Desire

I thought I was over feeling it. I’m nearly 42, with two young children, and desire was an echo from past lives. Lives when I had time and energy—when my skin didn’t sag and I didn’t have lines on my face. Lives when everything was before me, and all possibilities were open.

I’ve been married for 12 years now. I love my husband—what’s even more important, in some ways, is that I like and admire him. He’s a genuinely good man and an excellent father. He’s kind, thoughtful, dedicated to his work for children, sincere, and virtuous in the best meaning of that word. We've never had what I would call a "passionate" marriage, but I haven’t looked at another man in all the years we’ve been married.

Until now.

The "who" is important only insofar as I have to have regular interaction with him, and—for complicated reasons—I cannot change that. I have reason to suspect that he finds me attractive as well, but he is a good and moral man. I have no reason to believe that he would ever cross an inappropriate line.

The thing that bothers me is the intensity of my attraction to him. I honestly can't remember ever feeling as attracted to anyone as strongly as I do to him. Like a schoolgirl, I find myself looking for him everywhere I go. I feel giddy in his presence. I dream about him—and the dreams are not innocent.

I almost never remember my dreams—but I remember these. Desire snakes through them like lava, burning them into my brain and making it impossible for me to forget them when I wake up.

I am nearly 42, and desire has renewed its acquaintance with me.

What does it mean to feel desire again? Mostly it means frustration, anger at myself, and guilt. Unlike those other, earlier lives, in which I was free to act on my desire, I am bound now by my vows and my faith.

I am bound because I have been the victim of unfaithfulness in the past and I know firsthand the pain of it.

I am bound because I fear that C.S. Lewis was right when he wrote in The Great Divorce, “And of some sinful pleasure they say ‘Let me but have this and I’ll take the consequences’: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.”

These bindings are painful, because, suddenly, I want again. I want to experience the feeling of undressing someone again for the first time. I want to relive that giddy stage where all you can think about is getting him alone and having sex until you are utterly exhausted and breathless. I want to feel heat and light, passion, and that delicious ache for a lover that makes you dizzy and delirious with joy.

That kind of intense desire does not last. I’ve been in enough long-term relationships to know this. But, lately, I have been reminded of why so many people wreck their lives in search of the high of desire. It can be chaotic, destructive, and addictive—but it makes you feel alive. I'd forgotten what that felt like.

I know I cannot act on this desire. I cannot put my marriage, or my children’s lives, or my self-respect, in danger for something so selfish. But I cannot get this man out of my mind, and I cannot banish this newly awakened desire from my consciousness. I didn’t miss desire all that much when it took its long vacation. Now I wish it would pack its bags and leave me in peace.