Freud expresses this rather laconically: to find sexual pleasure in a relationship you have to conquer the incest prohibition, otherwise it will not work. He adds that this often works only in a second marriage or a second relationship. It seems as though the first catches all the negative weight of the past. Sex can be enjoyed only away from the mother.

From the point of view of the partial drive, this other person is always a means, and he/she never becomes a goal in him/herself. In pragmatic terms, this suggests that the drive does not require a person as a subject in any way. The movement of the partial impulse is that of an arc, a boomerang, that passes over the other person, returns to itself, and closes in on itself, creating a totality, a completed action, self- gratification.

Therefore the goal of the partial drive is not the other person, the goal is to achieve a particular form of gratification. In this respect, the other person is actually superfluous as a subject and can sometimes even be an obstacle to pleasure. He or she serves as an object—and actually as a partial object—a means of achieving a goal.

The most obvious difference between a drive and love concerns the object, which should no longer be referred to as an object. In contrast with the drive where the object can always be exchanged as an unimportant means to an end, in the case of love, everything turns upon this one irreplaceable other.

There is barely any room left for the self, and the loved one takes up all the space available. As Freud says: 'A person in love is humble