This book came at exactly the right time for me. It addresses an issue that I have been thinking about for a while. Sex in committed relationships. Why is it that even though you grow closer and closer to your partner that the passion in your sex life just dwindles away?

The author of "Mating in Captivity" seems to have found the answers to that. Esther Perel is a couples therapist and with the help of some case studies from her practice she illustrates how different aspects of our domestic life are holding us back from experiencing earth shattering passion with our life partners.

This book delivers new insights that other books on sex in marriages usually lack. Instead of advising to do whatever it takes to get closer to your partner and schedule time for sex, it suggests to emphasize one's independence and uniqueness. This in turn will create more of a gap between partners which seems to be necessary in order to have great sex.

I was hoping for a little more of guide on how to reconcile the erotic and the domestic. But then again Perel's intention wasn't on writing a How-To- Book. Nonetheless this book will open your eyes if you've ever wondered why your married sex life is nothing compared to your dating sex life back in the days. ( )

I read this in its paper form, but it is available as a Kindle ebook on Amazon.

The author is a couples therapist. The book is about sex in the context of marriage or other long term relationship.

Actually, it's a book about NOT having sex. Many relationships lose their sense of excitement over time. Working couples come home exhausted, familiarity can breed contempt, and sex suffers or fades away entirely.

The paradox is this: the stability and routine of a relationship can smother desire, but the unpredictability and mystery of eroticism can threaten the stability of a relationship.

We've been told been told that when we marry, we 'become one.' But being that close is smothering, there's no more mystery. She suggests that a couple not do everything together. They need to cultivate separate friends and interests. It's the difference that keeps things interesting.

This is just one of the many suggestions she has to breathe life into a fading relationship. This is not your stereotypical self-help book with its solid American work ethic. Esther Perel grew up in Europe, she has a different point of view, she questions a lot of things we (Americans) take for granted. There's something here for all couples, young and old, gay and straight. ( )

Reconciling Cliché and Popular Sociology
By Jeffrey L. Otto

On a crowded bus last week, my eight year old son couldn’t help but inquire about the title of Esther Perel’s debut book, "Mating in Captivity : Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic." “What’s ‘mating’ mean, dad? And ‘cap…tiv…ity’?” With numerous ears besides his own eager to hear my reply, I resorted to cheap humor that passed by him as surely as hot sex passes by Perel’s patients throughout this book. “Mating,” I told him, “is finding someone to love and captivity is what happens after that.”

Perel’s central premise is succinctly stated early on and aptly summarized in a piece of her own counsel. "I point out to Adele that if we are to maintain desire with one person over time we must be able to bring a sense of unknown into a familiar space." Adele, it seems, has been suffering from “contemporary angst” and now stands in as proxy to the larger condition that many face regarding sex within committed long-term relationships.

In the pages that follow, a cast of stereotypical characters (her clients) is rolled out for the reader while the soothsayer herself dispenses meaning to truth. The writing is airy, and even at times elegant, but sadly only rarely achieves the intensity that the topic deserves. Throughout, it’s never quite clear whether this is a legitimate self-help manual or a series of slightly tawdry, Springeresque sketches.

My own sensibilities would have preferred the author to engage in a more rigorous analysis of both the psychology and the anthropology attendant in the complexity of sexual relations within (semi)permanent relationships—in other words more Barthes, de Beauvoir, and Fisher—and less emphasis on the self-selected and voyeurized accounts of Alan, Adele, Zoë, Naomi, and Jed, among others.

The book was not without its highlights, however. In a well-written chapter titled “The Pitfalls of Modern Intimacy,” Perel deftly draws out the consequent logic of removing pragmatism from the realm of relationship building. Using romantic love as a measure to assess long-term compatibility, we create unreasonable expectations about the role of passion in providing the sustenance of permanency; expectations that can hardly be met by self as emotion laden being, let alone by the self as orchestrated by a never ending series of neuro-chemical carbon based reactions.

In another section, Perel usefully describes the limitations of the spoken word in the pursuit of everlasting sexual bliss. Her advice on the matter? Couples should start by purging the feminized language of emotion from the bedroom where, instead, we might reintroduce the carnal “mother tongue” that is our body. I’m reminded here of a passage from Monica Ali’s Brick Lane: “He was a man and he spoke as a man. He was not mired in words. He did not talk and talk until he was not certain of anything.” (Of course, here the protagonist was comparing her lover, a man of few words, to her husband, a man of many!) Yet, agree or disagree, it defies convention regarding the constitution of stable and happy relationships.

Finally, a subsequent chapter on monogamy convincingly points out that despite the breakdown of many sexual taboos in our society (homosexuality, premarital sex, birth control) Americans remain steadfastly committed to monogamy as a singular ideal within all types of relationships. During a recent conversation with a friend and colleague who is very open and accepting of alternative sexualities and is generally unflinchingly supportive of the goals of the American cultural left, the issue of monogamy and politics arose. And despite her predilection for progressive thought, she quickly staked out well trodden normative terrain, saying that “any man who cheats on his wife is a complete dirtbag.” Perel, however, correctly points out that for many couples, “fidelity is defined not by sexual exclusivity but by the strength of their commitment” and argues that monogamy and its alternatives should be negotiated rather than imposed.

More often than illuminating, however, the content was repetitive and replaceable. While easy to find humor in chapters explaining how democratic politics have left Eros limp and how the protestant work ethic leaves no room for eroticism, the anecdotal cases kept emerging even when their application felt forced. Perel did include a limited number of same sex couples along the way, but they were treated as synonymous with more traditional relationships and their explanatory power was thus limited.

Perhaps most bothersome was the condescension displayed towards her subjects—both those in the first degree, her clients, and those in the second, her readers. Her own cosmopolitanism (the Belgian daughter of holocaust survivors, educated in Israel and practicing professionally in Manhattan) often seemed needlessly dismissive of American cultural mores pertaining to sex and intimacy. “Some of America’s best features,” she informs us “result in very boring sex.” Can this really be true?

And lest we hope that American therapists can remedy the situation, Perel says not a chance: the American clinicians at one particular conference completely pathologized consensual and non-violent sex involving domination and submission. She took strong exception to their inability to fathom the complexity of fantasy and play within loving relationships, while stressing her own embrace of such matters.

Though admitting her “relative outsider” status and using it to glean myriad insights into American culture, her narrative paradoxically contains herself within that very collective identity. “Nowhere is our profound discomfort with sex more apparent than in the way we approach teenage sexuality,” she intones before then describing the more enlightened attitudes of Europeans who “view adolescent sexuality as normal” and “not a problem.”

Such assertions are easy to agree with. But often, at least for this reader, the aloofness drew me away from her arguments. I suspect that many of her readers will find such tones similarly off putting. Additionally, many of the situations in which she described her heroic interventions were candidly patronizing. The distinction between worthwhile social science and personal advertisement copy was never very clear.

Overall, this was a thought provoking but flawed book. With it’s cherry red cover, half clad torsos, and provocative titular vocabulary, it wasn’t always the most pleasant book to read in crowded places. The looks, especially from those of the female persuasion felt vaguely piteous. And while some of the ideas contained within are worth thinking about, I will probably only recommend it to a few of my Red State friends, for its shock value alone. © Jeffrey L. Otto, March 18, 2007. ( )