Mating In Captivity

 This book was mind opening to say the least. I have somewhat of a sentimental feeling towards it because of some occurrences which happened while I was reading it. Esther Perel tells you a lot of truths right into your face - and it's somewhat shocking when you read it at first, but with time you start to grasp it all in and you see how much that truth makes sense. The part in which she talks about love vs. desire was like a whack on my face, hah! I knew I had just read something that would make me thing – not more, but yes more deeply.

It also was an insightful read which answered questions I had had for years. Yes, my sexuality flourished each day as I read and understood more and more about so many questions that were often deeply rooted in my head but which I never took the trouble to ask just for the simple reason of knowing that I didn't have any answers to them. 

From sexual fantasies, sexuality, keeping desire alive, body language, passion, monogamy, taboos, erotic intimacy, equality...and on the list goes; the author brings the subject up. The fascinating thing about this book is that it isn't a "how-to" manual or another relationship "self-help" book - far from it! Esther Perel enters into your head and makes you realize the whole psychological side of love, sex and relationships. 

I read it and will re-read it - it's worth the time!!!

And to finish off, a quote from the author herself:

“Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Loves 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.... An expression of longing, desire requires ongoing elusiveness.... Too often, as couples settle into the comforts of love, they cease to fan the flame of desire. They forget that fire needs air.”

Book Review:

Are you happy enough with your relationship but find the sexual excitement has waned or is waning?

Is it possible to reconcile domestic comfort and security with erotic adventure?

Does the togetherness, equality, and openness in intimacy always make for good sex?

Can you have emotional security and trust, and physical passion long-term?

Can you have hot sex with someone you know well?

Ether Perel takes on these 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 paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home. Whether or not you are single or in a relationship, the paradox of modern love is reviewed and set alight by her provocative ideas and suggestions.

Through case studies and lively discussion drawn from her twenty years’ experience as a psychotherapist, Esther Perel puts forward the premise that sexual excitement thrives a lot on what is politically incorrect i.e. power plays, unfair advantages, role reversals, imperious demands, ambiguity in gesture and words, seductive manipulations, and subtle cruelties.  In effect, Perel unwraps cultural attitudes towards erotic sex through the titles she chooses for the eleven chapters that make up the book:

1. From adventure to captivity: Why the quest for security saps erotic vitality
2. More intimacy, less sex: Love seeks closeness, but desire needs distance
3. The pitfalls of modern intimacy: Talk is not the only avenue to closeness
4. Democracy versus hot sex: Desire and egalitarianism don't play by the same rules
5. Can do! The Protestant work ethic takes on the degradation of desire
6. Sex is dirty: save it for someone you love: When puritanism and hedonism collide
7. Erotic blueprints: Tell me how you were loved, and I'll tell you how to make love
8. Parenthood: Why three threatens two
9. Of flesh and fantasy: In the sanctuary of the erotic mind, we find a direct route to pleasure
10. The shadow of the third: Rethinking fidelity
11. Putting the X back into sex: Bringing the erotic home

So, according to Perel, the first step to bringing excitement back into your sex life is to leave political correctness out of your bedroom.

"There is no such thing as safe sex," Perel writes. Sex requires mystery, excitement, uncertainty. Which means not knowing everything about your partner. If you find that threatening, she suggests, you would find it less threatening so if you stopped equating intimacy with sex.

This book is not a how to book of exercises to rekindle passion. Rather, it centers on fantasy, play and surrender to the unknown as the path to sexual excitement. It talks about developing an erotic intelligence that balances serious intimacy and sexual play, and that can actually deepen commitment at the same time.