Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

by Esther Perel

Today’s twosomes are too busy, too stressed, too involved in child rearing, and too tired for sex.

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.

It’s hard to generate excitement, anticipation, and lust with the same person you look to for comfort and stability, but it’s not impossible.

The very dynamics that are a source of conflict in a relationship—particularly those pertaining to power, control, dependency, and vulnerability—often become desirable when experienced through the body and eroticized.

I see couples who view seduction as too much work, something they shouldn’t have to do now that they’re committed.

They prefer a love that is built on patience more than on passion.

Is there something inherent in commitment that deadens desire?

Romantics value intensity over stability.

Realists value security over passion.

they’re able to seamlessly meld the ordinary and the uncanny.

I want to be looked at without all the baggage.

She wants both the coziness and the edge, and she wants them both with him.

sexuality became a property of the self, one that we develop, define, and renegotiate throughout our lives.

What is different is that modern life has deprived us of our traditional resources, and has created a situation in which we turn to one person for the protection and emotional connections that a multitude of social networks used to provide.

Adult intimacy has become overburdened with expectations.

passion in a relationship is commensurate with the amount of uncertainty you can tolerate.

Introducing uncertainty sometimes requires nothing more than letting go of the illusion of certitude. In this shift of perception, we recognize the inherent mystery of our partner.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

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

Our need for constancy limits how much we are willing to know the person who’s next to us.

We see what we want to see, what we can tolerate seeing, and our partner does the same. Neutralizing each other’s complexity affords us a kind of manageable otherness. We narrow down our partner, ignoring or rejecting essential parts when they threaten the established order of our coupledom. We also reduce ourselves, jettisoning large chunks of our personalities in the name of love.

Yet the mechanisms that we put in place to make love safer often put us more at risk. We ground ourselves in familiarity, and perhaps achieve a peaceful domestic arrangement, but in the process we orchestrate boredom.

We ground ourselves in familiarity, and perhaps achieve a peaceful domestic arrangement, but in the process we orchestrate boredom.

When we resist the urge to control, when we keep ourselves open, we preserve the possibility of discovery.

Eroticism resides in the ambiguous space between anxiety and fascination.

The attributes that describe an idealized lover are always luxurious and bountiful.

“Love arises from within ourselves as an imaginative act, a creative synthesis that aims to fulfill our deepest longings, our oldest dreams, that allows us both to renew and transform ourselves.”

Beginnings are always ripe with possibilities, for they hold the promise of completion.

The seeds of intimacy are time and repetition. We choose each other again and again, and so create a community of two.

The trust that comes with emotional closeness enables them to unleash their erotic appetites.

it’s been my experience as a therapist that increased emotional intimacy is often accompanied by decreased sexual desire.

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

When people become fused—when two become one—connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with. Thus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex.

Hear me out!

Others approach relationships with a heightened need for personal space—our sense of self-preservation inspires vigilance against being devoured.

Autonomy being top priority. the fear of getting lost in someone else.. wheredisd I go?

Erotic, emotional connection generates closeness that can become overwhelming, evoking claustrophobia. It can feel intrusive. What was initially a secure enclosure becomes confining.

We want closeness, but not so much that we feel trapped by it.

In the beginning you can focus on the connection because the psychological distance is already there; it’s a part of the structure.

We appreciate being left alone to meander leisurely in our own mind because this reestablishes a psychological distance, a delineation of the boundaries between me and you.

That after sex distance explained

But sexual excitement requires the capacity not to worry, and the pursuit of pleasure demands a degree of selfishness.

Some people can’t allow themselves this selfishness, because they’re too absorbed with the well-being of the beloved.

It’s hard to feel attracted to someone who has abandoned her sense of autonomy. Maybe he can love her, but it’s clearly much harder for him to desire her. There’s no tension.

Reason, understanding, compassion, and camaraderie are the handmaidens of a close, harmonious relationship.

But sex often evokes unreasoning obsession rather than thoughtful judgment, and selfish desire rather than altruistic consideration.

his kindness makes me feel safe,

Erotic intelligence is about creating distance, then bringing that space to life.

The psychologist Virginia Goldner makes an accurate distinction between the “flaccid safety of permanent coziness” and the “dynamic safety” of couples who fight and make up and whose relationship is a succession of breaches and repairs. It’s not by co-opting aggression but rather by owning it that sexual tension can freely romp—and can itself bring safety.

Hmmmm, conflict is needed to maintain sexual tension?

the space necessary for desire to flourish.

I argue that couples may be better off cultivating their separate selves.

Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it. If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected. Love is about having; desire is about wanting.

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.