You Make Me Want

Chasing desire

Orpheus and Eurydice (1864) by Frederic Leighton

A friend once told me that there are two ways to say “I love you” in Spanish - the first is “te amo” which can be roughly translated as “you make me love you”. The other, and far more evocative, way to say it is “te quiero”, which means “you make me want”. In the latter, there is an immediate recognition the other party seems to hold all the power when it comes to love - with a glance, or a laugh, or a hand on your back, they can override your usual faculties and awaken in you that desire, that wanting, that is notoriously difficult to put back into its box.

I have been thinking about wanting recently because I have felt unwanted. Or, perhaps more accurately, unwantable, and this has been turning over and around in my head throughout the days. It’s puzzling because it resists being directly attributed to anything, such as feeling specifically ugly or stupid or annoying, but it sits under the surface of everything I do. Much of my day-to-day decisions seem to be a reaction to this feeling of unwantability, each trip to the gym or healthy meal or job application manifesting as a prayer that perhaps I can render myself wantable - that perhaps, somehow, I can be good enough to be wanted.

I suspect this feeling is why I am afraid of sex at the moment. It would be easier to say I have chosen to take some time away from sex to focus on myself; this is something I have said to friends who have enquired after my love life, and it is a lie designed to reframe my fear of sex into something proactive and unpitiable. The truth is that, to have sex, I must let myself be wanted exactly as I am, and this is currently impossible as I expect any partner to find me unwantable. I am realising that whether I desire them is not part of the question, it’s how I can make them want me that really matters.

Many of my forays into BDSM have been a fetishisation of feeling wanted, a dynamic that stretches (like many fetishes) all the way back into childhood neuroses and, for me, childhood emotional neglect. A feeling of unwantedness settled in me young alongside a conviction that my worth was rooted in serving others; a perfect recipe for both a people-pleaser and, in adulthood, a submissive bottom. As I grew up and began exploring my sexuality, the objectification available in BDSM dynamics became increasingly enticing - an object is simply wanted or discarded, and if I could be objectified by someone who wanted me, that assuaged my fear of worthlessness. If only temporarily, I felt desired by someone and therefore valuable. Better yet, I could empty myself of thoughts entirely and simply exist as the beautiful desired object, rather than desiring subject, and sidestep engaging with my own desires altogether.

Lately, however, I struggle to muster the belief that I am wanted in any capacity, which has made the whole game fall apart. After my recent breakdown, I realised that many of my life decisions (ranging from cosmetic procedures to doing a PhD) have been taken as a reaction to this subconscious feeling of unwantedness, seeking something that will secure in me a worthiness that cannot be shaken. I’m not unique in making decisions based on social desirability, nor is it entirely pathological; many people will alter their appearance or take high-flying jobs because it adds to their sense of worth and attractiveness, but what has worn me into the ground is making nearly every decision this way in the hope it would appeal to someone else’s idea of what I should be.

To be smart enough, successful enough, beautiful enough, thin enough, rich enough, kind enough, and productive enough for an imagined overseer with impossibly high standards will wear anyone down. I have sat across from my therapist for years and asked why I’m so hard on myself and such a perfectionist, only to be gently directed to talk about my childhood. It felt cheap and lazy that I did not feel desirable because I felt unwanted as a child, like a Freudian soap opera, and I resisted it. As much as I avoided the bare truth, when my therapist asked what I wanted (in sex, in my career, in my life) if I were to choose entirely for myself, I didn’t have an answer. It was as though there was a barred door blocking me access to my own desires, and the realisation destabilised me - did I have a self at all or just an emptiness I had tried to fill up with other people’s ideas of what I should be?

Knowing what you want is a rare thing, and finding something that makes you want is even rarer. For those of us who have spent a lifetime ignoring our own desires, being able to recognise that jolt of desire is a skill that must be built from the ground up, slowly and deliberately. For me, this means noticing how frequently my thoughts race through hypothetical catastrophes that instill a sense of urgency and panic, driving me towards survival rather than pleasure. Often, these thoughts will follow a well-worn narrative that places me back in the position that made me feel unwanted in the first place, tracing paths like What if I lose my job? And then what if I can’t pay my rent? And then what if I have to move back to my childhood home, and be that child again, desperately hoping that someone would save me? I draw myself out of these scenarios again and again, and tell myself I am 31 years old, I live in London, I am safe, and there is room for me to do more than survive now. There is room for me to want something beyond what keeps me safe, to take risks and follow my desires, if only I will let myself.

There is fear in this, too, of course. A fixed identity can be a shelter from the world when everything else feels chaotic, and the pleasure and pain of acknowledging your own desires is their capacity to upend this sense of a fixed self. We see, over and over, the fantasy of the fixed self rear its head during reactionary political swings to the right - for many, there is a comfort in knowing who you are and where you fit in the world, even if it means reductive gender roles and strict hierarchies. The flipside of this comfort is how quickly desire can turn to shame when it’s stifled, and how quickly this shame can destroy you. I have seen people eaten up by their shame, living half-lives and telling themselves that they are happy while burying what they really want deep down until, one day, it cannot be contained and destroys both them and the half-lives they’ve built. The comfort of fitting in, pushing your wants down, and doing what is expected of you is rarely worth the price you pay.

So, I am trying to find what makes me want, despite the risks. It is not a linear process, and sex is still difficult when I don’t know who I am or what I desire. For years, I have had a rigid sense of what turns me on and how I can bring other people pleasure, and I am afraid of change and what it would mean for who I am and the kind of relationships I have. When I imagine the rest of my life, I see a yawning chasm stretching out in front of me filled with unknowns, and it scares me. What I do know, however, is decades of pushing my desires down and trying to be someone else’s idea of perfection has not fulfilled me either. It has led me to a life I routinely break down from, exhausted by the effort of maintaining commitments I don’t enjoy and spending time with people I don’t like. It’s time to figure out what I want, and to let that dictate the course of my life, even if it means change, and perhaps that change is necessary when the way you live has been killing you. I need to know what makes me want. Te quiero.

Looking at Porn is written around my full time job. I hope you enjoy it. You can follow my Instagram here and you can email me at robinccraig@gmail.com if you like.