Come Together summary

Raise your hand if you believe some version of a narrative that says that maintaining intense sexual desire for your partner is the key to a healthy long-term relationship. Though this sort of belief is common, it results from a misconception we’ll call the desire imperative. The desire imperative suggests that a healthy sex life equals a constant, spontaneous, almost obsessive craving for our partner. But here’s the truth: if you’re not always lighting up with desire, or if you find yourself needing to schedule intimacy, you are not failing.

That’s because desire isn’t actually the most important thing in the long term –⁠ it’s actually pleasure, AKA enjoying the sex you’re having. For couples struggling with low desire, the underlying issue is often just that the sex they’re having isn’t pleasurable. Does sex feel like a chore, an obligation, or a duty? If so, of course you aren’t going to want it! 

When you’re struggling with a loss of intimacy, it can be easy to blame yourself or think there’s something wrong with you for being disinterested in sex. In reality, you may not be disinterested in sex at all. Instead, you may just be stuck in non-erotic spaces in your emotional floor plan.

An emotional floor plan is a way of visualizing your inner world. Think of it as being made up of seven different main rooms. Four of these rooms are pleasure-favorable: lust, play, seeking, and care. These are joyful states conducive to accessing pleasure. Then there are three pleasure-averse rooms: panic and grief, fear, and rage. In these rooms, pleasure is harder to reach. 

In long-term relationships, our bodies inevitably change as we age, become ill, go through menopause, experience trauma, or develop a disability. Rather than seeing these changes as barriers to intimacy, we can approach them with warm curiosity, co-creating contexts that support physical and emotional pleasure. 

This attitude of warm curiosity is key: it encourages openness to and discovery of new dimensions of pleasure. It encourages us to ask questions like, “How can this change in our lives introduce us to new forms of intimacy?” Aging bodies, for example, may not have the same stamina or flexibility as they did in youth. But this can encourage couples to slow down, experiment with new positions, or find pleasure in other forms of touch and closeness. 

Have you ever experienced a moment of such profound connection that you felt transported to another realm of being? Where the boundaries of your individual self seemed to dissolve into oneness with another soul or the universe itself? Even if you haven’t, rest assured this state is possible for all. 

Accessing this state is what the author calls the magic trick. It’s a form of mindfulness that’s about embracing our erotic wisdom and celebrating our capacity for embodiment. The magic trick isn’t just about sex, either –⁠ we can tap into erotic wisdom during any sensory experience,⁠ from drinking cold water on a hot day to hearing the resonance of voices joined in song.

What does it take to rekindle desire and passion in a long-term relationship? We’ve been discussing this topic for a while, but now, we’re going to explore the question through the journeys of two different couples.

First up is Mike and Kendra. This couple began experiencing a loss of intimacy during Kendra’s first pregnancy, as Kendra’s spontaneous desire disappeared. Mike wanted Kendra to want sex more often. Meanwhile, Kendra hated feeling like her lack of desire was a “problem” that needed to be fixed –⁠ especially since she still enjoyed the sex they did have. Mike, unfortunately, was caught up in the desire imperative.