Françoise, auditor of Europe 1, is embarrassed. A week ago, her husband shaved his long beard. With the impression of facing another man, she has had much less desire for him since. Catherine Blanc, psychoanalyst and sexologist in Paris, answers him in the program Sans Rendez-vous with Mélanie Gomez, Wednesday afternoon.
The question of Françoise, 51 years old
"For the past week, my husband has completely shaved his beard, even though he has been wearing one for ten years. I feel like I am facing another man because it changes him. The problem, is that I don't like it at all. He hardly attracts me physically anymore. How is it possible? "
Catherine Blanc's response
"She changed her man! This beard could symbolize many things for her, such as virility. The fact that there is no longer a beard highlights this face, these face connections with family atavisms, for example. example. I don't know what that could mean for her, but obviously it is no longer what she had invested erotically, what made this man to be her own. When another would find the opportunity wonderful to rejoice because she 'changed her husband', François lost hers and everything that made him 'her' man. "
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Shaving your beard rejuvenates. But is it a loss of virility?
"There are women who do not want to see a single hair, because it is very anxiety-provoking for them and it refers to virility. For others, it is the expression of the masculine and not of their infant As soon as he is shaved closely, in eroticism, one does not really want to find his baby again. A shaved man can symbolize this, for the one who is in relation to someone with a beard, with everything what it can return. And even if it stays the same man and the beard grows back very quickly. For a while, however, it can weaken the look she places on him. "
Can a woman be embarrassed as a man would be by a woman with a mustache?
"This is a very good analogy. Indeed, we want to pretend that there are no external signs of our kind, as if we should be intrinsically loved, whatever happens to us, that we get sick or that we are not in beauty. In reality, we have a lot of things that are the archetype of virility, for example: muscles, the sound of a voice, the beard, etc.
What is desired is also a sum of fantasies posed on these external signs of virility and when they disappear, for a certain time, there is a doubt, a questioning on the distribution of genres. It can be extremely anxiety-provoking for a woman as for a man if he suddenly had to see his wife with a mustache. Maybe it would be fantasizing about a man and it could be extremely anxiety-provoking and anti-erotic. "