Mating In Captivity: Reconciling Intimacy and Sexuality

Esther Perel MA. LMFT

th
245 5 Avenue, suite 2205, New York, NY. 10016
Tel: 1-212- 889-8117 Fax: 1-212-226-8403
Email: estherperel@me.com website: www.estherperel.com

To probe the nature of erotic desire in long term relationships

To explore the cultural forces that shape domesticated sex
To take on the Gordian knot of sexuality and intimacy
To explore the obstacles and anxieties that arise when our pursuit of security
and stability clashes with our quest for passion and adventure
Present a nuanced, relative and multicultural understanding of the differing
definitions of love, marriage, and sexual behaviours.

The flame is the most subtle part of fire, moving upwards and raising itself
above in the shape of a pyramid. The original primordial fire of eroticism is sexuality; it
raises the red flame of eroticism, which in turn raises and feeds another flame, tremulous
and blue. It is the flame of love and eroticism. The double flame of life.
Octavio Paz, The Double Flame

*Why does great sex so often fade for couples that love each other as much as ever?
*Why does good intimacy not guarantee good sex?
*Why does the transition to parenthood spell erotic disaster?
*Can we want what we already have?
*Why is the forbidden so erotic?
When we love how does it feel? and when we desire how is it different?

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your hearts desire, the other is to gain it.
~George Bernard Shaw
SOCIO-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:

Our view of sexuality is time bound, linked to social, economic and scientific
developments:

SOCIAL:
The emergence of individualism and the concept of self; this brings with it
the intensification of existential separateness which leads to the
redefinition of intimacy

Intimacy is central in Western coupledom and is primarily a

communicative experience which relies on words to express ones inner
life to empathic, validating partner. The dominance of talk intimacy
reflects a feminisation of intimacy

The rise of romantic love leads to the sexualisation of love

The focus of sex from a procreative morality to a relational and

pleasurable experience. The focus shifts from sexual duty to sexual
pleasure

The rising emphasis on individual happiness. Erotic and sexual

satisfaction are seen as critical components of marital happiness.

Sexual rights, sexual equality and sexual identityfeminism, gay

movement.

Sexuality and sex-roles represent some of the most enduring features of a

society, and new sexual behaviours and choices can be acts of powerful
rebellion against the dominant culture.

Today in the West, we are engaged in a grand experiment. For the first time in history,
we no longer have sex to accrue a large family nor is it exclusively a female marital duty.
Sex in a long-term relationship is now solely rooted in desire.

ECONOMIC:

Industrialization; as the individual ceases to be primarily an economic

unit, sex is separated from its exclusive reproductive function. In the
family, sex shifts from an economic resource to an emotional resource.

SCIENTIFIC:
The democratization of contraception frees women from the fear of
pregnancy and death in childbirth; womans pleasure is unleashed.
 With the advent of contraception and artificial reproduction, sexuality is
no longer the sole property of the biological world, it is now socialized as
a property of the self.

It is a prime connecting feature between body, self-identity and social norms hence its
centrality in our lives, its connection to intimacy and its prominence as in the demise and
ensuing divorces of many couples. (Anthony Giddens: The Transformation of Intimacy)

CULTURAL TENSIONS

1- Between the egalitarian, puritanical ideals of fairness, compromise and equality of

couples therapy and the undemocratic and rebellious spirit of eroticism.
2- Between the cultural pressures that domesticate marital sex-- rationality, stability,
directness and responsibility -- and the indirect, suggestive, playful qualities that underlie
erotic excitement.
3- Between the graphic, explicit exposure of sex and the proliferation of pornography on
the one hand and the need for the hidden that is essential to erotic desire.
4- Between recognizing that some women desire erotic submission and the fear that it
will sanction male dominance elsewhere.

THE PARADOX OF INTIMACY AND SEXUALITY:

Reconciling passion and intimacy or the Erotic and the Domestic is about
bringing together two sets of fundamental human needs: the need for safety and
security with the need for adventure and novelty. (Stephen Mitchell)
Love and desire, they relate and they conflict.

Security Adventure
*Safety, reliability *Novelty, mystery, unexpected, discovery
*Permanence, grounding, anchoring transcendence, risk, quest for unknown
*Autonomy/Independence *Freedom
*Love seeks closeness *Desire needs space
*Minimize the threat, contract the distance *Difference, otherness
*Know the beloved *Fire needs air
*We seek predictability *Passion and uncertainty

We seek to balance separateness and connection starting in childhood and into our
adulthood.
Secure attachment is a precondition for separateness, and separateness is a
precondition for desire.
 Partners need to negotiate their dual needs for safety and stability with their wish
for what is exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring.
For some, love and desire are inseparable, for others, they are irretrievably
disconnected.
Passion is commensurate with the amount of uncertainty we can tolerate.

If it is the forbidden that is exciting, if desire is fundamentally transgressive, then the

monogamists are like the very rich; they have to find their poverty, they have to starve
themselves enough, in other words they have to work if only to keep what is always to
available, sufficiently illicit to be interesting.

Adam Phillips, Monogamy

SEXUALITY AND EROTICISM:

Sexuality
Is the primordial force
It is rooted in nature; all
animals have sexuality.
Has only limited
possibilities.
Is inseparable from its
reproductive function.
We are born sensuous, we
become erotic.
ceremony, representation and ritual.
Eroticism
Eroticism is a metaphor of sexuality
It is sexuality transformed and
socialized by the human
imagination
Pleasure is an end in itself.
The most important agent of the
erotic act = imagination
Eroticism is always plural
You dont need the act of sex to
have the erotic experience, though
sex is often hinted at and
envisioned.
Eroticism is quality of aliveness and
vitality; it is not about frequency
and performance
It thrives on the forbidden, the
mysterious and the transgressive

The erotic landscape is vastly larger, richer, and more intricate than the
physiology of sex, or any repertoire of sexual techniques. If a sex can be a
collection of urges and acts, the erotic is a receptacle of our hopes, fears,
expectations and struggles.

Eroticism is energized by our entire human experience including unruly impulses

and painful memories.
 The erotic mind is layered with early childhood experiences of touch, play, or
trauma, which become cornerstones of our erotic life later.

Eroticism is not comfortable and near, it unveils inner struggles, emotional

tensions, a mix of attraction and fear, of excitement and anxiety, Desire can
emerge from positive experiences, but anxiety, guilt and anger also energize
desire.

Eroticism springs from the interplay between attractions and obstacles.

The erotic equation of Jack Morin: Attraction + obstacles = excitement.

High states of arousal flow from the tension between persistent problems and
triumphant solutions. We are most intensely excited when we are a little off-balance,
uncertain, poised on the perilous edge between ecstasy and disaster.(Jack Morin)

What is the tension between love and desire?

Love is about having

Contract distance
Minimize threat
Contain the unknown
Collapse the gap
Seeks closeness

Desire is about wanting

Needs otherness and difference
Wants to go where it hasnt yet been
A bridge to cross to an other
Needs space to thrive
Is fuelled by curiosity and anticipation
Thrives also on novelty and the unknown
Is mysterious and elusive
Nurtured by longing and absence

Fire needs air

The overwhelming needs we bring to adult intimacies lead us to confuse intimacy

with fusion

We give up the discovery and novelty for a permanence that does not exist
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We become fixed rigid narrow in roles and after fix our partner in such a fixed,
knowable entity

Stephen Mitchell: the conviction of safety is an illusion

We cant erase the uncertainty of love

Love is always vulnerable and implies dependence

Uncertainty fuels anticipation, longing, frisson, surprise, mystery, unknown, and

novelty

Exercise:
I am most drawn to my partner when:

Desire is fuelled by the unknown and for this reason it is inherently anxiety
provoking

Our willingness to engage that mystery keeps desire alive

Faced with irrefutable otherness of our partner we can respond with curiosity or
fear

We can reduce our partner to a knowable entity or we can embrace their persistent
mystery

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

Eroticism resides in the space between anxiety and fascination

The modern love story: in our efforts to contain the threat of loss, we suck the
erotic vitality our of relationship

My work is to introduce small transgressions, elicit strivings, and passionate

idealizations in the midst of the safe and the predictable.

The Rise of Intimacy

Intimacy as a sovereign for lives of increasing isolation

Communicative experience

Modern intimacy is bathed in self-disclosure

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The truthful sharing of our most personal and private material our feelings.

Exposing our internal life, uncloaking our deepest secret to an empathic,

validating partner, we will completely known and deeply recognized.

The men and women I work with invest more in love and happiness than ever before,
yet in a cruel twist of fate it is this very model of love and sex thats behind the
exponential rise of infidelity and divorce. Fascination and disillusion stare at each
other. We ask one person to give us what once an entire community used to provide-

Good intimacy does not necessarily lead to good sex

It is not always the lack of closeness but too much closeness that stifles desire

The modern ideology of love sometimes collides with the forces of desire

Love flourishes in an atmosphere of closeness, mutuality, and equality

We seek to know our beloved to keep him near.

We care about those we love, worry about them, feel responsible for them

For some, love and desire are inseparable

For many others, the caring, protective elements that foster love often block the
unselfconsciousness that fuels erotic pleasure

In other words, eroticism thrives in the space between self and other

Desire is often accompanied by feelings that seem to cramp loves style

Aggression, jealousy, control, anxiety, guilt, forbidden, and it often butts heads
with egalitarianism, fairness, and transparency

We must look at the cultural pressures that shape domesticated sex

Erotic desire is politically incorrect

Sexual Stereotypes
The stereotypes of women as entirely romantic and men as sexual conquistadores
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Women seen as longing for love essentially faithful, domestically inclined

Men as biological non-monogamous and fearful of intimacy

The stereotypes fail to capture the complexities

COMMON THERAPEUTIC VIEWS:

Sexual problems are the consequence of relational problems

If you fix the relationship the sex will follow
Intimacy begets sexuality
Talk is the avenue to closeness
Passion is meant to fade and to make room for a more tame but enduring form of
love
The myth of spontaneity
Fantasies that take us outside the relationship, deplete intimacy and are potential
betrayals
Porn use is bound to become problematic

ALTERNATIVE THERAPEUTIC CONSIDERATIONS:

Sexual problems are not always the result of relational problems. Fixing the
relationship may do little to improve the sex. Strengthening the mutuality caring
and companionate affection is not enough to generate erotic desire.
Sexuality is not a metaphor of the relationship. It is a parallel narrative, a story
unto its own. Sexuality and emotional intimacy are two separate languages.
Sex can illuminate whats wrong-- conflicts around intimacy and desireand it
can help heal destructive splits.
Good intimacy doesnt guarantee good sex.
There can be an inverse correlation between greater emotional intimacy and
decreased sexual desire.
What we seek emotionally isnt per se what excites us sexually.
Passion ebbs and flows
The importance of the language of the body
If passion is a fiction, so is reality.
Committed sex is not only spontaneous. It is willful and intentional.
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At the start of therapy

Inquire about the sexual relationship of the couple as part of the initial interview.
Ask about the role of sex in the relationship and the degree of satisfaction of each
partner.
Be aware of questions pertaining to frequency or performance (How often do you
have sex? Does it work?)
Invert the usual therapeutic priorities, ask about their sexuality first. It will inform
you of the emotional relationship and how it manifests in the bedroom and it will
serve as a window into the self, the couple dynamics, and the family of origin
legacy.
Inquire about history of abuse and any medical conditions, pains or disabilities, or
any age related limitations.

EROTIC BLOCKS: THE PARADOX OF LOVE AND DESIRE

It is important explore:
How attachment history influences the persons paradigmatic erotic style and how
they are reflected in his/her sexual behaviors
The respective fears of obliteration and abandonment for each partner.
The emotional intimacy which can generate the feeling of safety, which
intensifies sexual desire for some, but which can also create a fear of entrapment
and a fear of loss of self. They may experience an erotic withdrawal and have
difficulty sexualizing their partner.
The caring protective elements that foster love can block the freedom and
autonomy necessary for erotic pleasure
When love is burdensome, filled with responsibility, worry, and care, it
compromises ones need for space and separateness necessary for desire.
(Michael Bader)
Desire has non-loving feelings, (aggression, jealousy, control, guilt, power) that
can be hard to experience in the context of a loving committed relationship
The tension between familiarity and desire is such that some people replace
sensual love with comfort love.
When the emotional organization of the couple includes family projections it
hinders desire and can potentially render sex taboo.

The dialectic between the emotional and the erotic: Dynamics that are emotionally
challenging such as power, control, surrender, vulnerability and dependence can, when
eroticized, become highly desirable. What we seek emotionally may not excite us
sexually. But conversely, what we fear emotionally may be sexually desirable and
exciting.
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Eroticism is the poetry of the body, the testimony of the senses. Like a poem, it is not
linear, it meanders and twists back on itself, shows us what we do not see with our eyes,
but in the eyes of our spirit. Eroticism reveals to us another world, inside the world. The
senses become servants of the imagination, and let us see the invisible and hear the
inaudible.
~Octavio Paz, The Double Flame

EROTIC BLUEPRINT: TELL ME HOW YOU WERE LOVED, ILL TELL YOU
HOW YOU MAKE LOVE

Where did I learn to love, and how?

Did I learn to experience pleasure or not? Was pleasure celebrated, suspiciously
tolerated or simply dismissed?
To trust others, or not?
To receive or be denied?
To dare or to be afraid?
Did my parents monitor my needs or was I expected to monitor theirs?
Did I turn to them for protection, or did I flee to protect myself?
Was I rejected? Humiliated? Abandoned? Held? Rocked? Soothed?
Did I learn not to expect too much? Was it okay to thrive?
Did I learn to hide when I was upset? How did I learn to relate to my body, to
gender, to my sexuality?
How do you handle difference or conflict in general?
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How do you handle desire discrepancy, or differences in sexual turn-ons and/or

fantasies, e.g., do you know what you want and ask for it?
Do you give your partner what he/she wants without judgment?
Do you create sexual opportunities?
How do you handle sexual changes and/or problems that occur during the
course of an enduring relationship?
Are you flexible with regard to technique and variety?
Can you collaborate or are you locked in a power struggle?
Do you handle difficulties by becoming asexual, and/or going outside the
relationship for sexual pleasure?

Attachment Map and Erotic Blueprint

Our emotional history shapes our erotic blueprint and is expressed in the
physicality of sex.
Accordingly, there is a strong connection between our attachment map -defined
as our expectations, conflicts, hope and disillusionment with intimate connections- and
our sexual feelings and behaviors.

The psychology of desire is buried in the details of our childhood.

The dialectic between the emotional and the erotic: Dynamics that are emotionally
challenging such as power, control, surrender, vulnerability and dependence can,
when eroticized, become highly desirable. What we seek emotionally may not excite
us sexually. But conversely, what we fear emotionally may be sexually desirable and
exciting.

Many of our deepest fears and persistent longings emerge in intimate sex:
immensity of our neediness, fear of desertion, terror of being engulfed, yearning
for omnipotence.
Our erotic impulses have the unique capacity to transform, undo and avenge
traumas, hurts and frustrations and challenges we faced growing up into sources
of excitation of pleasure.
The erotic landscape is vastly larger, richer, and more intricate than the
physiology of sex or any repertoire of sexual techniques.

EROTIC INTIMACY:
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Using sexuality to disclose core aspects of oneself (dependency, neediness,

vulnerability, aggression)
Self-confrontation and expression of ones eroticism to another person.
Combines generosity and self-centeredness, a double promise of mutuality and
selfishness.
Connect without the terror of obliteration and experience separateness without the
terror of abandonment.
The momentary oneness comes from our ability to acknowledge the indissoluble
separateness.
Erotic intimacy is a space where we can transcend the civility of emotional
connection and release our unruly impulses and primal appetites.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having
new eyes. ~Marcel Proust

EROTIC IMAGINATION:

The freedom of our imagination unfolds in the sanctuary of our erotic mind.
Fantasy is a manifestation of autonomy, separateness and freedom.
Not all fantasies need to be shared.
Erotic couples respect each others erotic privacy, negotiating their way
between transparency and secrecy.
Fantasy is a combination of the collective imagination and the uniqueness of
our personal history
They create a safe space to experience pleasure by helping us to circumvent
the fears and obstacles to desire and intimacy.
Fantasies are not experiences we necessarily want to experience in reality.
Can free us from moral, social and psychological constraints.
Too often fantasy seen as a temporary insanity of the beginning, immature
pleasures destined to fade under the rigors of the serious, responsible business
of marriage or commitment.
Deprived of imagination on the inside, some reinvent themselves on the
outside
To objectify is a way to emphasize the quality of the otherness and of the
person we desire, that he/she is outside ourselves. It also allows for an
experience of high intensity and low emotion.

CORNERSTONE OF EROTIC DESIRE

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Longing and anticipation: longing is more female long extended seduction

and circuitous paths to pleasure.
Violating prohibitions
The excitement of trespassing the cultural restrictions, the family
prohibitions and breaking rules. Where the restrictions are high, the
naughtiness factor is too. We can trample the restrictions even more so
in our fantasies than in reality. It releases us from social, moral and
pragmatic constraints when we revel in the unacceptable.
The very same taboos we believe in reality may be the ones we wish to
violate in our fantasies.
Transgressions, risking being discovered, sneaking, hiding, being naughty,
all these can create inhibitions, but can also be titillating.

If it is the forbidden that is exciting, if desire is fundamentally transgressive, then

the monogamists are like the very rich; they have to find their poverty, they have to
starve themselves enough, in other words they have to work if only to keep what is
always too available, sufficiently illicit to be interesting.
Adam Philips, Monogamy

EROS AND POWER

Power, control and affirmation are all part of the erotic enigma; they live in the
shadow of desire.

A forceful partner demonstrates with his or her passion the value and
desirability of the one who submits. The submissive partner demonstrates
through his or her surrender the irresistible erotic powers of the aggressor.

Highly refined surrendering can give the powerless nearly total control.

THE PUZZLE OF PARADOXICAL EMOTIONS (based on Jack Morin)

Exuberancejoy, celebration, surprise, freedom, euphoria.

Satisfactioncontentment, happiness, relaxation, and security.
Closenesslove, tenderness, affection, connection, oneness.
For some of us, comfort and arousal are incompatible, while for others it is
the necessary condition.
Dual-edge emotions can be powerful erotic enhances.
Anxietyfear, vulnerabilityspecial alchemy of fear and desire.

The pleasures of love are always in proportion to the fear.

Stendhal

GuiltRemorse, naughtiness
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Angerhostility, resentment, and revenge. Anger creates separateness.

The Caring man may rely on his anger needs to muster assertiveness, it
helps people feel they deserve, get the strength to demand, claim injustice,
unfairness. It says pay attention to me, I want, I deserve, I am entitled too.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE BODY: EXPLORING THE MULTIPLE MEANINGS

OF SEX AND INTIMACY

Is our original mother tongue.

Contains emotional truths that words can gloss over.
Is imprinted in the individuals history and the cultures admonitions.
Freedom for some, prison for others.
Should be granted its capacity for soothing and for communicating in its own
language.
We are born sensuous and we become erotic.

SEX AND PARENTHOOD: WHEN THREE THREATENS TWO

Many couples trace the demise of their erotic life to the arrival of their first child.
Parenthood redefines safety and stability and launches a redistribution of
resources
New systemic configuration, division of roles, attending to the couple, attending
to the children in the family.
Current child centrality and sentimental idealizations create a situation for eros
redirected: (the erotic elements are invested in the children)
Re-creation of family de-eroticizes the couple
What eroticism thrives on is what family life defends against: comfort and
consistency vs. excitement and unpredictability
The importance of cultivating desire and not monitoring it.
Sex and motherhood
The fear that adult sexuality will damage the child.
Its not the kids who extinguish the flame its the adults who fail to keep the
spark alive.
Good sex need real time rather than the crumbs of an over-scheduled life.
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Who Are Erotic Couples:

Erotic couples
Cultivate a sexual frame that transcends passion, strong desire or
spontaneity.
Nurture their original attractions, while cultivating new ones.
Develop a repertoire of initiation rituals, availability signals, and methods
for declining.
When sexual problems arise remain engaged rather than becoming
discouraged or avoidant.
Are energized by private sexual interests (whether they realize it or not).
Jack Morin, SSTAR, March 2012, Chicago