Mating in Captivity is a hot, hot book! I had to fan myself a couple of times while reading it. Not because there were any explicit sex scenes but because her ideas were so fresh and daring. It gave me chills, I tell you!
I stumbled onto Esther Perel during a YouTube TED Talk
binge. After listening to her lecture for California Southern University, I had to know
more. Thank God for libraries!
It is almost a given that sexual desire will decrease the
longer a couple is together, even in warm and loving relationships. Research attributes this the effect of repeated exposure. What if
it weren’t that simple? What if there
were another dynamic at play? What if
love and passion were, for some couples, inversely proportional?
Intimacy doesn’t guarantee hot sex.
We want love AND desire.
Many of us believe desire will grow with love. But Perel uses compelling prose and client
cases to illustrate the comedy of errors in the play called love. As soon as love shows up, so does fear. Then we get all antsy, trying to control fear
by strapping love down to reduce the uncertainty. Ahh, now we're safe.
“We ground ourselves in familiarity and perhaps achieve a peaceful domestic arrangement but in the process we orchestrate boredom.”
The illusion of safety has a side effect…less passion. In our race to cozy security, we merge,
leaving no air to ignite desire. We tell
our partner everything. We are best
friends. There’s no mystery. Next thing
you know, you and your significant other
are living like brother and sister.
Desire thrives on curiosity, distance, tension, and just a
dab of selfishness. Love develops from
intimate conversation, sharing, nurture, selflessness and a sense of fair play. Love and desire don’t have much in
common. Yet, that doesn’t mean that
love and desire can’t live in the same house. Just recognize that…
“Adult intimacy has become overburdened with expectations.”
In Committed,
Elizabeth Gilbert found that in many cultures marriage was the means to
cement power and maintain wealth. As society has changed, marriage is solely for love. Intricate communities have
shrunk and now consist of the nuclear family and a few friends.
We are more isolated than we used to be.
The people in our lives are tasked with being all things in the absence of a tight knit community. This is a heavy burden. Mating in Captivity doesn't claim to have all the answers, but serves up Perel’s poignant observations from 20 years in private practice.
"How much uncertainty can you stand?" In order to have both love and desire, you have to manage the paradox. In an exercise with Ben, a client, Perel asks him to inhale and hold the air in as long as possible. Eventually, the oxygen turns to carbon dioxide, forcing him to exhale and inhale again.
The people in our lives are tasked with being all things in the absence of a tight knit community. This is a heavy burden. Mating in Captivity doesn't claim to have all the answers, but serves up Perel’s poignant observations from 20 years in private practice.
"How much uncertainty can you stand?" In order to have both love and desire, you have to manage the paradox. In an exercise with Ben, a client, Perel asks him to inhale and hold the air in as long as possible. Eventually, the oxygen turns to carbon dioxide, forcing him to exhale and inhale again.
“You can’t choose between inhaling and exhaling; you have to have both.”
She binds this analogy to intimacy and passion, stressing
that it is not a problem to solve, but a paradox to manage. Perel ends with “Complaining of sexual
boredom is easy. Nurturing eroticism in
the home is an act of open defiance.”
