Mating in Captivity-(a thin book).

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. ツ

“At the time of the Clinton affair, I was intrigued at how adultery could become a matter of national political agenda in the U.S. Why was it, I wondered, that this country seemed quite tolerant of divorce, and rather intolerant of infidelity, when the rest of the world had traditionally been more tolerant of infidelity and less so of divorce? Around the same time I was at a national conference on couples therapy and, there too, I was struck by the overemphasis on pathology and the lack of any mention of the words pleasure or eroticism when addressing a couple's sexual life. The claim that sexual problems were always the result of relational problems and that one should fix the relation and the sex would follow, did not bear true for me. I saw loving, caring couples whose desire was flatlined, not resulting from a breakdown in intimacy. So I began to question a host of assumptions pertaining to sexuality and intimacy in long-term relations that were spoken as truths; they seemed unexamined to me.”

So here is 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.  And as for intimacy in the bedroom, a little goes a long way.

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 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.

 “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.

She hates the verb “have” when used in relationships for her no one “has” anyone. Relationships are negotiations, not assumptions. 

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.”

It is not by flaying our erotic impulses into banality and duty that we fortify them. It is sometimes by averting our eyes that we see most clearly, and feel most strongly. The 1960s freed us to look squarely at sex. Our own decade might free us to look at something else besides -to look not more, but deeper.