I see the erotic as a lifeforce, not simply sexual desire or expression.
It’s the creative current that animates us throughout our lives.
The Erotic as Lifeforce
This isn’t a new idea. Many wisdom traditions have understood sexual energy as life energy. In Chinese philosophy, sexual energy is one expression of our vital life force. Even the earliest use of the word libido referred not simply to sexual desire, but to life force energy.
This understanding has always resonated deeply with me. I feel it in my own life and I see it awaken and flow within my clients. When I sit with them in my consulting room, I’m never thinking about their sexuality in isolation. I am tuning in to a much bigger question:
How is your erotic lifeforce expressing itself at this point in your life?
Because our sexuality never exists separately from the life we are living.
Over the past couple of weeks I was interviewed for two different podcasts. One explored sexuality after becoming parents, the other sexuality after menopause.
Although they focused on different stages of life, I found myself saying essentially the same thing in both conversations.
The erotic doesn’t disappear. It changes.
A Fruit Tree
Afterwards, when I was sitting quietly in meditation, an image came to mind of a fruit tree.
And with it came a simple metaphor: the erotic evolves through life just as a fruit tree moves through the seasons. Not becoming more or less. Simply expressing itself differently.
However our culture tells a very different story.
Youth is celebrated as the height of erotic life. Everything afterwards is measured against it, as though the rest of life is a gradual fading of something we once possessed.
Yet that has never reflected either my own experience or what I have witnessed over twenty-five years of working with thousands of people at every stage of life.
Another Way of Seeing
We need to ask a different question.
Not: “How do we preserve youthful sexuality?”
But: “How is the erotic inviting us to live this season well?”
Like the fruit tree, we each move through four seasons.
Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter.
No season is better than another. Each has its own beauty. And each prepares us for the next.
Spring — Awakening
Spring is a season of awakening.
We reach towards life with curiosity, hope and desire. We learn, explore, aspire. We discover ourselves, and we discover one another.
The erotic is expansive. It reaches out into the world, full of possibility. It delights in discovery, in play, in the joy of inhabiting a living body.
Sexual expression is often at its most enthusiastic. Desire feels urgent and the body feels alive with possibility.
This is the season of youthful desire. Not because the erotic is at its peak. But because it is awakening.
Summer — Building
Then comes summer. The season of creation.
For many of us this is the time of building careers, relationships, homes and families. For others it is creating businesses, communities, art or service.
Whatever form it takes, this is a season of extraordinary fullness. The fruit tree pours enormous energy into producing its fruit, and so do we. It is a beautiful, deeply creative, and often exhausting season of life.
Our culture tells us that sexuality inevitably suffers here, but I see it quite differently.
Rather than the youthful urgency of spring, it becomes softer, more tender, more relational. It becomes less about intensity and more about connection; less about performance and more about presence.
For those raising children, lovemaking may become not only an expression of the love between two people, but also a celebration of what that love has created. The reproductive and bonding aspects of sexuality merge.
Far from diminishing the erotic, perhaps this season expands it—from the intensity of youth to the tenderness of love.
Autumn — Mellow Fruitfulness
Eventually the intensity of building begins to soften.
The children become more independent. Careers become established. Life grows more spacious. The fruit has ripened. Autumn arrives.
John Keats described autumn as the season of “mists and mellow fruitfulness.” What a beautiful way to think about this stage of life. There is less striving, less proving, and more fullness.
There is a new spaciousness. Not because we have stopped creating, but because the intensity of building has eased.
We have more room to breathe and more room to reflect. More room simply to enjoy the fruits of everything we have cultivated over decades.
There is also a growing sense of sovereignty. Not reigning over others, but finally reigning peacefully within ourselves. We no longer need to prove who we are, we simply become more fully ourselves.
From this place, contribution flows naturally. Through mentoring, creating, teaching, writing—or simply through the way we live—we begin sharing the richness of what life has given us.
The erotic lifeforce has not diminished. It has simply found another way to flow.
Winter — Distillation
And then there is winter. It’s the season I have not yet lived, but which I can glimpse through others.
Through the extraordinary tenderness I see between my parents as my father becomes increasingly frail. Through older clients. Through the privilege of reading and writing a testimonial for a beautiful book about sexuality in later life.
Again and again I notice the same quiet quality. It is not decline, but repose. The tree appears still. Yet beneath the surface life remains. Its energy has not disappeared, it has simply withdrawn into essence.
Perhaps winter is the season of distillation. A gradual refining of all that life has taught us. The erotic lifeforce has not gone. It has simply found its most essential expression.
And perhaps, in that gentle distillation, we are gradually prepared for death—life’s final completion.
An Invitation
So this week I don’t offer you a provocation. I offer you an invitation.
Rather than measuring your life against youth, ask yourself:
What season am I in?
What is this season asking of me?
How is the erotic inviting me to live this season well?
Spring has its awakening.
Summer its building.
Autumn its mellow fruitfulness.
Winter its quiet distillation.
Each season brings its own challenges. Each offers its own gifts. None is a lesser version of another.
The erotic doesn’t disappear. It changes.
Inviting us to remain fully alive in every season of being human.
The Salon
Please join me in the Salon below for a deeper, chattier, more personal dive into this subject.
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