I recently read “Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence” by Esther Perel. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book.
“I see lovers who hold so tenaciously to the idea that sex must be spontaneous that they never have it at all. I see couples who view seduction as too much work, something they shouldn’t have to do now that they’re committed. I see others who believe that intimacy means knowing everything about each other. They abdicate any sense of separateness, then are left wondering where the mystery has gone.” (xix)
“And what is true for human beings is true for every living thing: all organisms require alternating periods of growth and equilibrium. Any person or system exposed to ceaseless novelty and change risks falling into chaos; but one that is too rigid or static ceases to grow and eventually dies. This never-ending dance between change and stability is like the anchor and the waves.” (5)
“The challenge for modern couples lies in reconciling the need for what’s safe and predictable with the wish to pursue what’s exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring.” (5)
“Faced with the irrefutable otherness of our partner, we can respond with fear or with curiosity, We can try to reduce the other to a knowable entity, or we can embrace her persistent mystery.” (18)
“Beginnings are always ripe with possibilities, for they hold the promise of completion. Through love we imagine a new way of being. You see me as I’ve never seen myself. You airbrush my imperfections, and I like what you see. With you, and through you, I will become that which I long to be. I will become whole. Being chosen by the one you chose is one of the glories of falling in love.
It generates a feeling of intense personal importance. I matter. You confirm my significance.” (20)
“Ironically, what makes for good intimacy does not always make for good sex.” (23)
“Love rests on two pillars surender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness, One does not exist without the other. With too much distance, there can be no connection. But too much merging eradicates the separate ness of two distinct individuals.”(25)
“Intimacy comes with a growing concern for the well-being of the other person, which includes a fear of hurting her. But sexual excitement requires the capacity not to worry, and the pursuit of pleasure demands a degree of selfishness.” (29)
“Dynamics in relationships are always complementary – both partners contribute to creating patterns.” (29)
“Instead of always striving for closeness, I argue that couples may be better off cultivating their separate selves.” (37)
“Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery.” (37)
“If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticicm is numbed by repetition.” (37)
“People who live in an extended family, or who are under the yoke of economic duress and forced to live in close quarters, tend not to seek greater closeness. When people live on top of each other, there is no isolation to transcend, and they are far less interested in embracing western, middle-class ideals of intimacy. Their lives are entwined enough as it is.” (40)
“We naively believe that the essence of who we are is most accurately conveyed through words.” (41)
“In our era of communication, intimacy has been redelined, No longer is it the deep knowledge and familiarity that develop oves
time and can be cultivated in silence, Instead, we think of intimacy
primarily as a discursive process, one that involves self disclosure, the trustful sharing of our most personal and private material-ous feelings. Of course, it is as much about listening as it is about telling.” (41)
“The body is our original mother tongue, and for a lot of men it remains the only language for closeness that hasn’t been spoiled. Through sex, men can recapture the pure pleasure of connection without having to compress their hard-to-articulate needs into the prison of words.” (43)
“The adherents of talk intimacy (often, though not always, women have a hard time recognizing these other languages for closeness, hence they feel cheated when their partners are reluctant to confide in them. “Why won’t you talk to me?” they plead. “You should be able to tell me anything. Don’t you trust me? I want to be your best friend.” In this setup, the pressure is always on the non-talker to change, rather than on the talker to be more versatile.” (43)
“I am not convinced that unrestrained disclosure – the ability to speak the truth and not hide anything – necessarily fosters a harmonious and robust intimacy. Any practice ban t taken to a ridiculous extreme.” (44)
“The mandate of intimacy, when taken too far, can resemble coercion.” (45)
“Some couples take this one step farther, confusing intimacy with control. What passes for care is actually covert surveillance— a fact-finding approach to the details of a partner’s life. What did you eat for lunch? Who called? What did you guys talk about? This kind of interrogation feigns closeness and confuses insignificant details with a deeper sense of knowledge. I am often amazed at how couples can be up on the minute details of each other’s lives, but haven’t had a meaningful conversation in years.” (45)
“When the impulse to share becomes obligatory, when personal boundaries are no longer respected, when only the shared space of togetherness is acknowledged and private space is denied, fusion replaces intimacy and possession co-opts love.” (46)
“If one consequence of the supremacy of talk is that it leaves men at a disadvantage, another is that it leaves women trapped in repressed sexuality.” (46)
“When we privilege speech and underplay the body, we collude in keeping women confined.” (46)
“Only in sex does he feel emotionally safe. By limiting him to her own onphysical language, to the exclusion of his sensual language, Laura has stifled his ability o “speak” to her.” (48)
“It is especially during lovemaking that they are able to escape their inner rumblings. For them, sex is a relief that puts a halt to their anxiety; for their more verbal partners, sex turns out to be a source of anxiety.” (49)
“I tried several different approaches, most of which relied on physical interactions rather than verbal ones. I had them lead each other around the room, trying out different arrangements of leaders and followers: cooperation, resistance, and passivity. I had them fall backward into each other’s waiting arms. I had them stand face-to-face and push against each other with their open hands. I had them mirror each other’s movements.” (50)
“When you doubt your own desirability, it is harder to trust Mitch’s desire for you.” I explain. “It’s far easier to locate the fault with him—and, to be fair, he gives you plenty to work with-than it is to face the depth of your own self-doubt.”q (50)
“I no longer look at relationships as being either intimate or not. Instead, I track eachh couple’s ability o engage in a series of intimate bids tendered over time.” (51)
“Some would say that Elizabeth’s desire for submission is nothing more than a reenactment of traditional male domination. They would claim that sexual arrangements in which one partner is dominant and controlling, the other passive and weak, are inherently hierarchical and oppressive, nothing more than a sexist replay of
patriarchy. But prisoners rarely have the desire to pretend they are prisoners. Only the free can choose to make believe.” (60-61)
“being able to play with roles goes some way toward indicating that you’re no longer controlled by them.” (61)
“We do an exercise in which they divide a piece of paper by drawing a line down the middle, then separately write their immediate associations of the word “love” on the left-hand side. I give them prompts: “When I think of love, I think of…” “When I love I feel …” “When I am loved I feel.” “In love, I look for..” As soon as they finish, they write their answers to the next set of prompts on the right-hand side: “When I think of sex I think …” “When I desire, I feel …” “When I am desired, I feel…” “In sex, I look for…” (65)
“Not all inequities are a source of trouble. Sometimes these form a couple’s basis of harmony.” (70)
”Helen Fisher who explains that lust is metabolically expensive. It’s hard to sustain after the evolutionary pay-off: the kids. You become so focused on the incessant demands of daily life that you short-circuit any electric charge between you.” (79)
“I explain to him that his renewed desire came from her reassertion of her separateness and her dreams.” (81)
“Desire is an enigma; it’s insubordinate, and it chafes at impositions.” (81)
“he was choosing her again, and it’s the act of choosing, the freedom involved in choosing, that keeps a relationship alive.” (81)
“She claimed her individuality, and the end result was greater intimacy. Desire emerged from a paradox: mutually recognizing the limitations of married life created a bond between them; acknowledging otherness inspired closeness.” (81)
“What makes sustaining desire over time so difficult is that it requires reconciling two opposing forces: freedom and commitment.” (82)
“You can’t choose between inhaling and exhaling; you have to do both. It’s the same thing with intimacy and passion. The tension between security and adventure is a paradox to manage, not a problem to solve.” (84)
“In lovemaking he feels connection and nurturance that he does not get anywhere else. He is at once vulnerable and masterful, exposed and confident. Ben is a man with an active brain.” (86)
“While Adair likes sex, Ben needs it. Sex is his life support. Unplug it and he thinks he’s dying. No wonder he panics at the thought of sex going downhill.” (86)
“Frank Jude Boccio, author of Mindfulness Yoga, says, “We bitch about our difficulties along the rough surface of our path, we curse every sharp stone underneath, until at some point in our maturation, we finally look down to see that they are diamonds.”” (87)
“This entire culture is profoundly uncomofrtalb with vulnerability and dependency. Good intimate sex requires both.” (95)
“Maria says she wants to be seduced, yet she resists seeing Nico as seductive. “My relationship stands in the way of my attraction to him. Sometimes I’ll look at him, like when he gets out of the shower or comes home from the gym, and P’ll think, ‘God, he’s hot.’ Why is he so attractive until I remember he’s my husband?”” (103)
“I explain to Maria that it’s scary to be both erotically exposed and emotionally intimate with the same person, especially when you hold the belief that sex is somehow shameful. “There’s a whole part of you that hasn’t yet entered your relationship. In fact, the psychic energy involved in keeping it tucked away is enough to make you exhausted. No wonder you’d rather go to sleep than make love to your husband.” (104)
“The body is the purest, most primal tool we have for communicating.” (111)
“James, largely through example, that you can be close to some-one—intimate, caring, secure-without feeling sacrificed in the process. In asserting her independence, Stella has communicated over and over that she’s not fragile, and that her well-being does not depend exclusively on him. The price of love does not have to be personal obliteration.” (114)
“Earlier in our conversation, James made a point of telling me that Stella had a temper. “While that may be so,” I confirmed, “if you had made love to her more often you would have a wife with a very different temper, because the frustration that people can experience when the body is not touched, stroked, held, and pleasured drives people up a wall. What you then get is arousal transformed into rage.”” (118)
“You know he loves you; you’ve never doubted that; and that’s why you’ve stayed all these years. What hurts so much is that you’ve never felt wanted by him. You feel that it’s all on you to make it happen, and indeed it is. You’ve forfeited sensual complicity for emotional security. It’s a cruel bargain.” (119)
“Love and desire are not the same. Cozy is not the same as sexy. Your wife knows you love her. What she wants is to feel desired by you. She wants to know your hunger, to taste the delicate flavors of your craving, and to see it as a match for her own. Your inability to let go, to surrender to your own hedonistic designs, is infuriating to her. Your passivity is irritating, and your considerateness is the opposite of her fantasy of unrestrained rap-ture. Your lustiness would be an open endorsement for her own ardor. It’s hard to let go with someone who doesn’t.” (119)
“She finds herself irresistibly drawn to cleanliness, as if order on the outside can bring peace on the inside. And, to some extent, it does. As odious as her to-do list might be, there is something about getting things done that gives her a sense of control and efficacy.“ (129)
“Stephanie used to be quite a slob. “Before I had a child I never found myself cleaning the egg cups in the refrigerator.
I was messy. Books everywhere, papers everywhere, and I never experienced it as a lack of control. It felt cozy to me. But now I feel this need to exert myself over my environment. It’s me against the mess, my personal battle against the forces of chaos that I know will take over the minute I turn my back to watch TV or, God forbid, to be intimate with my husband.” (130)
“Jesse feels as though he’s running a day car center with someone he used to date.” (131)
“Her life is filled with novelty and adventure, but it all takes place in relation to her kids, leaving Warren longing. The children are the adventure now.
If we think of eroticism not as sex per se, but as a vibrant, creative energy, it’s easy to see that Stephanie’s erotic pulse is alive and well.” (131)
“We no longer get work out of our children; today we get meaning.” (134)
“What Stephanie fails to see is that behind Warren’s nagging insistence is a hearing to be intimate with his wife. For him, sex is a prelude to intimacy, a pathway to emotional vulnerability.” (136)
“The trick is that in order to keep our partner erotically engaged we have to become more seductive, not less.” (139)
“To her I suggest, “Keep in mind that there’s something limiting about an absolute no. What really hurts him is categorical rejection. You might find more freedom in ‘Maybe’ or ‘Let’s kiss’ or even ‘Talk me into it.’ Warren, more than anyone else, can help you to reconnect with the woman inside the mother. Can you imagine recruiting him rather than pushing him away? Invite him to invite you, and see what happens.”” (140)
“When Warren asks, “Want to?” And Stephanie finally answers, “Convince me,” their dynamic begins to shift.” (141)
“Children are indeed a source of nurturance for adults. Their unconditional love and utter devotion infuse our lives with a heightened sense of meaning. The problem arises when we turn to them for what we no longer get from each other: a sense that we’re special, that we matter, that we’re not alone.” (142)
“Thinking of this as but one phase in a lifelong relationship helps them remain patient and hopeful.” (143)
“For him, having a woman meet him as a sexual equal takes away the burden of guesswork and the persistent insecurity of never being sure he’s doing it right. When she is more forthcoming, he doesn’t have to worry about her, and he no longer feels diminished by her placating, lukewarm response. Her exuberance gives him permission to make some demands of his own, and to experience unrestrained abandon with the woman he loves.” (168)
“In a culture where everything is disposable and downsizing confirms just how replaceable we really are, our need to feel secure in our primary relationship is all the greater. The smaller we feel in the world, the more we need to shine in the eyes of our partner. We want to know that we matter, and that, for at least one person, we are irreplaceable.” (180)
“For him, sex is a place of emotional nourishment and a sanctuary. It is love incarnate. Through sex he reaches an egoless oblivion that makes him feel at one with the world.”
“It’s like I’m gone; it washes everything out. That kind of absolute focus, total attention, somehow releases me from myself. I stop thinking, the sensation washes up my spine, through my brain, and out. But there’s no observing of what’s going on.” Lovemaking is all-encompassing.” (184)
“Hiding, dissimulation, and other forms of deception amount to disrespect. You lie only to those beneath you – children, constituents, employees.” (186)
“Marriage is imperfect. We start with a desire for oneness, and then we discover our differences. Our fears are aroused by the prospect of all the things we’re never going to have. We fight. We with-draw. We blame our partners for failing to make us whole.” (187)
“I suggest that they create new email accounts reserved exclusively for erotic exchanges between them – their thoughts, memories, fantasies, and seductions.” (208)
“Quite a few of my patients balk at the idea of deliberateness when it comes to sex. They find these strategies too laborious for the long haul, believing they should no longer be necessary after the initial conquest. “Seducing my partner? Do I still have to do that?” This reluctance is often a covert expression of an infantile wish to be loved just as we are, without any effort whatsoever on our part, because we’re so special. It’s the grandiosity of the baby, and we all carry it inside. “I don’t want to! Why should I? You’re supposed to love me no matter what!”” (215)
“Sex often remains the last arena of play we can permit ourselves, a bridge to our childhood. Long after the mind has been filled with injunctions to be serious, the body remains a free zone, unencumbered by reason and judgment. In lovemaking, we can recapture the utterly uninhibited movement of the child, who has not yet developed self-consciousness before the judging gaze of others.” (218)
Liked the quotes? Then buy the book here
