After I graduated from college, I stopped forcing myself to connect with people (whose company I only pretended to enjoy). Suddenly I had an abundance of time for creative pursuits, but one of the unintended side-effects was that my sex drive died on the vine.

At first, I didn’t care.

I felt completely fulfilled by coding and writing and designing.

This past year, though, I’ve been noticing a general lack of warmth in my life. I can think of a happy moment and describe it as “warm” or “funny” or “sexy,” but there’s no attendant feeling. It’s all cold logic.

It’s tempting to fall into the trap of “Oh, I need to be with someone to rekindle my warmth,” but…

1. Worthwhile relationships are rare: It’s hard to find people who can match your very specific type of “weird.” There are so many variables (age, location, income, personality, etc) and the sheer improbability of it all makes dating feels like a very reactive (luck-based) process.
2. Love only exists within you: As the psychologist Esther Perel says, we are often focused too heavily on the object of our desire, rather than our capacity to love. In other words, even if I found someone who is technically compatible with me, it’s not going to “make” me feel warmth again.

Lately, having come to terms with this, I’ve been working on my emotional imagination. We’re taught to picture the goals we want to achieve, but…

How often do we picture the emotions we want to feel?

Instead of fantasizing about my ideal partner (which generally leads to desperation, not happiness), I’ve been spending ten minutes every day imagining warmth. I lie on the floor and bring up the feeling of having just come back from a run on a warm summer day.

I’m stretched out on the porch. The wind is running lazily over my skin. The sun is soaking deep down into my bones…

I guess all this is to say that when something feels elusive, it helps to move inward. Like you said, Annie, sex is born from intimacy. And perhaps intimacy is born from warmth.

We become warm and invite others to join us.

(Not the other way around.)

Thank you for sharing! 🔥