Hard to Get. Leslie Bell
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Psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists employ the notion of splitting, sometimes referred to as dualistic or binary thinking, widely in their work with patients, although it’s fallen out of favor in the field of cultural anthropology, where it is associated with the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Splitting continues to be a helpful concept in clinical work because it describes the defensive processes of so many patients, including many of the women with whom I spoke. These are neither total nor absolute splits in the grand narrative sense of the term—splits between black and white or masculine and feminine that undergird the foundations of society—but multiple splits that people invoke at different times and in various situations to manage anxiety and to defend against uncertainty. I therefore discuss multiple and shifting psychological and social splits as a way to make sense of the lived experiences of twenty-something women as they navigate sex and relationships. For an expanded discussion of the concept of splitting and its use by psychoanalytic, queer, and poststructuralist theorists, please see appendix I.
I argue that splitting came to predominate among many of the women with whom I spoke, not because they were in any way pathological, but because of the unsettled nature of this new in-between period of early adulthood for women, and the uncertainty and anxiety that accompany it.34 Confused about freedom and what it is to be a woman today, young women often split their social and psychological options—into independence, strength, safety, and control versus relatedness, vulnerability, need, and desire—as though they’re mutually exclusive and not equally important to human development.35 Despite all the advances of women over the past fifty years, these experiences are frequently split into masculine and feminine ones, with the masculine being overvalued socially and psychologically. In modern western culture, autonomy and all that accompany it are much more highly valued than are interdependence and all that accompany it. Splitting leads some women to assume that they cannot be strong and autonomous when they are interdependent with others, vulnerable, and intimate. Vulnerability, needs, desires, and intimacy, then, often become new taboos for young women—experiences to be avoided rather than embraced.
It’s no wonder that splitting is often young women’s preferred method to make sense of the dizzying array of freedoms before them. A group of people trying to be autonomous and successful at work, and to have love and sex lives in which they express their vulnerability, need, and desire, is groundbreaking and historically unprecedented. This new in-between developmental period brings these two life spheres together at a time when neither is yet firmly established. But splitting makes young women feel that their options are limited as opposed to expansive.
STRATEGIES OF DESIRE
I argue that the women I spoke with employed strategies of desire to solve the problems at hand—problems of desire, autonomy, agency, intimacy, and safety—in a new in-between developmental period in which the rules aren’t clear. These strategies of desire were sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious, and women developed varying ones based on the cultural tools available to them, their psychological tendencies, their family backgrounds, and their relationship experiences. They were after—albeit with different degrees of internal conflict—sexual experiences, relationship experiences, safety, and control. This notion of a strategy helps describe the ways in which these women both had agency and were limited by the cultural notions available to them.36
In my research and clinical practice, I’ve found that the women to whom I’ve spoken have tended to employ strategies of desire clustered in three types. These strategies are based on the degree of conflict over sexual and relational desires that women are able to tolerate. My three archetypes—those of the Sexual Woman, the Relational Woman, and the Desiring Woman—are ways to interpret broad sets of behavior. Of course, they flatten out individual experiences to a degree, but they provide a broad paradigm for understanding how contemporary women cope with a confusing and sometimes conflicting set of beliefs and behaviors.
Women mobilized defensive strategies of the Sexual Woman and the Relational Woman when they were unable to tolerate the degree of internal conflict and anxiety that they felt over sexual and relational desires.37 Both archetypes defensively split their desires, leaving them frustrated in their ability to get what they want.
Women who had little conflict over sexual desire and a high degree of conflict over relational desire used the strategies of desire of the Sexual Woman.38 These women had benefited from the increased sexual freedom that characterized their childhood, adolescence, and twenties, and they succeeded in developing comfort with their sexual desires. Revealing sexual desire did not fill them with fear and dread and did not threaten their identity or sense of self. However, they feared losing their identities and independence through being in an intimate relationship. So they felt conflicted about having and letting somebody in on their relational desire.39 For many women, these strategies reflected a split between a strong and independent identity and a relationship. They used strategies that allowed the expression of sexual desire but preserved their identities and independence from the perceived threat of relationships.
For example, one of my informants, twenty-nine-year-old Jayanthi, delighted in defying her Indian parents’ expectations by sleeping with as many men as she could in her early twenties. She enjoyed sex a great deal, and over the course of her twenties learned how to regularly have an orgasm. But Jayanthi also derived pleasure from being able to attract men and turn them on, and from the control that she felt in not getting emotionally attached to men even when they may have felt attached to her. As she moved into her late twenties, though, she was left with a nagging desire for something more intimate and lasting than a mere sexual encounter. But she worried about losing control, and losing herself, in intimate relationships with men. Women such as Jayanthi represent a new take on the dilemma of female desire: at ease with sexual desire, but ill at ease with desire for a relationship.
Women who had little conflict over relational desire but a high degree of conflict over sexual desire gravitated toward the strategies of desire of the Relational Woman.40 These women were comfortable feeling and expressing their desire for relationships but feared that either a man or a relationship couldn’t withstand their strong sexual desire. They felt conflicted about having and expressing sexual desire and so gave it up. Unlike good girls of yesteryear, women who employed strategies of the Relational Woman had felt and understood the power of sexual desire. It was for this reason that they avoided it. They worried that asserting their sexual desires might overwhelm the men (or women, although this was more rare) with whom they wanted to be in relationships. Or they worried that their strong sexual desire might be incompatible with a stable relationship. These women then developed strategies of desire that inhibited their desires for sex. They illustrate the problem of splitting sexual desire from safety and stability in relationships.
For example, twenty-eight-year-old Alicia might, at first glance, have looked like a good girl of old. She delayed sex until after college, acted demurely, and was only subtly flirtatious with men, and she wanted more than anything to be part of a traditional family. Alicia also felt inhibited from expressing her sexual desires to men and was more comfortable with being passive in sex than she was with initiating sex. But Alicia, unlike a prototypical good girl, knew what she wanted from sex and actively fantasized about it. She didn’t, however, share those desires with the men with whom she was in relationships. She worried that her sexual desires would be incompatible with the kind of committed relationship that she wanted, so she held herself back from expressing them.
Women who could tolerate the conflicts they felt over sexual and relational desire made use of the productive strategies of desire of the Desiring Woman. These women used their conflicts to inform how they could pursue their desires; they were comfortable with and expressed their desires for sex and a relationship.41
For example, twenty-eight-year-old Maria managed to tolerate a reasonable amount of internal conflict between her desires and could acknowledge desires for both sex and relationships without defensively splitting. She then sought out intimate relationships with men who were interested in satisfying sex and who worked to sustain a good sex life, and she received such interest and efforts nondefensively.
THE STUDY
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