Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

by Esther Perel

We all share a fundamental need for security, which propels us toward committed relationships in the first place; but we have an equally strong need for adventure and excitement.

The body often contains emotional truths that words can too easily gloss over.

Romantics value intensity over stability. Realists value security over passion. But both are often disappointed, for few people can live happily at either extreme.

we all need security: permanence, reliability, stability, and continuity. These rooting, nesting instincts ground us in our human experience. But we also have a need for novelty and change, generative forces that give life fullness and vibrancy.

We seek a steady, reliable anchor in our partner. Yet at the same time we expect love to offer a transcendent experience that will allow us to soar beyond our ordinary lives.

Love, beyond providing emotional sustenance, compassion, and companionship, is now expected to act as a panacea for existential aloneness as well.

Adult intimacy has become overburdened with expectations.

We bring to our romantic relationships an almost unbearable existential vulnerability—as if love itself weren’t dangerous enough.

While love promises us relief from aloneness, it also heightens our dependence on one person.

A sense of physical and emotional safety is basic to healthy pleasure and connection. Yet without an element of uncertainty there is no longing, no anticipation, no frisson.

the fantasy of permanence may trump the fantasy of passion, but both are products of our imagination.

When we love we always risk the possibility of loss—by criticism, rejection, separation, and ultimately death—regardless of how hard we try to defend against it.

Introducing uncertainty sometimes requires nothing more than letting go of the illusion of certitude. In this shift of perception, we recogni...

When our partner stands alone, with his own will and freedom, the delicateness of our bond is magnified.

In truth, we never know our partner as well as we think we do. Mitchell reminds us that even in the dullest marriages, predictability is a mirage.

But love, by its very nature, is unstable.

We remain interested in our partners; they delight us, and we’re drawn to them. But, for many of us, renouncing the illusion of safety, and accepting the reality of our fundamental insecurity, proves to be a difficult step.

Love Seeks Closeness, but Desire Needs Distance

Love is an exercise in selective perception, even a delicious deception as well, though who cares about that in the beginning?

We magnify the good qualities of those we love, and confer on them almost mythical powers. We transform them, and we in turn are transformed in their presence.

If love is an act of imagination, then intimacy is an act of fruition. It waits for the high to subside so it can patiently insert itself into the relationship. The seeds of intimacy are time and repetition. We choose each other again and again, and so create a community of two.

When intimacy collapses into fusion, it is not a lack of closeness but too much closeness that impedes desire.

Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exist without the other. With too much distance, there can be no connection. But too much merging eradicates the separateness of two distinct individuals.

“You’re so afraid to lose him that you’ve alienated yourself and you’ve lost your freedom. There isn’t a separate person here for him to love.”

the courage to act on our professional ambitions, to confront family secrets, and to take the skydiving course we never dared consider before. Yet we balk at the idea of establishing distance within the relationship itself—the very place that grants us the delicious togetherness in the first place. We can tolerate space anywhere but there.

Unconditional love does not drive unconditional want.

Yet in our efforts to establish intimacy we often seek to eliminate otherness, thereby precluding the space necessary for desire to flourish. We seek intimacy to protect ourselves from feeling alone; and yet creating the distance essential to eroticism means stepping back from the comfort of our partner and feeling more alone.

In our world of instant communication, we supplement our relationships with an assortment of technological devices in the hope that all these gizmos will strengthen our connections. This social frenzy masks a profound hunger for human contact.

We naively believe that the essence of who we are is most accurately conveyed through words.

the wish for intimacy can lead a person to impose forced reciprocity as a way to stave off the threat of rejection.

Golde in Fiddler on the Roof reminds us that even ordinary daily activities will, over time, weave themselves into a rich tapestry of connection.

Because loss of control is almost exclusively seen in a negative light, we don’t even entertain the idea that surrender can be emotionally or spiritually enlightening.

“‘I know it’s not right to complain when you have it all,’

In her honesty, he discovered her again. Even more important, he was choosing her again, and it’s the act of choosing, the freedom involved in choosing, that keeps a relationship alive.

A society that sees sex as soiled does not make sex go away. Instead, this kind of anxious atmosphere breeds guilt and shame in its more extreme version, or a generalized discomfort in its more ubiquitous expression.

“It seems OK to ask for what you really need,” I explain, “but to ask for something just because you want it or like it is selfish. Pleasure itself, unless you’ve earned it, is dubious. It also raises the question of how much you feel you deserve and are worthy of receiving—just because you’re you. But eroticism is precisely that: it’s pleasure for pleasure’s sake, offered to you gratuitously by Nico.”

Erotic intimacy is the revelation of our memories, wishes, fears, expectations, and struggles within a sexual relationship.

The more we trust, the farther we are able to venture.

We know our beloved will be waiting for our return, will not punish our selfish pursuits, and in fact may even applaud them.

Bader’s explanation emphasizes the importance of differentiation—the capacity to hold on to oneself in the presence of another.

Despite a 50 percent divorce rate for first marriages and 65 percent the second time around; despite the staggering frequency of affairs; despite the fact that monogamy is a ship sinking faster than anyone can bail it out, we continue to cling to the wreckage with absolute faith in its structural soundness.

Fear of loss and fear of abandonment tighten our grip on fidelity.

We want to know that we matter, and that, for at least one person, we are irreplaceable.