Are You Smuggling Your Desires?

A few years ago I came across a phrase that immediately lodged itself in my brain. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

The phrase is desire smuggling, coined by relationship educator Marcia Baczynski of AskingForWhatYouWant.com. I had never heard those two words put together before, but as soon as I read her description I recognized the phenomenon. In fact, I suspect most of us would.

The basic idea is surprisingly simple. When asking directly for something feels too vulnerable, we often look for another route. We hint. We soften the request. We ask about someone else’s interest instead of admitting our own. We tell ourselves we are “just curious.” We wait for the perfect moment, hoping it will somehow become easier tomorrow than it feels today.

I don’t think most people are aware they’re doing it.

As I sat with the idea, I found myself replaying conversations I’ve had over the years. Not because clients were being dishonest, but because they were being careful. (And yes, those are very different things.)

Someone reaches out asking about massage, but after we’ve talked for a while it becomes clear that what they’re really trying to figure out is whether they’ll feel accepted. Another person asks what kinds of fantasies other clients have explored before they’re willing to mention the one that’s been living in the back of their own mind. Sometimes a man spends twenty minutes explaining why he’s probably overthinking something, when what he really wants to know is whether he’ll be judged if he says it out loud.

Those conversations have always struck me as understandable. We all do this to a certain extent.

Desire has never existed in a vacuum. Every one of us learned something about wanting long before we became adults. We learned from our families, our first relationships, school, religion, friends, movies, and the countless small moments that told us what was acceptable and what wasn’t. Sometimes those lessons were explicit. More often they were subtle enough that we stopped noticing them years ago.

If you learned that certain desires were embarrassing, inappropriate, selfish, or simply “too much,” it makes sense that you would become cautious. Caution isn’t a character flaw. It’s an adaptation.

That is one of the reasons I appreciate Marcia’s framing so much. She doesn’t describe desire smuggling as manipulation or weakness. She describes it as a human response to environments where desire hasn’t always felt welcome. I think that’s a generous way of looking at it, and, from what I’ve seen, a realistic one.

Reading her article also made me wonder how many conversations never happen because both people are waiting for the other person to go first.

I see this in intimate relationships all the time. One partner hopes the other will somehow guess what they want because asking directly feels too exposing. The other partner assumes everything is fine because nothing has been said. Both people may care deeply about one another, yet they’re navigating entirely different conversations in their own heads.

The same thing happens in dating. It happens in marriages. It happens in friendships. It even happens in the conversations people have with themselves.

We often imagine that desire is the difficult part. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes we know exactly what we want. The difficult part is believing that our desire will still be welcomed once another person knows about it.

That’s a much more vulnerable question!

I don’t think the answer is to force ourselves into radical honesty or to march into every relationship announcing every fantasy we’ve ever had. Human beings need discernment as much as they need courage.

But I do think it’s useful to notice when we’re asking sideways for something we wish we could ask for directly.

That small moment of recognition creates choice.

Instead of wondering why we keep dropping hints, hoping someone will read our mind, or talking ourselves out of what matters, we can become curious about what we’re protecting. Sometimes the fear is still relevant. Sometimes it belongs to a chapter of life that’s long since ended.

Either way, it gives us somewhere honest to begin.

If this idea resonates with you, I highly recommend reading Marcia Baczynski’s original article on desire smuggling. She gave language to something I suspect many of us have experienced without ever knowing it had a name.

And if, somewhere in the middle of reading this, you found yourself thinking, “I do that…” then you’re in very good company.