Photo: Mika Baumeister
I downloaded a couple of dating apps, curious to see what prospects look like for a woman shy of 50 in Japan and how the apps have changed during the pandemic.
Since then, I have often thought about Desire and Desirability and their roles in our lives. It's come up frequently in recent weeks. I am, after all, waiting for the formal end to my previous relationship (in the form of divorce documents). In the meantime, I’m reflecting on what worked, what didn’t, what I learned and am grateful for, what kind of future I want to create, and what I'll need.
One thing is clear: in past relationships, I focused more on my Desirability in the eyes of others than on my sense of Desire. It left me feeling full of stress and a heavy feeling that I wasn't good enough. Nor would I ever be.
Desire and Desirability
Desire, and its counterpart Desirability: they’re often misunderstood and confused.
Desire is a pull to live, to connect. It’s your life force calling you. Desire is a direction. Desire is a human imperative to live and thrive and be alive, full of zest. It’s our life calling us into the potential of action, even if we aren’t exactly sure where the force, the direction, or the actions are leading us.
Desirability is how we fit into someone else’s Desires. It’s neither intrinsically right or wrong, good or bad- it’s an index of where we might fall on a given person’s Desire map. We may rate high on one person’s Map and not on another, without having changed anything about ourselves.
I’ve been looking at Desire and Desirability in this way:
Desire from Desirability: How are they alike and different?
If Desire is something that steers us, Desirability is something that happens to us.
Question for you: What happens when we make Desire our GPS? How is it different to making Desirability our GPS?
Desire and Desirability at Work
Over the past months, Desire and Desirability made frequent appearances at work (well, not in the way you think!). For a number of women I coach, the theme of Likeability at Work has been an important coaching topic. I admire the women who actively explored this theme in their coaching sessions.
Confusing Desirability as a litmus test for self-worth had been an exhausting experience for me when I worked in corporate. I’d been too embarrassed to acknowledge it, much less bring it up. Ignoring it probably made me carry myself awkwardly. I wish I’d known then I could learn to see Desirability as something that’s relative, and that I wasn’t alone.
At work, our Desire might be our vision for our career, and what we want work-life balance or success to look like over time. Desirability (or Likeability, in the women’s parlance) is a kind of popularity rating with peers, or their hirability into, or promotability within the organization.
Sometimes our career Desire might align with our Desirability at work. Has this happened for you? Think about what work looks like and what happens in this environment. For many of us, there are phases in our career when the two don’t align.
Paying attention and learning to align both your Desire and your Desirability in a few areas of your professional life will help to create and shape a career that feels more supportive and fulfilling, and successful over time.
Learning to discern between Desire and Desirability, and continuing to tune into my Desire has given me more calm and confidence in the more unpredictable areas of my life. It’s a skillful and self-compassionate way of practicing mindfulness at work, and anywhere life brings you.
Questions for you:
What happens when Desire and Desirability aren’t aligned? What are the voices you hear in your head when they aren’t aligned?
What happens when the two are aligned? What happens next?
An exercise:
Clear the space around you, and sit. Create some space to sense into your body. Breathe for a few rounds of deep breath and scan your body. Listen to your senses. Scan for wherever you feel a strong pull. The easiest pull to notice is hunger and the desire to eat. Sexual, erotic desire. Look for their cousins: emotional pull, mental drive, spiritual pull.
Create space to listen to any Desire that’s with you. Tell me what you notice. What will you change about what you’re doing now? What is the very first action you’ll take?