The Powerful Hunger that Ended My Marriage

On desire, needs, and permission

Photo of me by Peter Dressel, 2005

To confront the part of myself that craves attention from men, I once asked a man to roleplay a scene with me in which I’d crawl across the floor—my mascara streaked, lipstick smeared, hair messy—begging him to fuck me, which he’d eventually do, exactly how I wanted it.

I wanted to give my craving a voice. I wanted to experience her shamelessly and messily asking for, and getting, what she wanted, to directly confront the extreme pressure I felt to be put together and self-reliant.

He declined, knowing he wasn’t equipped to handle that level of raw want from a woman.

That’s the story, isn’t it?

That no one can hold the depth and expanse of our hunger, so we settle for crumbs or lock it away where even we can’t find it.

Growing up in NYC, I learned to dress in my armor of chic black clothes, with thick-soled boots, and stride, bristling, through the city, needing nothing from anybody, pretending I wasn’t driven by hunger.

I fooled myself for a long time. Until I couldn’t anymore.

Looking back at that ordinary morning when my first husband’s smug smile made me want to bean him with a frying pan and flee the state, I now know what happened.

It was my hunger breaking through the layers of adrenal exhaustion and depression caused by the unconscious effort it took to push it way down, out of sight, for years.

In other words, hunger ended my marriage.

A spot deep inside me that, no matter how and what we tried—and try we did, with years of couples’ counseling and couples’ retreats—we couldn’t stay with long enough to satiate.

I could call it hunger to be seen and known, but that’s not all of it.

It could also be hunger for depth of connection, but that’s only partially true.

Good sex can touch this hungry spot, even satiate it for a few, but this isn’t just about sex.

I couldn’t name this spot back then, which made it impossible to effectively invite him into meeting me there, so I made him wrong instead, as one does, until one knows better.

That said, there were hints. This poem of mine appeared in my book, Steady, My Gaze, published while I was still married:

Rapacious

You wanted to be a good wife,
so you tried to kill me when you wed,

locked me in the basement—no food,
water, light—because you didn’t want

to scare him. But I love men 
who are not mine, catch their glances

and claim them. When I dance 
through your body, they grind against me 

and I grind back. To you, I am forest fire 
and dry wood, twister, the tidal wave 

that makes villagers scramble up trees. 
You fear me, your body’s mortar 

crumbling in the hollow places. 
But you miss the point. I worship 

cock as fulcrum of the universe. 
Your marriage means nothing to me. 

Only God meets this hunger. You want 
to know God through your husband? 

Unchain me, let me climb the stairs 
and live in your house. 

*Note: Originally published in 2011 with the word lingam (instead of cock) because I was studying tantra back then. It’s too cringe for me now, I had to update it.

In the past, I labeled this rapacious part of myself as the Hungry Ghost, a Buddhist term that refers to beings driven by insatiable needs, often depicted with huge bellies and small mouths that make it impossible to consume enough to appease their hunger.

Western culture is built on unexamined, rampant Hungry Ghosts that drive us to consume, consume, consume–stuff, food, people, social media–to try to fill this voracious spot.

But trying to appease the Hungry Ghost through a person, food, or shopping, is a losing game.

Why? Because it’s insatiable.

Instead, we have to get to know it and learn its tricks, so we can catch when it’s manipulating us, and decide how best to work with and integrate it, so it no longer drags us around, spending our money, time, and energy on things that ultimately don’t fulfill us.

Hint: Suppression, denial, and punishment don’t work.

If you want to avoid blowing up your life, it’s best to let it out of the basement and invite it to live openly in your house. This is usually best done step-by-step, in partnership with a skilled mentor like me, or a therapist specialized in inviting disowned parts to be reintegrated without judgment or shame.

I later realized this Hungry Ghost label was a tool I used to distance myself from something I had shame around: That I, an independent, intelligent, and self-reliant modern woman, had needs.

Not that I was needy, but that I had any needs at all.

Instead of doing the harder work to get to the root of those needs (and my aversion to them), or learn how to ask for what I want and need in constructive ways, I made myself wrong for wanting at all.

I pathologized my hunger and shrank myself to be acceptable and appropriate.

Sound familiar?

Tell me what you find most repellent about yourself and I’ll tell you what wants and needs you’ve disowned.

As women, we’re taught to fear our hunger. That if we give it free rein, we’ll burn our lives down and end up living on a park bench, yelling at the trees, scarlet letter pinned to our chests.

We’ll be labeled as high maintenance. Too much. End up burned at the stake. Stoned to death.

I never did get to do that scene that man wasn’t able to do with me that day, but I still learned over time to allow my hunger a voice.

And now, there’s no going back.

Allowing my hunger a voice has enabled me to shape a life, and a second marriage, that’s true to me. I wouldn’t shove her down in the dark basement again for anyone.

How about you?