Unlocking Erotic Intelligence – How to Keep Desire and Passion Alive in Long-Term Relationships
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Esther Perel’s Perspective
Esther Perel is a Belgian-born psychotherapist who specializes in couple therapy in New York City. Perel is fluent in nine languages and serves as an organizational consultant for Fortune 500 companies. Perel’s TED talks have more than 20 million views. She’s a New York Times bestselling author and is also an executive producer and host of the popular podcast “Where Should We Begin?”.
StoryShot #1: The Quest for Security Undermines Erotic Vitality
“Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?”
— Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity
Humans naturally seek security. As a result, most humans commit to long-term monogamous relationships. We often make this decision based on the security associated with this relationship, rather than our sexual drive. As well as having a propensity for security, we also have an equally strong drive for adventure and excitement. However, security and excitement are challenging to combine. Hence, humans struggle to lust with the same person that they seek comfort and stability. Importantly, Esther Perel explains that it is impossible.
It is easy to see that desire often fades as security increases in a relationship. Hence, desire typically fades as relationships lengthen. Perel describes two viewpoints where people can stand in a relationship. Either people are romantics who desire intensity and adventure over stability or realists who value security over passions. However, people are often left disappointed on both ends of the spectrum. Healthy relationships often require both desire and security.
Perel believes that love and desire are not mutually exclusive. Still, they generally do not take place simultaneously. The reasoning is that security and passions are different human needs that are underpinned by different motives.
Perel says intimate friction is unsurprising, given the recent evolution of modern social support systems. For many of us, the idea of an extended family and a close-knit community has been all but dismantled. In its place is a more anxious, transplanted independence. Intimacy has become overburdened with unrealistic expectations. We expect our partners to be passionate and sexual, but we also expect them to adopt several other roles. We expect them to provide creativity, intellectual discussions, psychological advice, stress-busting, caregiving, and work management. These things are fantastic to have in a partner, and everyone is entitled to their own needs and desires. However, nobody will be perfect at everything. If you believe your partner should be perfect, you will struggle when your partner decides to behave in a way that is true to their authentic self. The sense of safety that you’ve manufactured becomes threatened, and you will react with negative emotions. If you drop your ideas of perfection, you can create a sense of independence within the relationship. You can provide your relationship with the space to breathe and grow organically.
StoryShot #2: Love Seeks Closeness, but Desire Needs Distance
“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. An expression of longing, desire requires ongoing elusiveness. It is less concerned with where it has already been than passionate about where it can still go. But too often, as couples settle into the comforts of love, they cease to fan the flame of desire. They forget that fire needs air.”
— Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity
Intimacy and sex are often associated with being physically close to somebody. However, Perel explains that separateness is what encourages connection. This includes emotional separation. For example, we generally choose partners whose strengths match our vulnerabilities. Later, we may associate intimacy with a concern for the other person’s well-being. This leads to safe sex. Genuine sexual excitement relies on a degree of selfishness, rather than focusing all your efforts on your loved one’s wellbeing. You need to re-create the distance that initially led to your passionate and intense sexual encounters to start bringing lust home. Perel describes erotic intelligence as creating distance and bringing that space to life with excitement and adventure.
The distance between two people energizes desire. Intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, but repetition numbs eroticism. Eroticism thrives on the novel, the mysterious, and the unexpected. Love is about having. Desire is about wanting. Desire requires ongoing elusiveness.
StoryShot #3: Communication Is Not the Only Avenue to Closeness
Couples are often told that communication is the key to a relationship. Although this might be the case for certain parts of the relationship, it is certainly not the case for desire. Perel explains that too much communication, openness, and vulnerability can strain a relationship. If you continually demand entry into your partner’s thoughts, you will turn intimacy into intrusion rather than closeness. Perel compares this to coercion. Hence, she recommends that you should not feel you have to talk about everything with your partner.
Some people will struggle with the idea of not knowing everything their partner is thinking. This struggle will be associated with fear of losing control. However, sexual fantasy should always transcend moral and psychological constraints. Therefore, you have to let go of control over your partner’s thoughts and give them space to build passion.
One example of partners giving each other true freedom is allowing the other partner to play with roles. Eroticism is the gateway back to freedom, and role-playing removes all forms of control. Your partner chooses who they want to be in the bedroom.
So, try to control your desire to know every little detail about your partner and their past. If you love them, let them breathe. Too much transparency could be harmful.
StoryShot #4: Democracy Doesn’t Belong Between the Sheets
We often associate desire with feelings that are not generally associated with love, such as aggression and jealousy. The capacity to contain aggression is a prerequisite for the capacity to love. We must integrate our aggression, rather than eradicate it. Aggression as a human emotion cannot be purged from human interactions, especially not among those who love each other. Aggression is the shadow side of love. It is also an intrinsic component of sexuality, and we can never entirely remove it from sexual relationships. In contrast, domesticated sex is meant to be fair, equal, and safe. This is not true passion and will leave couples bored with their sexual interactions.
Traditional gender norms of women being creatures of love and men being creatures of sex have changed. Now, both types of traits are accepted in both genders. However, love and sex speak different languages. Traditionally, relationship therapists would recommend couples strengthen their relationship to improve their sex life. Perel argues that this is incorrect. Both dynamics can be sources of conflict, but they are not directly related. For example, power, control, dependency, and vulnerability are often sources of conflict with love. However, these are desirable and allow the body to be eroticized in the bedroom. Sex should be playful and not abide by the same rules as your loving relationship.
StoryShot #5: Sex is Dirty, so Save It for Someone You Love
Sex can be very messy. During college, casual sex becomes common. Still, what people search for is an opportunity to discover themselves through exciting experiences. Sex should be responsible and integrated. Perel explains that pleasure flourishes in the context of relatedness. So, on top of deep love, you also need to show basic care and appreciation to the person you’re having sex with. Because of the added requirements of good sex, it is better to save it for people you love.
StoryShot #6: How You Were Loved Shows How You Make Love
How you were loved as a child has a significant impact on making love as an adult. However, you do not have to be controlled by your past. Perel suggests that understanding your past can help you change your present for the better. She describes erotic intimacy as the adult version of hide-and-seek. There is a thrill in hiding, followed by relief in being found. However, as your connection grows stronger with your partner, you can become braver at stretching the time before you are found. In secure relationships, you will learn that you know you will eventually be found, no matter how long it takes. In addition, in a loving relationship, we also understand that our partner will wait for our return and not punish our selfish pursuits. This analogy outlines how important it is to maintain our sense of self. Being unavailable to our partners provides a protective limit. It prevents you from becoming so close to your partner that you fear entrapment or loss of self. If your partner loves you, they will allow you to have this space.
Perel applies this to our childhoods. Children want to explore the world from a young age. Children who know they have their parents’ security when they return often explore more and for longer. When the child feels they need to return to security, they return to emotional safety. If your primary caregiver abandoned you as a child, you might anxiously attach due to fear of further abandonment. Suppose your primary caregivers criticized you or placed a lot of responsibility on you as a child. As a result, you might avoid attachment for fear of being entrapped more.
These behaviors of discovery and safety-seeking fluctuate throughout our entire lives. Therefore, there will be times when you are more willing to take risks. Plus, other times when you feel you need the security of your loved ones. To be happy as an individual and as a couple, you need to allow these oscillations. If your partner suggests they want to move away for a few months to explore the world, then you should not stop them. They are just being true to themselves. Providing them with this freedom allows your relationship to flourish when they return.
Perel outlines that this integration of responsibility and adventure is effortless for a lucky few couples. They can buy a home and be naughty in it too; they’ve got coziness and a little edge. But for most couples, seeking both safety and excitement is a tall order that takes effort.
Our dynamics with our caregivers built our unique, personal framework of intimacy. These early bonds determine how much we can love, how we receive love, how much love we want, how we express love, our fears, and our expectations. This subconscious bundle of “me” is what we wrap up and exchange with our partner, and hope that as these mysterious little packages unravel, things work out. Occasionally, they don’t, and that is fine. As long as you learn more about yourself and grow from the experience, it is positive.
StoryShot #7: Parenthood Can Threaten Desire
Children bring complexities and new dynamics to your relationship. The love we show for our children is unconditional and powerful. This can mean that our relationship with our children becomes an all-consuming affair. When a child arrives in a couple’s life, they need to redistribute their resources. More often than not, this redistribution will take away resources from the couple. In other words, they’ll have less time, communication, sleep, money, freedom, intimacy, and privacy.
Most parenting books emphasize that routine, predictability, and regularity are key to being a good parent. Children need a secure base to explore the world around them. As a result, parents must become steady and reliable. This stability is at odds with everything eroticism relies on. Perel explains that sex and eroticism depend on vibrant creative energy. You are using this energy elsewhere to help raise a child, leaving little for your sexual relationship.
Although having a child can make eroticism difficult, there are some ways to minimize the impact of parenthood on your sex life. Firstly, Perel recommends that couples cordon off an erotic territory for themselves. Additionally, being in a habit or pattern can lead to seeing your partner as your children’s caretaker, rather than your lover. To overcome this, Perel recommends using safe objectification to encourage eroticism. Parents often worry that their adult sexuality will damage their kids or is inappropriate. However, curbing your desires can lead to them disappearing altogether. Plus, if we are inhibited around our partner, our children will leave a life of inhibition.
StoryShot #8: The Erotic Mind Provides a Direct Route to Pleasure
The erotic mind is full of sexual fantasies. Perel describes sexual fantasies as any mental activity that generates desire and intensifies enthusiasm. To generate enough desire, your thoughts need to be graphic and well-defined. In addition, these sexual fantasies do not necessarily need to reflect reality. This is not the real thing, but instead a simulation. You do not even need to hope that this will happen in real life. Perel describes these fantasies as poetry, rather than prose.
Fantasies, just like pornography, can involve overly simplified versions of people. Emotions, opinions, and personalities are generally significantly simplified during these fantasies. This allows the fantasy to highlight what turns a person on. That being said, we should avoid inviting other people into our erotic minds If your partner does not receive your fantasies well, this can devastate your relationship. On the flip side, another person recognizing and accepting your fantasies can be powerfully affirming. The most crucial purpose of sexual fantasies is to better understand what we seek sexually and emotionally.
StoryShot #9: We Should Rethink Fidelity
Recognizing a potential third in a relationship can ensure that each partner does not take the other for granted. Understanding that our partner will feel attracted to other people adds spice to relationships. It reminds you that you do not own your partner. Additionally, accepting your partner’s freedom within a relationship means they will be less inclined to seek it out. Specifically, talking about this potential attraction to other people can contain the volatility and appeal of these desires. We are less inclined to keep secrets if we can tell the truth safely.
Perel describes acknowledging the third as validating the erotic separateness of our partner. We do not own our partner, and this psychological distance can allow us to see our partner’s beauty through the eyes of a stranger. On the other hand, if you do not allow your partner freedom, it will be harder to produce desire within your relationship.
As a mainstay of patriarchal society, fidelity was about lineage and property. It had nothing to do with love. Today, particularly in the west, it has everything to do with love. When marriage shifted from a contractual arrangement to a matter of the heart, faithfulness became a mutual expression of love and commitment. The focus is always on the object of love, not on our capacity to love. 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. Some affairs are acts of resistance. Others happen when we offer no resistance at all.
StoryShot #10: Bring the Erotic Back
Esther also explains the spectrum of sexual expression that we should embrace. It is dominant and submissive, selfish and generous, ruthless and civil, objectifying and worshiping, fast and slow. Investigating each of these will inject a sense of unpredictability and adventure into your intimacy.
Final Summary and Review of Mating in Captivity
Mating in Captivity takes on tough questions, grappling with the obstacles and anxieties that arise when our quest for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. She invites us to explore the complicated union of monogamy and sexual desire. She also explains what it takes to bring lust home. Sexual excitement doesn’t always play by the rules of good citizenship. It is politically incorrect. It thrives on power plays, unfair advantages, and the space between self and others. More exciting, playful, even poetic sex is possible. Still, first, we must kick egalitarian ideals and emotional housekeeping out of our bedrooms.
We’d like to end this summary and analysis of Mating in Captivity with this quote from Esther Perel:
“For [erotically intelligent couples], love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning. They know that they have years in which to deepen their connection, to experiment, to regress, and even to fail. They see their relationship as something alive and ongoing, not a fait accompli. It’s a story that they are writing together, one with many chapters, and neither partner knows how it will end. There’s always a place they haven’t gone yet, always something about the other still to be discovered.”
Rating and Criticism
Some people are critical of Perel’s argument that mating in captivity can be healthy. They don’t find the argument to be coherent, and they believe it is an excuse for bad parenting. It can even be argued that Perel’s acceptance of aggression in the bedroom may lead to domestic violence in some cases.
We rate this book 4.2/5.
EDITORIAL NOTE: The content was first published in 2020. It was updated in December 2021.
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the book is very interesting and encouraging. It gives out the plain facts in a sexual relationship.
will need a copy
We can’t agree more. Thanks for your comment, Kenneth! Feel free to let us know what your favorite insights are.