PDF Summary:Mating in Captivity, by Esther Perel

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• Chapter 1: Family → Original Chapter 7
• Chapter 2: Fantasies → Original Chapter 9
• Chapter 3: Commitment Vs. Desire → Original Chapter 1
• Chapter 4: Intimacy vs. Desire → Original Chapter 2
• Chapter 5: Egalitarianism vs. Desire → Original Chapter 4
• Chapter 6: Communication Methods→ Original Chapter 3
• Chapter 7: Mixed Messages → Original Chapter 6
• Chapter 8: Parenthood → Original Chapter 8
• Chapter 9: Infidelity→ Original Chapter 10
• The original introduction and chapter 11 are covered by the introduction to Part 1 above, and chapter 5 is covered by the introduction to Part 2.)

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Dependence and independence are a dichotomy in adulthood too, with our partners. To have sex, we have to be able to enter another’s universe or body. However, we also have to be so aware of ourselves—so selfish—that the other disappears. The ability to temporarily “leave” someone comes from childhood experiences⁠. If we’ve learned that the connection we have with someone doesn’t break the moment we stop monitoring it, we can believe that after we’ve finished focusing on ourselves, the other person will still be there when we come back.

It’s possible to balance dependence and independence emotionally but fail to do so physically. Sex is quite literally two becoming one, and losing the sense of self can be so off-putting that people can’t handle it.

Views on Sexuality

In addition to teaching us about relationships and the balance between dependence and independence, our parents can much more directly shape our sexuality. If our parents treat sex as something dirty or shameful, we associate those feelings with sex too. If they teach us we must be a certain way in a relationship, we hold onto this. Additionally, what hurts us as children can often be what excites as...

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But sexual fantasies have a more complicated connection—the whole point of a sexual fantasy is that it’s pretend. It’s probably never going to be real, and there’s a good chance you don’t want it to be. Fantasies tend to be irrational (like eroticism in general) and are often very different from our values and behavior in real life. If most people fantasized about getting flowers from their lover, fantasies probably wouldn’t have such a bad reputation. Instead, people have fantasies that are at odds with their self-image and/or moral compass. Faithful people think about sleeping with the babysitter; feminists are dominated. We feel like there’s something wrong with us for coming up with (and enjoying) these scenarios.

However, fantasies are a way of restraining the potentially dangerous feelings inherent in eroticism (aggression, jealousy, and so on) to a safe place. Fantasy takes a conflict (for example, fear of our own aggression) and gives us a solution. While we wouldn’t apply the fantasy solution in real life, working through conflict in our heads can have a healing quality and help us manage difficult emotions in real life.

Should You Share?

People often...

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The Qualitative Approach

This approach recognizes that eroticism is subjective, contradictory, illogical, and sometimes inarticulate. Eroticism doesn’t respond well to time management, explicit communication, or quantification. Eroticism is about play, and you can’t win play or attach goals to it⁠—the whole point is to have fun.

That said, however, there are times when the quantitative approach can be useful. If you have physical limitations, communication problems, lack knowledge, or have no free time, a practical solution such as consulting a doctor, working on your communication, informing yourself, or better managing your time may be necessary.

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Fear of loss isn’t only fear of losing love. Historically, marriage and passion were separate. People used to find love outside of the relationship, and they used to find security, order, meaning, community, and belonging in traditional institutions like religion and extended family. In modern times, however, individualism is a core value of American society, and while it comes with freedom, it also comes with loneliness. These days, we expect our partners to not only love us and sleep with us, but also to provide everything traditional structures used to, including saving us from existential vulnerability. If the relationship were to end, we’ve lost not only love, but also a large part of our world.

As a result, many people are least experimental and adventurous with their partners because we don’t want to lose them. People might be willing to do anything outside their relationships, but at home, they’re almost puritanical. Anything “naughty” can feel risky or inappropriate for a committed relationship.

How to Balance Security and Commitment

Having established just how much some of us rely on our partners, you might be thinking desire’s doomed, because we can’t give...

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Intimacy is a fundamental human need and you need to get it from somewhere, but historically, that place wasn’t always your lover. Like looking for security in our partners, looking for intimacy with them is also a relatively new idea. Two or three generations ago, people married for practical reasons and the central emotion was respect⁠—if they fell in love later, it was a by-product or a bonus. People found intimacy in relationships outside of their marriage, often same-sex ones.

As social structures changed and work and family separated, people spent more time apart. They were lonely and looked for intimacy in romantic relationships. Notably, in social structures where people are close to other people (living with your extended family, living with a bunch of roommates), they have built-in closeness, and they’re less inclined to look for more intimacy in their romantic relationships.

How to Balance Intimacy and Desire

When you and your partner get so close that you’re now a fusion rather than two separate people, you no longer have anyone to connect with⁠. You have to reintroduce distance if you want to reintroduce desire. This can be psychological distance,...

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The closest we can get to total equality is to clamp down on any feelings that create imbalance⁠—love, hate, aggression, longing, and so on⁠—which leaves us only with boredom.

How to “Balance” Egalitarianism and Desire

If an erotic relationship isn’t equal, most people see that as a problem. This is because egalitarianism is such a fundamental value in American society that its absence in any context feels uncomfortable. For example, many people think that domination and submissions are degrading, undignified, and antifeminist, and have no place in a healthy relationship, particularly a marriage. A woman submitting is too politically incorrect, and if women submit in their sex lives, will this spill over into regular life (business, politics, and so on), undoing everything early feminists fought so hard for?

However, eroticism is a separate, compartmentalized space from the rest of our lives, separate even from our emotional relationships. Eroticism is about getting away from who you normally are, being free, and surrendering. Forbidden and taboo things come with an inherent rush, and a woman who wants to submit can in fact be expressing her freedom. It wouldn’t be...

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Some of the restrictions on men’s socializing have led them to self-express and communicate with their bodies. Most people are aware of the stereotypical aggressive male sexuality, but not everyone considers that sexuality can also tap into tenderness. Sex is a way of connecting without words.

Friction Between Communication Styles

People who value verbal communication have trouble understanding that there’s any other way to express intimacy. This leads to the talker trying to get the non-talker to switch languages. However, nonverbal communication can be just as important as verbal, and the talker could work on a second language too.

For example, Eddie was dumped by many women because he didn’t talk to them. They thought he had a fear of commitment and was reluctant to be open about himself. He ended up marrying a Japanese woman who spoke little English (he spoke no Japanese). The two literally couldn’t talk, so they communicated their love in other ways, such as showing each other art, washing each other, and cooking for each other. They communicated, just not by talking.

Downsides of Talk-Only Intimacy

There are four downsides of engaging only in talk...

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Extremes

Either extreme⁠—sex as taboo, or excessive sex⁠—makes us want to mentally dissociate from the physicality of sex. When sex becomes guilty, or shameful, it’s more comfortable to separate the act from emotions. And this doesn’t just refer to long-term relationships; the loss shows up in any relationship that involves caring for another person.

For example, Ratu is a college student at a prestigious university. She and the other students don’t have the spare time to date, so instead they hook up (defined as anything from fooling around to sex) on weekends. Their ideal “relationships” are booty calls and friends-with-benefits arrangements—relationships that purposefully exclude emotions. The students don’t want commitment; it’s scary and restrictive and results in a loss of independence. They’re uncomfortable enough with even the sex, because they have to get drunk first and don’t want to remember it the next day. Hook-up sex fits in with hedonistic culture, but wanting to pretend sex never happened is somewhat Puritan.

You might think that having sex with multiple people is good training for maintaining an erotic relationship with a single person, but it...

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Family life does best in this secure, predictable environment, but as discussed in Chapter 1, erotic life does best among unpredictability and risk. Once we’re parents, we have far less tolerance for unwieldy emotion, and eroticism doesn’t do well in a controlled environment. Controlled environments are boring. Sometimes, boredom can even morph into repulsion.

Expectations of Full-On Parenting

There has always been a bond between parents and their children⁠—from an evolutionary point of view, parents are the best chance a child has for survival. However, the expectations around this bond have changed. In previous generations, children were free labor. Now, they give us meaning instead.

Parents are expected to prioritize their children’s happiness over their own. This can mean that resources parents might normally put towards eroticism—time, imagination, and so on—are entirely used up by their kids.

The individualism of American culture makes full-on parenting even harder. We don’t have the same community we used to, such as close extended family we can ask to babysit. Additionally, services such as daycare and medicine are expensive, and individualism makes...

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Interestingly, our culture only emphasizes monogamy in relationships. The values that lead to monogamy⁠—being happy with what you have and commitment⁠—are totally different from consumer culture⁠—new, different, better.

Monogamy in Childhood

Our obsession with monogamy, like much of our lives, goes back to our childhoods. As babies, our primary caretakers were utterly devoted to and connected with us (as far as we knew). No one else existed, just us and them, and we seek this same kind of connection—total merging—with our partners. People who didn’t have a connection like this with their mothers as children often want this connection even more than those who did experience it.

Of course, this connection wasn’t as exclusive as we thought when we were babies who didn’t know any better. Our mothers knew plenty of other people besides us, including their partners, who also wanted their love.

Why Are People Unfaithful?

People are unfaithful for many disparate reasons, ranging from revenge to healing. Unfaithfulness doesn’t necessarily mean that a relationship has deeper problems. Lots of cheaters are happy with their relationships.

By nature, affairs have...