“It’s Not a Sexy Decision at All, That Sort of Thing Should Happen Naturally”: The Idealization of Erotic Time As a ‘Time Outside of Time’

“Eroticism always entails a breaking down of established patterns, the patterns, I repeat, of the regulated social order basic to our discontinuous mode of existence as defined and separate individuals.” (Bataille, 1957: 18). This idea of the erotic as existing outside the world of reason still inhabits our collective imaginary and informs the way we think about and experience sexuality. There is a romanticisation of erotic time as spontaneous and singular, sheltered from the banality of everyday life – even in the context of contemporary societies, characterised by temporal compression and acceleration.

In this communication, we aim to reflect on the effects of the perpetuation of discourses that construct erotic time as a ‘time outside of time’ and that associate this temporal exclusion to a truer authenticity of sexual desire. To do so, we analyse biographic narrative interviews about women’s experiences of sexuality during post-partum, a period characterized by a significant reconfiguration of quotidian temporalities. A total of 45 women aged 28-45 in heterosexual relationships were interviewed, all of whom had their last child 5 or fewer years ago.

Results show that, although the strategy of ‘putting sex on the agenda’ is adopted by many couples as a way to manage their sexual life during post-partum, this is often experienced as uncomfortable and odd. For many of the interviewed women, sex should always happen spontaneously and take as long as desired; you should not need to plan when it will happen, nor worry about when it needs to end. Planning their sexual life is perceived as a last resource and a sign of relationship failure. These results help us think about the ways in which erotic temporalities are imagined as exceptional, immune to social acceleration and compression – and about some of the problematic effects such a notion might produce.