| | |  | Books | Home » » Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence | | | | | | | Description: | | One of the world’s most respected voices on erotic intelligence, Esther Perel offers a bold, provocative new take on intimacy and sex. Mating in Captivity invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home. Drawing on more than twenty years of experience as a couples therapist, Perel examines the complexities of sustaining desire. Through case studies and lively discussion, Perel demonstrates how more exciting, playful, and even poetic sex is possible in long-term relationships. Wise, witty, and as revelatory as it is straightforward, Mating in Captivity is a sensational book that will transform the way you live and love. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Esther Perel | | Paperback:
| 272 pages | | Publisher:
| Harper Perennial | | Publication Date:
| October 30, 2007 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0060753641 | | Product Length:
| 8.08 inches | | Product Width:
| 5.32 inches | | Product Height:
| 0.65 inches | | Product Weight:
| 0.46 pounds | | Package Length:
| 7.87 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.28 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.94 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.18 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
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224 of 245 found the following review helpful:
 Amazing: a couples therapist finds the sex in sexSep 22, 2006
By Jesse Kornbluth
"Head Butler"
Everyone knows that familiarity breeds contempt. Especially if familiarity comes with a wedding ring attached. A book about sex in marriage --- now there's a thin book!
But here comes Esther Perel to suggest that we --- men and women alike --- have it wrong. Good sex doesn't have to end when the hormones cool. Lust doesn't have to devolve into companionship. You can be a mom and a sex kitten. And as for "intimacy"....in the bedroom, a little goes a long way.
Who is this wild woman? A therapist in New York who's been working with couples and families for two decades. Belgian-born, to Holocaust survivors. Married (to her original husband). Two kids. Speaks eight languages --- including common sense.
Not for Perel a how-to book of ridiculous exercises you can practice to rekindle the passion you once knew. If she had her way, you'd never consult a manual again. You might, however, write a dirty letter about all the hot things you'd like to do to your partner --- or that you'd like done to you. Or maybe you should start two e-mail accounts just for the sexual dialogue between you and your mate.
But she's the mother of your child!
But he's the guy who only gets his kicks from online porn!
Perel has heard all that. Many times. She's not fooled --- underneath those smart New York rationalizations are hearts that still want to believe in hot sex with someone you know. The problem, she says, lie in the unspoken assumptions of most marriages.
Like: To love is to merge. Wrong. Merging is what happens when you see the Other as your security. That's death to sex. Good sex requires a spark. A spark requires a gap. Cross the gap, feel the sizzle. No gap? The best you can hope for is a cuddle.
"There is no such thing as 'safe sex,'" she writes. Sex requires mystery, excitement, uncertainty. Which means not knowing everything about your partner. You find that threatening? You'd find it less so if you stopped equating intimacy with sex.
Here's a radical thought: don't do everything together. Cultivate your own set of friends. Create differences, not affinities. "Ruthlessness is a way to achieve closeness" --- ponder that for a while. Monogamy? Great if you can honor it. But it is, statistics show, "a ship sinking faster than anyone can bail it out."
Infidelity is a symptom of deeper problems in the relationship? Many believe that. Perel doesn't. She finds life...complicated. She hates the verb "have" when used in relationships --- for her, no one "has" anyone. Relationships are negotiations, not assumptions. You can get crazy with someone you've lived with and known well --- if your "rules" allow that.
Eroticism, she says, is "sexuality transformed by the imagination." So, start dreaming. There's a big payoff: "Nurturing eroticism in the house is an act of open defiance."
I live in a city of therapists and in a neighborhood where they are at their most dense. I have done couples therapy; socially, I know several sex-and-couples therapists. All women. All buttoned-up --- their sexuality is not just unseen or tamped down, it's under lock-and-key. So it's a great relief to read Esther Perel. No question about it --- she's hot.
128 of 138 found the following review helpful:
 Interesting, but disagreed with one partOct 09, 2008
By Elisabeth
Because the author's ideas are provocative, this won't be an easy read. It wasn't for me, but an interesting read nonetheless. The author challenged all my beliefs about love and how relationships really work and I liked being challenged. She made me think in ways I had never before.
For example, her discussion on how desire needs distance -- but intimacy needs closeness -- and how these two conflict with each other in long-term relationships is dead on! But the author believes -- and I agree -- that it's possible to achieve both even if it seems impossible. She explains how this is possible without cornering you into believing only one method is the right way. There is no right way. Instead she shows how couples have managed to achieve this in their own way and discusses the pros and cons of each.
I also appreciated her discussion on how sexual fantasies differ from everyday fantasies. If you fantasize about the perfect job or the perfect mate, it's because you want these things to happen in reality. However, if you have a sexual fantasy about being raped, it doesn't mean that you want this to happen in reality. There's an element to your fantasy that is your true desire and in your sexual fantasies, you are in complete control about how this plays out.
So if I liked this book so much, why only 3 stars instead of 5? It's because there's a part where the author agrees with a client that it's respectful to withhold telling the truth about an affair. I've heard this argument before and I strongly disagree. I think it's disrespectful to decide for someone else (who's not your child) what they can and cannot handle. Withholding the truth is not about respect, it's about fear. If you told the truth, that person could leave you or retaliate in another way. Withholding the truth from them strips them of their choices in order to gain an unfair advantage over them. Lying to someone in order to keep them bound to you is not only selfish and controlling, it's also manipulative. It's just manipulation reframed in a positive way. And a surprising argument coming from an author who earlier argued against possessiveness. So, while I did enjoy the rest of this book, this part left me cold.
Otherwise, I think this is a very interesting and provocative book.
54 of 57 found the following review helpful:
A very revealing book!!!!Oct 09, 2006
By A Reader
This book is fantastic!! I don't know where to begin. First, her writing style is incredible. There is a beauty to what is written in her book. The beauty is revealed when you read passages that explain intellectually things you have felt for some time. Some of her explainations were so beautiful and fulfilling it brought me to tears.
Second, she is incredibly accurate about relationships and desire. She clearly shows why love and desire operate on different trajectories. But, the beauty is, the trajectories are not mutually exclusive and can co-exist. The key is re-igniting the individual.
Third, she is open minded, accepting, and understanding of the incredible impact that sexual freedom and individuality have had on marriage. She does not sugar coat the fact that monogamous marriage is "dying." She advocates being proactive about ensuring passion and desire within your marriage.
The examples in her book were not very applicable to me, but the principle of each story was clearly established and easily applied to my own marriage.
Most importantly, she helped me understand my desire. She helped me understand why I enjoyed thinking of my wife in certain ways. It helped me understand my desire and find new ways of experiencing passion.
65 of 70 found the following review helpful:
AstonishingOct 11, 2006
By Erin E. Anderson
I hate self-help books. I'm a Master's candidate in psychology and my relationship was deteriorating fast. I'd been living in a passionateless environment with lots of affection and familiarity. It was causing amazing problems. This book was the most intelligent thing I'd ever read, and it was concise, clear, amusing, and devoid of rediculous jargon and quizzes and self-help steps. It has situations in it that are real and applicable.
If you are having problems, buy this book. It can only help.
59 of 66 found the following review helpful:
 How to screw up your sex lifeAug 03, 2010
By Karen Ziminski
NY psychologist writes book on sex to gain attention for herself and her practice. No quantitative scientific research. Consists of some quotes from some books she's read, plus some anecdotes drawn from people she's talked to, plus a lot of speculation. Her favorite word seems to be "perhaps," as in "perhaps we are convinced that lustfulness conflicts with maternal duty."
There is nothing in this book that would really help a married couple whose sex life has faded. She suggests role play, like pretending the wife is a prostitute. Yawn. She also suggests pornography. In his book "In the Shadows of the Net," Patrick Carnes, with 25 years of experience in the field, warns that many people get so hooked on porn that they lose interest in their mates. Fantasy and porn not exciting enough? Perel suggests the discrete affair, open marriage, swingers clubs. No mention of the risk of herpes, hepatitis, AIDS, etc. And for every anecdote that she has on extra-marital sex helping a marriage, I dare say I have heard ten about its having the opposite effect. Not that I have any actual numbers, but then I'm not writing a book. Dr. Perel doesn't back up her pronouncements with any hard data.
On 9-24-10 at the annual conference of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, plenary speaker John Gottman, mentioning Esther Perel by name, said that her idea that emotional distance makes for better marital sex is contradictory to his findings. Now at the University of Washington, he has been doing research with married couples since 1980.
On 5-20-11 at the annual conference of the Massachusetts Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, I asked Terry Real whether too much intimacy could be boring, whether it was important to keep mystery in a marriage. He recognized that as Perel's idea and said that while he likes her as a person, he totally disagrees with that idea. He says intimacy is the great turn on, the pearl of great price.
Lori Brotto, a psychologist in Canada, is doing serious research on lack of desire, and is getting good results with treatments based on mindfulness, one thing in the moment. She has published articles, but no book yet.
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