Put on some clothes already. It just might save your marriage.
My wife and I have been together for a decade, but I’ve never seen her naked by daylight. And not because she’s unattractive—at 18 she got as far as the Miss Minnesota pageant, and today she can still be credibly described as the thinking man’s Heather Locklear. So why the extreme modesty? Karen believes that relationships last longer when you protect the mystery.
While her cover-up may have started as a desire to obscure an aging body, over time we’ve come to understand that it’s about something much finer: sovereignty. She rules her image, and she’s in charge of that dramatic moment known as “the reveal.”
That’s the paradox of flesh. You anticipate, you dream, you fantasize. The reveal? Thrilling.
So why don’t we hear more about the erotic power of mystery? I think it’s because, in part, we find it uncomfortable and foreign. Telling all is the American way.
So I was delighted to encounter the contrarian thinking of Esther Perel, a Manhattan-based couples and family therapist. “To sustain an élan for the other, there must be a synapse to cross,” she writes in
Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Desire. “Eroticism requires separateness.”
Having problems in your relationship? First, she suggests, create two e-mail accounts, and use them only to write to each other. There’s one rule: You can’t write about household issues. Think back to the start of your romance. Distance amplified heat then, and it can generate it now. Maybe that’s why they call it Hotmail.
“Only connect,” E. M. Forster wrote. No. Only disconnect. Let privacy and negligee separate me from a world of imperfection, disappointment, and decay. Please, let me step into another world, one I’ve waited for all day. In this intimate universe, the lights are dim, the music is exotic, and here she comes, this amazing woman. Can she be my wife? Or is she my mistress? Who cares? I’m all hers.
My wife and I have been together for a decade, but I’ve never seen her naked by daylight. And not because she’s unattractive—at 18 she got as far as the Miss Minnesota pageant, and today she can still be credibly described as the thinking man’s Heather Locklear. So why the extreme modesty? Karen believes that relationships last longer when you protect the mystery.
