“I love you dear. Can you just hold me?”
“Sure after I tie you up.”
“Can we talk about our feelings?”
“If you let me choke you, like that character in the Sally Rooney novel.”
Donald Trump's mega best seller, The Art of the Deal has sparked discussions in households across the country. When you look at love as a transaction, negotiation becomes the foreplay. Americans have come a long way from the old saw, Tell em you love em then you lay 'em . Now what sexually active couples are doing is bargaining. Say you want to gag your loved one or slap and hit them. Say you like being bitten and are proud of the hickeys on your neck. Whatever you want to do or want done to you is a potential bargaining chip. Say you want to be suffocated? The psychoanalyst Charles Brenner coined the term "compromise formation." In order to arrive at a particular result with another human being, you always have to ask for More!!!! In the present negotiations over tariffs, Trump has threatened to annex other trading partners--like Canada--in order to arrive at a favorable balance of trade. The comparable behavior when it comes to couples would be overtly dominating and possessive behavior. What is the final result? The answer is a kind of bickering and nagging which creates homeostasis.
