"Heterosexuality is dangerous. It tempts you to aim at a perfect duality of desire"

Marguerite Duras’s assertion that “heterosexuality is dangerous. It tempts you to aim at a perfect duality of desire,” calls attention to the deeper complexities embedded within societal expectations of gender, relationships, and desire. The term “dangerous” is provocative; it challenges the assumption that heterosexuality, often considered the social norm, is neutral or benign. According to Duras, heterosexuality is marked not just by attraction between men and women, but by an alluring, potentially perilous ideal: the notion that desire should achieve a perfect balance, a harmonious complementarity, between two fundamentally different individuals.

This vision of a “perfect duality” is rooted in binary thought, an old philosophical tradition that views male and female, masculine and feminine, as oppositional yet ideally matched halves. In this framework, heterosexuality becomes less about the unpredictable, multifaceted nature of human connection and more an aspirational construct, pushing individuals to mold their identities and desires to fit neatly defined roles. Such a duality prescribes and polices the forms that love, sex, and yearning are supposed to take. The pursuit of this perfection can lead to self-alienation, disappointment, and the erasure of difference and complexity within and between people.

Duras’s words open a critique of how normative heterosexuality restricts the imagination, potentially making those engaged in it blind to the rich possibilities of desire beyond binary oppositions. Relationships then risk becoming performances of roles rather than genuine encounters between unique selves. By describing the temptation toward an idealized balance, Duras highlights the pressure to conform to externally defined standards rather than embracing the unpredictability and multiplicity inherent in human desires. Her insight resonates with broader critiques of normative sexuality and gender roles, suggesting that real danger lies in forgetting that desire defies simple categorization and that love, sexual or otherwise, must ultimately transcend imposed dualities to fully honor our individual and shared humanity.