Undifferentiated grief flowed from her as she talked—grief for her lost sexuality, but also for her lost peace of mind, her lost sense of self, independent of her roles as mother, daughter, wife, boss, employee, student . . .
And then, when the tide of her grief ebbed, they had great sex.
After that, Laurie came to me and said, “What the hell?! We go on a romantic getaway, nothing—worse than nothing! But I ugly cry about how much I love him and how exhausting my life is, and we have hot and dirty sex. This context thing makes no sense!”
So I explained.
sensation in context
Suppose you’re flirting with a certain special someone, and they start tickling you. You can imagine some situations where that’s fun, right? Flirtatious. Potentially leading to some nookie.
Now imagine that you are feeling annoyed with that same special someone and they try to tickle you.
It feels irritating, right? Like maybe you’d want to punch that person in the face.
It’s the same sensation , but because the context is different, your perception of that sensation is different.
It’s true for all our sensory domains. A smell that seems pleasant when it’s labeled “cheese” smells gross when it is labeled “body odor.” 7 Same smell + different context = different perception. Mood changes your perception of taste, too: feeling sad, as you do at the end of a weepy movie, reduces your ability to taste fat in food. 8
It’s true in all your other senses, too, not just the basic five you learned in elementary school. We’ve all experienced it with thermoreception: Imagine your car has run out of gas one mile from the gas station, on a scorching-hot, sauna-humid day. You walk the mile through the sludgy air. You get to the air-conditioned gas station, chilled to seventy-two degrees, and it feels like a frigid blast, a powerful relief from the heat. Now imagine your car runs out of gas in the same place six months later, and it’s a bitterly cold, bitingly windy day, and you trudge the same mile to the gas station. That same seventy-two degrees now feels like a warmed oven, a powerful relief from the painful cold. Context.
It’s also true for equilibrioception (sense of balance): Anyone who’s gotten off a ship after a week-long cruise knows that our brains adapt to movement—you spend two days wondering why the ground is moving under your feet. Nociception (sense of pain): People who’ve experienced serious pain develop a higher tolerance for future pain. 9 And chronoception (sense of time): Time does indeed seem to fly when you’re having fun—or rather, when you’re in a state of “flow.” 10
These changes in perception are not “just in your head.” People who are given a drug that will relax them and are told, “This is a drug that will relax you,” not only feel more relaxed compared to those who got the drug but not the information, they also have more of the drug in their blood plasma . 11 Context changes more than how you feel; it can change your blood chemistry.
It’s also true for sexual stimuli. In chapter 2, I described how the dualcontrol mechanism responds to stimuli that are either sexually relevant or a threat, and I talked about how we learn what stimuli goes into which category—remember the rat with a lemon fetish? But just as the smell of cheese or the taste of fat is influenced by our mental state and the external circumstances, whether a particular stimulus is experienced as sexually appealing depends on the context in which we perceive it.
Tickling is one example of this. Suppose you’re watching your partner do laundry. If you feel overall supported and connected in your relationship, then seeing your partner doing the laundry may act as a cue for erotic thoughts. But if you’ve been feeling resentful because you’ve been doing a disproportionate amount of the laundry lately, then seeing your partner do laundry may feel satisfying—“It’s about time!”—without feeling
And then, when the tide of her grief ebbed, they had great sex.
After that, Laurie came to me and said, “What the hell?! We go on a romantic getaway, nothing—worse than nothing! But I ugly cry about how much I love him and how exhausting my life is, and we have hot and dirty sex. This context thing makes no sense!”
So I explained.
sensation in context
Suppose you’re flirting with a certain special someone, and they start tickling you. You can imagine some situations where that’s fun, right? Flirtatious. Potentially leading to some nookie.
Now imagine that you are feeling annoyed with that same special someone and they try to tickle you.
It feels irritating, right? Like maybe you’d want to punch that person in the face.
It’s the same sensation , but because the context is different, your perception of that sensation is different.
It’s true for all our sensory domains. A smell that seems pleasant when it’s labeled “cheese” smells gross when it is labeled “body odor.” 7 Same smell + different context = different perception. Mood changes your perception of taste, too: feeling sad, as you do at the end of a weepy movie, reduces your ability to taste fat in food. 8
It’s true in all your other senses, too, not just the basic five you learned in elementary school. We’ve all experienced it with thermoreception: Imagine your car has run out of gas one mile from the gas station, on a scorching-hot, sauna-humid day. You walk the mile through the sludgy air. You get to the air-conditioned gas station, chilled to seventy-two degrees, and it feels like a frigid blast, a powerful relief from the heat. Now imagine your car runs out of gas in the same place six months later, and it’s a bitterly cold, bitingly windy day, and you trudge the same mile to the gas station. That same seventy-two degrees now feels like a warmed oven, a powerful relief from the painful cold. Context.
It’s also true for equilibrioception (sense of balance): Anyone who’s gotten off a ship after a week-long cruise knows that our brains adapt to movement—you spend two days wondering why the ground is moving under your feet. Nociception (sense of pain): People who’ve experienced serious pain develop a higher tolerance for future pain. 9 And chronoception (sense of time): Time does indeed seem to fly when you’re having fun—or rather, when you’re in a state of “flow.” 10
These changes in perception are not “just in your head.” People who are given a drug that will relax them and are told, “This is a drug that will relax you,” not only feel more relaxed compared to those who got the drug but not the information, they also have more of the drug in their blood plasma . 11 Context changes more than how you feel; it can change your blood chemistry.
It’s also true for sexual stimuli. In chapter 2, I described how the dualcontrol mechanism responds to stimuli that are either sexually relevant or a threat, and I talked about how we learn what stimuli goes into which category—remember the rat with a lemon fetish? But just as the smell of cheese or the taste of fat is influenced by our mental state and the external circumstances, whether a particular stimulus is experienced as sexually appealing depends on the context in which we perceive it.
Tickling is one example of this. Suppose you’re watching your partner do laundry. If you feel overall supported and connected in your relationship, then seeing your partner doing the laundry may act as a cue for erotic thoughts. But if you’ve been feeling resentful because you’ve been doing a disproportionate amount of the laundry lately, then seeing your partner do laundry may feel satisfying—“It’s about time!”—without feeling
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