Appetite: Love, Sex, Food, and Money
Yes, they are all related: Love, Sex, Food, and Money. First, let’s define “appetite” for kicks and giggles:
Appetite is the general desire to satisfy any bodily need or craving.
So, consider that hunger is a type of appetite where we feel a strong or compelling desire or craving for food. Feeling turned on— or not— are also functions of appetite and desire related to physical, emotional, and genital pleasure. Love corresponds to emotional appetite. And the desire for financial success is connected with a hunger to feel good and satisfied in the realm of abundance. These appetites, desires, feelings and/or instincts are the drives of our life force. They inspire us to live satisfying, healthy, and hopefully wonderful long lives. Problems arise when our ability to feel the cues of our appetites are interfered with, consciously or unconsciously.
We all want to feel good; be loved and love. Taking a walk, going to a movie, having a date with someone you love, eating a good meal makes us feel good. The desire to listen to podcasts, read books and blogs all about wealth, health, and self-development, is related to our desire to understand those appetites better in the service of feeling good. And we could say our drive to learn is another appetite. We want to feel good about feeling good, and we also want those in our lives to feel good too.
However...We currently live in a society that is very suspicious about desire and also can be very blaming and shaming. We say that people who want to cultivate financial wealth are greedy. If you enjoy a serious deluxe ice cream sundae, full fat whip cream, fudge, nuts and the cherry on top you are a glutton, a pig, and probably going to get fat, have a heart attack and die— AND, “shame on you.” Shame and pain become strongly linked together in our mental files under experiences we’d rather avoid for the rest of our lives under pain of death.
And then there’s sexual desire. If you're a man there are often social expectations that you should be masterful at ‘wielding' your penis (yes I used the “p” word... and just wait), and rather than feeling pleasure and love in your experience, you wind up suffering with “performance anxiety." What? “Performance anxiety?” As if making love is about performance! If your partner wants something or doesn’t, you are told you should feel emasculated and less than if they actually say something about it; especially if it’s in the middle of lovemaking. It may not occur to you that you are being invited by a loving and adventurous partner to an amazing conversation for pleasure. You should just know through your mind-reading powers and magic what your partner likes.
If you are a woman, sure, you can enjoy your sexuality but that’s kind of slutty or forward, so really, don’t enjoy your sexuality. The vagina and clitoris (see I did it again, used “the” words) should never be addressed directly under pain of severe embarrassment and shame, it’s worse than being a commoner and looking the Queen of England directly in the eyes. And of course, neither men nor women should talk about what they like or don’t like sexually because you could hurt each other’s feelings. Another fate almost worse than death. It will certainly kill the mood in no uncertain terms. But also of course, what rarely gets illuminated is that when we communicate with each other about anything and everything we can seriously wind up really truly and absolutely enjoying ourselves and feel great about it, more deeply in love than we could have imagined —and definitely not ashamed.
From early on in our relationship my husband and I would show our affection and love for each other very openly. Like many couples we enjoyed kissing each other on the lips, holding hands and caressing each other every day and usually multiple times during any given day; and after thirty-two years still, do. There came a time when our children thought it was funny or weird that we were so outwardly affectionate. We explained to them that this was how we showed our love sometimes. And we told them that when they grew up and fell in love they might want to kiss on the lips too and caress. "We give you kisses and hugs because we love you, and we kiss each other because we love each other." I wanted to help my children feel and understand that physical expressions of love are good, normal, okay, sometimes way better than okay, and there’s enough to go around for everyone. There was also the importance of teaching them that the way their father and I expressed our love for each other was often different than how we expressed love for our children— the love between children and parents vs. parents and parents are different kinds of love. There is a lot to this, but the point I want to make here is that we spoke openly with our children and no one was shamed, made to feel pain, or teased. We wanted our children to feel good about their bodies, about love, and about their appetites.
Too often we get messages early in life that our bodies, in general, are disgusting or something to be ashamed of, even necessary evils. Certainly we learn early on that our genitals are mysterious and taboo because few people will talk about them with us, and when they do it’s in hushed tones or with embarrassment. Touching ourselves or others is shameful, warned off with sometimes scary notions and threats. “You’ll go to hell if you touch your privates.” One day I was cooking dinner when I heard one of my very young sons exclaim, “Oh, wow!” I walked into the family room and he was smiling and seemed to be concentrating. His hands were exploring in his pj’s. “Mommy, guess what? There’s a ball in there….uh…hey… wait there’s two. Mommy, I have two balls in me.” He was so proud, delighted and triumphant— as one should be with such discoveries. I smiled and nodded, “Yes you do have two balls, just like daddy. Good job honey.” That was the end of that for then, and it was a happy, pleasurable and enjoyable moment. No shame and no blame. Lots of love. It was truly super cute and wonderful to see him discover himself and want to share that openly and joyfully with me. He has grown to be a loving and expressive man.
We get so sensitized to shapes and public and private parts, mixed with messages of morality. If you are “too thin”, bad shape, we need to fatten you up, if you are “too fat,” another bad shape, we need to slim you down. There’s always this elusive “perfect” weight and body shape many of us are pushed to aspire to, and it’s not difficult to find yourself overly critical and unhappy because it seems to become so arbitrarily important in determining your self-worth.
The problem with everything I have said so far is that none of it is about checking in with your actual appetites— love, hunger, desire. If you are hungry maybe you should eat. If you are tired maybe you should sleep. And if you have an urge to masturbate because it would feel good, soothing, pleasurable, or just literally satisfy an itch, what’s wrong with that? Really? If you love your partner and want them to kiss you or make love with you or you want to make love to them, why not talk about it and make it happen?
We don’t want to talk about any of it because of conscious and unconscious feelings we have based on the messages we’ve received that I mentioned previously. Why we overeat or starve ourselves is usually not related to our physiological hunger cues. It may even be related to truly faulty physical and psychological impressions we have of ourselves that are terribly distorted. The same is true for our relationships to exercise, sex, and even having financial or professional success. Unfortunately, many times we know what we need to do to lose weight, build our cardiovascular health, or succeed professionally, personally, and romantically, but we have loud inner voices that tell us we can’t, it’s too hard, we’ll fail, we’ll suffer, embarrass ourselves, or hurt someone else, to name a few favorites. And sadly, we don’t think that we will survive our dreaded feelings, let alone thrive because of them.
This is an important idea for all of us, and something I address from my first meetings onward with clients. I encourage them to begin to notice that their feelings, along with their thoughts are their best guides. We begin to listen, recognize, and think meaningfully about theIr inner dialogues, whatever they may be, allowing them the freedom to rediscover their intuitive authentic cues. Some of the most important work we will ever undertake is in this realm and belongs to the development of feeling self-love and worth. I often hear, “but I don’t know what to do,” or “okay, I see that I’m unhappy, but now what?” Implied in both of these questions is that somebody outside of you— I for instance— will know better than you do what you want or need because you bought a message, probably as a very young child, that it’s dangerous to follow your own internal barometer. Now it feels completely lost to you. To keep you “safe” and in check, you have developed a “CIA”, a Critical Internal Agency, that’s loud, clear, and often not very nice telling you to keep quiet and hidden.
In reply to these questions, I might respond, “I guess we will have to wait and see what you are hungry for; that’s something only you can discover.” As their therapist I am of course there to help them listen to themselves and notice when their CIA is kicking in, being a very critical or shaming version of a parental voice in their mind that keeps them disconnected from their real hunger and desires. Together, by thinking and being open about sharing what’s on their minds and in their hearts we can get to a place of feeling uninhibited and free to think, feel, and be hungry. When they really experience with me repeatedly and over time that I am not laughing at them, angry, or shaming but interested, engaged and caring then real shifts can take place. They begin to develop and own a more interested, engaged, and caring part of themselves!
It might sound sort of funny when I suggest that you need to feel free to feel your desire and appetite. But if you look and see that you struggle in any area of your life, which we all do, consider there may be some internal dialogues constricting and hurting you that you don’t know you don’t know about— they are unconscious. And as long as they are unconscious it is really hard to provide what you really want and need for yourself and in your relationships freely.
There are some simple ways to check in with yourself and start identifying where your appetite in life is being misdirected or unsatisfied and make conscious what is unconscious.
I strongly recommend keeping a journal. You don’t need to go crazy writing in it for hours every day. Writing from three to ten minutes first thing in the morning when you wake up can give you a lot of insight into yourself over time. Commit to writing in a journal every day for a month and it will become a powerful and empowering habit— Just try the three to ten minutes...really. Not more to start. If you’ve had a dream, write it down. Ask yourself what thoughts or feelings you have today about any of your hungers, and write. Write about your thoughts and feelings about food or sex or money or love or anything else that pops into your mind— three to ten minutes! At the end of a week, a month, a year review what you’ve written and see what you see! This is a simple (though perhaps not easy) way to begin listening to yourself in new ways.
Make a date and share with your spouse or significant other concerns, desires, and sensitivities you have about discussing and showing your love and/or physical and sexual likes and dislikes. Ask them about theirs. It’s so important to start to get your hidden worries and feelings of shame or doubt on the table. You will probably find that you are both relieved and newly excited by your relationship and what’s possible. If your inhibition around this area (or any area) is paralyzing you and you can’t move forward in this way, you might consider reaching out for professional help from a psychotherapist who works psycho-dynamically (meaning they will help you get to your unconscious).
Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 in each area of your life that matters to you, 1 indicates being unhappy and 10 indicates complete happiness and fulfillment. You can use your journal for this activity. Highlight it and/or earmark the page so you can refer back to it daily and mark your progress. Areas to look at could be a relationship, sexual expression, family, financial, work, fitness, nutrition, friends, giving back, spirituality, and even sleep. These are just some suggestions, but you can look to see what’s important to you and then how you feel in each area. You can address many areas or just one or two. The point of this is to concretely identify where you feel you are lacking in your life and where you are also accomplished and happy. Consider that ratings under 8 might indicate where you are missing something about your hunger cues and those are the most pressing areas to focus on.
I am not interested in telling you what to do. I am interested in helping you begin to connect your feelings with their appropriate expressions so you can choose freely and with pleasure how to live your life and attend to your appetites. If you “overeat” you may be misidentifying your desire for affection and turning to food instead. You may want to feel filled with love and self-worth unconsciously, but it's too embarrassing or threatening to be conscious of and deal with, so you grab a box of chocolate chip cookies and fill yourself with them instead. You also might eat “too much” because that actually is your body’s metabolic need. But you need to take a minute to listen and observe. If you observe that you are drifting from your spouse or partner, you can also begin to consider whether you are both being open and enjoying your communication about everything including and especially about sex.
On a final note, there is one other appetite I haven’t named so far, but I have pointed to. It is curiosity. If we can remain open and engaged, questions and the desire to explore— curiosity, will come naturally. When we can be openly curious about ourselves and the people in our lives, meaningful and authentic relationships develop. You might worry that if people really knew who you were with all your appetites showing they would surely reject you. The flaw in this thinking is that when you don’t show who you really are you feel like all your relationships are fraudulent, and you really just can’t be truly happy. When you are honest about your likes, dislikes, and your real appetites, and then find out that you are liked and loved with and because of them, you can breathe again and feel wonderful. You discover the pleasure and ease of being loved based on who you authentically are— There’s nothing you need to hide or fake, which are exhausting and miserable tasks. If there are those who do reject you when you are authentic, they are also people who will never truly fulfill you. We are all hungry and love feeling good. Enjoy the journey as you figure out your tastes and appetites, what makes you feel best, and then pay it forward.
I have listed some simple ways here for you to begin to recognize, think about, and even take action around how your appetites are affecting your life and relationships. If you are interested in diving deeper please feel free to reach out to me for a free 15-minute phone consultation.