Esther Perel's Blog, page 13

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Is fidelity a virtue or a weakness?

Let me turn some ideas around.

For some people sexual faithfulness is the easiest faithfulness to keep, but they betray their partner in many different ways not always less destructive than infidelity. When people stay in a destructive relationship, and they are not imprisoned, it begs to question: Is this an act of fidelity, of faithfulness?

If people are aggressive or fighting with each other, if they’re addicted to each other, if they each have a mountain of judgments that stick their wings to the wall like a butterfly and prevent them from moving, if there is the inversion of their passion that has now taken the place of love, are they still faithful? At that moment we wonder is it fidelity or weakness? A lack of courage? Or is it boldness, audaciousness, or affirmation of oneself? Usually, infidelity is vilified as an evasion of morality and a lack of control of one’s instinct, an egoistic act that doesn’t take into account the established order and that breaks the existing commitment. It’s a flaw. And yet without infidelity nothing would be thrown into question, into movement. No creation of a disorder in order to prepare a new order. We wouldn’t be able to evolve.

Some writers define infidelity as anything that occurs between a married person and someone other than a spouse that lessens the intimacy and increases the emotional distance between the spouses. But such definition fails to take into account the many other ways that partners can emotionally leave each other.

Infidelity is not only a betrayal or a form of abandonment it can also be an opportunity.

Is there such a thing as a bad marriage?

When people come to me in the aftermath of the discovery of an affair there is such a pull to see the entire marriage as a failure. One event can throw years of marital capital in the bin. So I ask myself does this really mean this was a bad marriage?

I look at many couples and see good marriages, even those who are high on task management and lower on relational atunement. I see relationships where I think, “this is a good couple.” I will often see the couple the day after and I will say, ”this is not a bad marriage, this actually is a good marriage because it meets this need, that need.” They have built homes together, they have taken care of children together, they have taken care of ailing parents together, they have gotten each other through unemployment phases together, all for the sake of those major expectations in marriage: companionship, economic support, family life, social respectability.

Maybe they haven’t added to this the fact that they want their partner to be their best friend and trusted companion and passionate lover, all in one. But that doesn’t mean they are in a bad relationship. I think that people often, in the couples I see, find it enormously reassuring that they don’t have to think the entire thing was a sham. Even though the shattering of the reality may make you feel that the whole marriage was a lie, not the whole thing was a lie. Maybe some aspects of it were a lie. You still need ground to stand on, some things to hold on to. One of the sentences that I often add to that reassurance is, “In the west today most people are going to have two or three marriages, two or three committed relationships in their adult life. It’s just that some of us are going to do it with the same person. Maybe your first marriage is over.” There is something very hopeful about that. I’ve never thought there is much to the sentence. I originally said it as a joke about my own marriage. I said I’ve had three but they’re with the same man. And then I began to think about this, that there was something very structuring about that. 25 years of being married isn’t just dumped out because of this one affair.

Are you an active participant in your sex life?

The passive partner’s thought process is: “I would like to make love with you, but I won’t tell you what I want because I’m used to waiting, and I’m in a position of self-denial. I don’t dare be assertive, because I don’t feel entitlement.”

Women have historically learned to organize their desire passively and at the receiving end of a man’s desire. Women have never had to learn to ask for what they want sexually. They cultivate their desirability, rather than their own wanting. They may be in touch with their desire, but embarrassed and fearful that if they are too lustful and too forthcoming they will also be too ‘slutty’.

Women are willing to repress their desires, sublimate them into other areas of their lives, or even let them go dormant for a decade.

Desire is bound up with a healthy dose of entitlement and deserving. People who are shy in this arena struggle with a lack of healthy entitlement, often paying attention to other people’s needs rather than their own.

“Tell me how you were loved, and I’ll tell you how you you make love.” How did we learn to love and experience pleasure and trust? Were we rejected, humiliated, or were we held and soothed? Importantly, did we learn not to expect too much? Did we learn to make eye contact? Was it OK to be bold, to strive or were we asked to repress our energy? Was the subject of sex and our feelings open, or something that we had to whisper about? These are the dynamics which affect how people make love, and whether they can say: “I want you and I want sex.”

The active partner yearns for the passive partner to share the erotic upkeep of the relationship, and doesn’t want to be the sole custodian of desire.

During sex try to stay inside your own body long enough to experience pleasure instead of second-guessing your partner. Instead of thinking: “Am I taking too long? Is he getting bored? I don’t need my orgasm,” concentrate on your own pleasure.

Experiment by experiencing what it’s like to drive sex just once. Pick the time, the place and what you want to do and how to do it. You will be the seducer, the pursuer and be totally in charge.

There is still time to sign up for my upcoming 4-class July online workshop (July 9, 16, 23, and 30 from 1pm – 2pm EST).

My goal throughout this workshop is to create an open and judgmental environment to explore the nature of your erotic self.

Singles and couples from all sexual orientations are welcome.

More information here.

Future of Couples — Key Ingredients to a Happy Marriage

The promise that there is one person out there with whom a perfect life is possible if we can just find him or her is a commonly held romantic ideal. Our desiderata includes everything the traditional family was meant to provide—security, children, property, respectability—but now we also want our partner to be our best friend, our trusted confident and passionate lover. When it comes to sex, we include desire and sexual fulfillment as key ingredients to a happy marriage. Too often our focus is on the object of our love, not on our capacity to love. Hence psychologist Erich Fromm’s point: we think it’s easy to love, but hard to find the right person. Once we’ve found The One, we will need no one else.

We expect our partners to be the primary supplier for our emotional connections and to provide the anchoring experiences of our life. This makes for a stable relationship but not automatically a creative relationship.

When I think of an inspired relationship, the words creative and playful are key, as are the words alive, vibrant, vital. People who are bigger than the problems they face. People who’ve been able to not just inhabit the roles of parents and spouses but who also have maintained a sense of individuality and freedom that they derive from the powerful connection that exists between them. Often it’s also about people who are not just conforming to the dominant ideas, or envious of other people’s happiness.

Many of the lamentations of unhappy partners include, “I’m not getting my needs met”, “I deserve more”, “I’m entitled”. And I always wonder about when we became so sure that we are “owed” these things, and that happiness is not a possibility, but a mandate. I wonder if couples would be happier if they didn’t seek to be happy. All of these sentences highlight the centrality of the I that is so blatant in our individualistic society, where getting our own needs often overshadows empathy to others’ needs. How about we try to do both?

There is still time to sign up for my upcoming 4-class July online workshop (July 9, 16, 23, and 30 from 1pm – 2pm EST). You can register anytime before 11:59pm on July 8.

My goal throughout this workshop is to create an open and nonjudgmental environment to explore the nature of your erotic self.

Singles and couples from all sexual orientations are welcome.

More information here.

Tomorrow: Ask me your questions on Live Radio

I’ll be joining Marty Moss-Coane on Radio Times (WHYY-FM) in Philadelphia tomorrow (June 1, 2014) at 11am. We’ll be taking your questions about marriage, relationships, infidelity, and desire. Listen live online at WHYY.org. If you can’t listen live, the show will be archived on their website here.

Paradox of trust and secrets

A woman discovered her husband’s affair following the death of his mother and unleashed a kind of a rebelliousness against the constraints that he had put on himself and that they had put on him. When asked what particularly hurt her, sexually speaking, the husband talked about how he only could experience pleasure with her if she was the initiator, if she was active. If she can experience the drive of masculinity, he feels less passive, less imposed upon, less having to surrender to an all powerful woman, but that he has basically, for 20+ years, held back. We had 2 chairs: one chair of inhibition / disclaimed, disqualified self; the other chair of man when he’s confident and reaching out to her and he’s in touch with his desire. What was her hurt? That the one time he actually had that unbridled lustful desire he was more able to experience pleasure with the other person, it going to someone else. That is what she was jealous of.

We may ask the question: Are you cheating? But our partner is not obliged to answer. In every relationship, there are parts of ourselves that are communicated and parts that are excommunicated. We may want to question the degree to which we see fidelity as a kind of transparency (an open book, truth telling – no secrets) can have consequences on the sexuality of the couple. The more fearful the partners are and the more threatened they are by the other person’s autonomy, the less there will be overlap. It’s paradoxical: the more I sense that my separateness threatens you, the less I am likely to talk to you, the more you are likely to think I am hiding things from you, the more I am likely to find that you are being intrusive, the more I will hold things back, the more you will feel that I am being distant from you, holding from me and why don’t you talk to me and tell me everything and I don’t tell you because you don’t listen to the things that I will tell you that you may not be comfortable with. And so I’ll curtail my openness in order to protect you, when in fact you will not be protected because you will experience my curtailing as what is threatening to you. A Dance.

Trust is having the capacity to know you don’t know everything. If you need to know everything, you don’t trust … definition of autonomy. They need to be able to tolerate what they don’t know. You have a right to ask, but I’m not always sure you can expect an answer.

Masters and Disasters: Which are you?

Couples are splitting in record numbers, and younger generations are choosing to stay single more often than before. In 1986 John Gottman noticed this trend and began to wonder why these relationships fell apart. He and Robert Levenson set up “The Love Lab” to evaluate the physiological differences between couples who were still happily married six years later, and those who weren’t. They found that couples who are physiologically aroused – stressed out – in their relationships tend to split. Couples who foster connection, kindness, and meet each other’s emotional needs are “Masters” at love and tend to stay happier.

Masters of love do a lot of things differently. Check out this article in The Atlantic for more research and suggestions for how you can become Masters of Love.

Can men and women really just be friends?

With good communication and the right boundaries in place, it is possible.

When a woman’s place was stirring the pot aound the fire and men were off hunting down the dinner, both sexes generally only came together for romance. Today, we go through life with more friends and boyfriends than any generation before. So how do we decide who will be what? I did a straw poll of friends, colleagues, and patients on the When Sally Met Harry dilemma: ‘can men and women really be friends?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ says Henry, a 33-year-old IT manager. ‘Not only is it possible, it’s really special, but hard if you find them physically attractive. But if you don’t, no problem.’

Carl is a student of mine living in New York who arrived a week before 9/11. He found Joanna on a street corner staring at the burning towers. ‘I just hugged her, then and there. I guess it was fear, horror, a need to connect to life,’ he says. ‘We became friends, and I immediately knew I wanted more. Unfortunately, she didn’t.’ This is one of those predicaments where the lack of sexual attraction could enable a friendship and disable the love. But the mysteries of attraction don’t operate in tandem. One wants more, one doesn’t. Carl had to be sure he could accept Joanna’s asexual interest – take it as a gift, not a rejection. That took time and trust. Joanna had to be sure he wasn’t pretending to be OK with it, and trust that he wouldn’t hit on her at the first sign of weakness. She describes their friendship in deep familial terms now. They’re physical with each other, but it’s comfortable and safe. ‘We hug each other like you would a member of your family,’ she says. ‘It is not powered by desire, but by care.’ Carl agrees: ‘I love her like a sister – it’s a unique friendship I can’t have with other men.’

Read the rest on Psychologies UK: Can men and women really just be friends?

Case Study: Love, Sex, and Power

I’ve been with my partner for eight years and for a long time now he has been complaining that we don’t have enough sex. Every time we try to talk about it we end up arguing, which just makes me feel more distant from him and less inclined to want to have sex. I know this situation is damaging our relationship and I desperately want to find a solution, but I just don’t know how to make things better. I’m at a loss as to what to do to get both our relationship and our sex life back on track. Can you help me please?

What do we do when one of us starts avoiding sex? How can we turn around negative anticipation and thoughts about sex into a more open, curious emotional space? And how do we change the dynamic when one of you is the pursuer and the other one withdraws when pressured? Let me take you into one of my therapy sessions and introduce you to two of my clients – I will call them Claudia and Patrick, and present the process they went through to deal with the problem they had with their sex life:

Claudia says, ‘Patrick never wants to talk about sex.’ I reply, ‘Claudia, if you want to bring up the topic, please do. If you need to know that he’s “on board” ask him if he’ll join you in the conversation.’ Patrick agrees he’ll participate. Claudia adds, ‘The problem is that we never have sex and he never wants to discuss it either.’ I clarify that perhaps the real problem is that once the discussion is saturated with ‘the problem is that he’, and the words ‘never’ and ‘ever’ are used, it guarantees another sexless night. Let’s turn it around. ‘If sex between the two of you was the way you wanted it be, what would it be like?’ I ask. ‘First, it would be integrated into our relationship,’ says Claudia, adding, ‘It would be frequent, fun, healthy, intimate and exclusive.’ Then I ask Patrick the same question. He, too, emphasizes frequency, play and exclusiveness.

With just one question, they have already established the beginning of a commonality. There is an immediate mind-shift. Clearly, positive associations lead to more positive associations. ‘Can you think of an experience where you felt some of these wonderful sexual qualities?’ I continue. It doesn’t take Patrick long to remember a special situation at the beginning of their relationship. Claudia had flown 3,000km to visit him and he was at the airport eagerly waiting for her arrival. He couldn’t wait to see her: ‘You wore a short skirt, and your hair was up and showed your lovely long neck,’ he said. ‘You were beautiful and had such a radiant smile and I felt an intense rush. I wanted to take you right then and there and make love to you. We drove to my house and we couldn’t wait for our bodies to embrace and meld into one another.’ He recalls the intimate bonding. I suggest to Claudia that she closes her eyes while she listens to Patrick’s unfurling memories. I know that she’s seeing the scene as he speaks. So does he. In fact, they’re not only remembering it, they’re reliving it. When he finishes, Claudia is in tears. ‘I didn’t know you still remembered this. We used to be so close.’

Through the sharing of these intimate experiences, Patrick and Claudia evoke their desires and their loss. They re-sexualize each other, individually and together. Claudia tells of a trip they took to Mexico. They were on the beach, Patrick held her tenderly, she felt completely free and safe, happy to give herself over to him. That day she had her first orgasm. I see through his closed eyes and his facial expressions that he too is right back there with her. When they both return to the present, they’ve been moved and their senses awakened. Longing has replaced any feelings of blame and frustration. They have momentarily reconnected with the people they once were for each other. Years of bickering about sex are now tamed; the tone in their voice is gentle and soft.

Telling their positive sexual experiences was essential in opening up the possibility for renewed sexual relations. I then asked them about this exercise, and they both said the only problem was that I was in the room. My presence made them feel that the intimate encounter was not exclusive, which they had stated as an important quality of the sex they dream of. If you’re at a sexual impasse, instead of just discussing the problem, tell each other your wishes and recall ideal moments. One person tells the story and the other listens with their eyes closed, invited back into the erotic world of their partner. Write a list of all the qualities you like in a satisfying sexual relationship. You’ll notice immediately that you’re closer in your desires than you’ve come to believe. Ideal stories of the past will lead to new experiences in the present. Start there.

Do you have questions about fostering excitement in your relationship and deepening your connection with your partner? I’ve got answers.

After years of requests, I am offering my first Online Relationship Workshop for you: Love, Sex & Power.

This four-class online course starts on July 9th and is a rare opportunity to engage in honest conversation about the topics we’re most silent about: sex and intimacy. Experienced from the comfort and privacy of your own space.

Can’t join live? No problem! All classes are recorded and available for download.

Register and you’ll receive handouts and recordings to listen at your convenience.

Plus, as a special gift to my blog readers, you can enter code SUMMERLOVE to save 15% if you sign up by this Sunday, June 22nd.