed no one.

      There was another, very personable man, whose fixation was everything associated with feet: shoes, socks and, naturally, feet themselves. He had several good friends who allowed him to make love to their feet. He had a room with hundreds videos of people’s feet, both shoed or socked or naked. He had a stash of pairs of socks, each in small sealable plastic bag. He would select one and place it in the microwave for a few seconds to warm the contents and then open the bag and drink in the smell of the released aroma. This would enliven memories of profound sensual pleasure.

We do not choose how or in what way we love – love is where you find it. We love in the way we can. We suppose there are normal ways to love and we negatively judge anything unusual. Until recently there was something wrong and perverted with making love to someone of the same sex. But we’ve always loved our pets, we love the smell of a baby’ head, we love flowers and astronomy and even mathematics. But these latter ways are not sexual, you might say. Hold on. Not so fast. In truth, sexual isn’t always ‘sexual’; it has many shades of manifesting. Let’s not talk about the libido, let’s call it élan vital, life force, Eros, the flow of living energy that some have called Ch’i or Prana. Of course, sexuality, in the raw sense of our biological drive is very much a central to this. But this same energy also flows out to our imagination, to the stars, to other worlds and all that life may be.

     A person who is purely focused on raw genital sex has just as big a problem as a binge eater or the alcoholic. All the vital emotional avenues to life have been blocked, except perhaps one secret vice. But a single channel for the élan vital is too narrow. The life-force is squeezed through small valve like hot steam. It becomes a drive that cannot be contained; the pressure is too great and it’s then what we call an addiction.

     The question is not what the élan uses as its channel, but rather how many channels there are available. How scarce are the ways I dare to live? Do I only have booze or sex to give me that lift that tells me I am alive, or are there many avenues for me? Can I be lifted out of myself when I’m with nature or when I hear a Ravel quartet or when a friend’s kindness brings tears to my eyes? It’s much better that the whole of life is an addiction.

     It all depends on the variety of what turns you on. The more the better; but better a small, narrow valve than none at all; ultimate depression and death is when the last valve is completely choked off. If I’m not allowed to sniff my glue and there’s nothing else, the only alternative is suicide.

They say that nature abhors a vacuum. You could equally say that a vacuum longs to be filled. So it is with a human being who is empty. But if all the channels to fulfillment are blocked except one, the pressure on that point is enormous. The person experiences this as ‘I’ve got to have something’. And if that single something is a balloon or a car or booze or drugs or sex – anything that momentarily frees the life flow, no matter what the consequences, I’ve got to have it.

      There are those of course whose addiction is the search for an avenue, the quest for what will turn them on is what keeps them going. At least they have the conviction that there is something that will open the valve. Something, somewhere.

     You don’t have to go far if you want to see a human being with all senses, all channels, open. You can see it in any infant, curious and hungry for experience. To begin with there are no blocks; and that, in a way, is a problem because there can easily be too much input – or the wrong kind. When you are wide open you are infinitely vulnerable to poisons.

      All that we do in therapy, at least in person centred work, is aimed at releasing the tedium vitae, opening the channels that have been closed down by bad experience or a life-negating milieu. This isn’t done be trying to imposed affirmations over the top of choked channels, straining forward in hope and the effort to change, but by freeing up the points of blockage, daring to look at the detail of what is still shutting off the élan vital.

contact: stanrich@vodafone.co.nz

(03) 981 2264