Product Description

When you love someone, how does it feel? And when you desire someone, how is it different?

In Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel looks at the story of sex in committed couples. Modern romance promises it all – a lifetime of togetherness, intimacy and erotic desire. In reality, it’s hard to want what you already have. Our quest for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. And often, the very thing that got us to into our relationships – lust – is the one thing that goes missing from them.

Determined to reconcile the erotic and the domestic, Perel explains why democracy is a passion killer in the bedroom. Argues for playfulness, distance, and uncertainty. And shows what it takes to bring lust home. Smart, sexy and explosively original, Mating in Captivity is the monogamist’s essential bedside read.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19512 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
'At precisely the same moment that you're being shocked by her, you're also acknowledging the validity of her ideas. Perel's ideas are like the chorus of a really good pop song - instantly familiar because they resonate deeply. It's all rather terrifying in its intuitiveness and its pure rightness' -- Observer 'Reads like a cross between the works of Jacques Lacan and French Women Don't Get Fat' -- The New Yorker 'As revelatory as it is straightforward' -- Publishing Weekly 'Enormous fun' -- Sunday Times

Review

'An elegant sociological study, complete with erudite literary and anthropological references'

(Daily Telegraph )

'Reads like a cross between the works of Jacques Lacan and French Women Don't Get Fat'

(The New Yorker )

'At precisely the same moment that you're being shocked by her, you're also acknowledging the validity of her ideas. Perel's ideas are like the chorus of a really good pop song - instantly familiar because they resonate deeply. It's all rather terrifying in its intuitiveness and its pure rightness'

(Observer )

From the Author
I wrote this book because, in 22 years of practice in six
different languages, I've met couples over and over again who were having a
good relationship, who love each other, but who have no sex, no tingle! I
met couples who had a bad relationship, and who I helped to have a good
relationship again, and the expectation was that the sex would just come
back - but it didn't. I began to think there's something in this premise -
that if sex is wrong, the relationship is wrong; and equally that more
talk, intimacy and closeness will equal more sex, better sex - that just
doesn't work. I knew I was on to something.

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Customer Reviews

Plucky, inspired, imaginative, intelligent and entertaining
There is a huge and perplexing quantity of literature out there crammed with
advice on how we may tackle the blandness of sex in a long term relationship and thus improve our sex lives; if only we were to follow those authors clearly laid out instruction manuals. Whilst this may be effective for many people, hoards are left asking themselves why they feel so much in a rut and unable to relate to the proposed steps forward. The trouble is, as Esther Perel puts it, “eroticism simply doesn’t lend itself to the rigors of scorekeeping” but “is an imaginative act” and “cannot be measured”. Furthermore, “no amount of will or reason can dictate our love dreams”. How can we desire what we already have? How do we liberate ourselves and re-discover excitement in a sexual relationship that has gone stale? In our long term relationships, how do we manage “the tension between security and adventure”, between commitment and eroticism, or put “the ‘X’ back in sex”? Answers can never be simple and Perel does not pretend otherwise. But what she does do, through case studies and discussion, is explore the paradox between separateness and closeness, as it is acted out in sex, in a way that is plucky, inspired, imaginative, intelligent and entertaining. It is extremely well written and does not hide behind a lot of psychoanalytic jargon, thus making it accessible to the lay as well as the specialist reader. As a professional in the field, I found it to be a first class piece of writing that I can highly recommend.

Paradigm Shifting!
An intelligent and insightful book that made me question some of my assumptions about sexual expression in long-term relationships. Shines a revealing light on some of the socio-cultural myths and expectations that bind us and demonstrates, with compassion, that many of our hidden fears, anxieties and fantasies are more common, more human, and more understandable, than we might dare to imagine. Highly recommended.