Book Review! Esther Perel’s - Mating in Captivity
Two thumbs up for Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity, Sex, Lies, and Domestic Bliss. First off, I have so much respect for Esther Perel as an incredible therapist. She is so talented with couples' work, which is a form of therapy I have no training in, little experience, and frankly don't enjoy. I think couple's therapists do real hard work and should be paid more. I do, however, have individual clients bring up relationship issues frequently.
I never want to recommend something that I haven't tried myself, or in this case, read myself. So, I finally got around to reading it! Overall, I'd highly recommend this book. It was published in 2007, and feels relevant and insightful for today. I like her take on how gender stereotypes effect our response to relationships and sex, but how it is more than we think. She discusses cultural impacts on our views, how parenthood changes us, and fantasies in a helpful way.
If you'd like more insight into relationships, sex, and healthy thinking about both, read it. It is well written, interesting, and an easy read. Perel has a gift for conveying deeper meaning quite clearly and accessibly. I've never met her and I'm grateful for her contributions to the therapy world in general.
Caveat: it is not written from a religious moral perspective. While she makes space for God, religion, and morals in her therapy style, know that this book isn't about promoting any religious values. (Some will be pleased by this, others displeased.)
While I do recommend reading the whole book, as there is so much there, here are some of my takeaways:
We place so many roles and expectations on a spouse, that they contradict each other.
Don't confuse love and merging.
Love and desire are at odds...but intimacy can bridge them.
Perel elevates creativity, play, and pleasure as aliveness.
Love and desire are not mutually exclusive. But security and passion happen at different times. We can alternate between "periods of growth and equilibrium."
It is important to appreciate complexity and significance in your partner.
What makes us good at intimacy does not always make for good sex.
Sometimes we are being loyal to our (traumatic) past instead of the present (our present partner).
Erotic intimacy needs generosity and self-centeredness; giving and taking; to surrender to self-absorption and experience our separateness.
Freedom and independence are both cornerstones of desire.
Quotes:
"Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery." (page 37)
"You can't choose between inhaling and exhaling; you have to do both. It's the same thing with intimacy and passion. [...] You need each at different times, but you can't have both at the same time. [...] Love and desire are two rhythmic yet clashing forces that are always in a state of flux and always looking for the balance point." (page 84)
"This entire culture is profoundly uncomfortable with vulnerability and dependency. Good intimate sex requires both." (page 95)
"Therapy is a process of expanding sexuality by shedding inhibitions, encouraging physicality, and negotiating boundaries." (page 97)
"Any experience of love holds within it a dimension of dependence." (page 207)
"The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable." (page 211)