"For they could not love you, but still your love was true" in anticlimatic

Sam Rockwell, one of my all time favorite actors since Lawn Dogs, has a pretty incredible scene in the newest season of White Lotus where he describes kind of coming around full circle on the psychology of sexual gratification. A sex addict, living off of prostitutes in southeast Asia, he finds himself on the receiving end of a ladyboy for a change and finally gets it: he doesn’t want to be himself, “banging” these girls, as he says- what he really wants is to be the girl, getting banged by himself.

And what really did it for me regarding that scene, for how candid and disturbing it was to hear it described the way he describes it, is how true it really is- though most of us do not play it out to such a grotesque degree, or perhaps even realize it. There is an easy path to empathy through physical intimacy, and along that path we project onto our partners what our deepest subconscious desires for ourselves are. Ideally, and most commonly, it is to feel loved- but for people that hate themselves, a desire to be destroyed might prevail.

Now, I don’t know if any of this is true, but it is interesting to think about. Do you really enjoy your partner? Or do you enjoy your partner enjoying you?