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Mating in Captivity
| Date: |
15 July 2007 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Eugene Botha
Eugene Botha
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
Esther Perel (Author: 'Mating in Captivity'): 'Good intimacy doesn't necessarily guarantee good sex.'
In New York City we caught up with Esther Perel. She is a clinical psychologist and the author of a controversial new book on intimacy and erotic sex in long-term relationships called 'Mating in Captivity'.
Esther: 'I think there wouldn't have been a book to write if I had written about people who don't get along and don't want to touch each other. That is an obvious thing. What is much more intriguing is people who love each other but don't have desire for each other.'
Esther specialises in couples' therapy and made a curious discovery. Many couples who have really good and solid relationships complained that their sex lives were dull and erotic desire had disappeared.
Esther: 'What happened to this generation, post-sexual revolution, with contraceptives in hand, democratic ideals in their head, the permission to have sex as much as they want, and without the desire to do it? And they don't know why because they came with the expectation that sexual satisfaction would be a part of a fulfilling relationship. If in the past we were ashamed because we had sex, now we are ashamed because we are not having it.'
Bonita Nuttall (Carte Blanche presenter): 'Esther was intrigued by this, because the common perception with therapists and the general public alike is that in marriage and in long term relationships, couples should strive to get as close as possible to each other, and that this would result in good sex. In her work Esther slowly began to realise that this is actually a mistake. She discussed this with some colleagues, and the idea for the book was born.'
Esther: 'Mating in captivity is an image that a colleague came up with one day when I said they love each other, they care for each other, they get along, why don't they want to be with each other physically? And she said they don't like to mate in captivity and I thought this is it. This is the idea. I thought of the panda bears and all of the animals in the Bronx Zoo that are having trouble reproducing because they are too close. I thought that sometimes it is not the lack of closeness that stifles desire but sometimes too much closeness. The couples that I see often talk about the paradoxical relationship between domesticity and erotic desire. On the one hand, we want safety, stability, reliability and predictability. But eroticism thrives on novelty, mystery, risk, the unknown, the unpredictable. So what eroticism thrives on is often what family life defends against.'
Esther's book was an immediate but controversial success. It has already been translated into seventeen languages.
In the book she challenges the common perception that couples should do everything together and be each other's best friends as well. She says this is the beginning of stifling eroticism in a relationship.
And she practices what she preaches. She and her husband of 22 years, with whom she has had two children, give each other a lot of space, and their erotic connection remains.
Esther: 'I have rarely talked about my husband as my best friend. I never talk about him as my best friend. I have friends. I have best friends. I have women friends. A partner is a partner and is not supposed to be the best friend.'
And against the accepted wisdom Esther contends that lack of desire is not necessarily a symptom of a bad relationship.
Esther: 'What we are always told is that if you are having trouble in the area of sexuality in your relationship it means that there are troubles in your relationship, fix the relationship, the sex will follow. I have had many, many couples who get along much better but it did absolutely nothing for the bedroom.'
So sometimes the relationship is not the problem when couples experience lack of desire. Esther says it lies in the different ways people experience sex.
Esther: 'What I did understand is asking, 'Do you have sex?' tells me very little. But tell me what sex means to you is a very different question. Is it escape? Is it rebellion? Is it a time when you don't have to be responsible and adult and mature? Is it safe time where you can regress and be taken care of and surrender? Is it a place where you can actually safely feel powerful where you don't in other parts of your life? What does sex mean to you?'
Bonita: 'And if you can define what sex means for you, and be open about it, erotic desire will not disappear, says Esther. And this means that partners in a relationship might experience sex completely differently, and Esther says that is perfectly okay. But partners should realise this, and give each other the freedom to experience sex each in their own unique way and not try to always be inside the head of the partner during sex. Each should focus on their own pleasure.'
Esther: 'And if he is having a good time and he is inside his body and his erotic space I can finally go somewhere where I want to go. Because otherwise it is him looking at her looking at him looking at her.'
And crucial to having your own unique erotic sexual experience is embracing your sexual fantasies.
Esther: 'Animals have sex. Human beings are the only ones that have eroticism. Sexuality transformed by our imagination. Everybody needs to have a rich fantasy life. It is a place where you can play and pretend and imagine like children when they play fireman. It is often a way to safely experience pleasure and circumvent the pitfalls of intimacy.'
Fantasies create that very necessary distance between partners, and this enhances erotic desire in relationships. And Esther is adamant that partners do not always need to know what the other is thinking.
Esther: 'Some like to know what goes on up in there because this is where desire and sex take place. It is an imaginative production. It is a whole plot. Some feel very threatened by it, are judgemental about it, are disgusted by it, and in those cases maybe you should have fantasies by yourself.'
Bonita: 'In the model where people are expected to be absolutely close, absolute transparency is a prerequisite. But Esther says good relationships do not always demand absolute transparency. Even in the realm of infidelity.'
Esther: 'In this society, in the United States where I do a lot of my work, I definitely have said no. I don't think that every time it must be told. I think sometimes that people have experiences that are theirs only and they have to go through it by themselves and take care of matters by themselves. But for that I need to say something first, which was not all affairs and not all infidelities have something to do with the relationship. It is not always a symptom of a relationship that has gone awry. When you understand that then you don't have the same need to go and explain and tell your partner everything, because it is not about them.'
Esther explains this rather controversial viewpoint with the example of one of her clients, who in reaction to the death of his father, had had a number affairs, which his wife discovered.
Esther: 'This man I saw last week was a good guy, a dutiful citizen, a responsible professional who had always done what his father had told him to do. So he goes and has a number of affairs that have nothing to do with his wife. They have to do with him and his father for that matter ... he and his sense of himself as a man. He needed to work this out by himself.'
And Esther says erotic desire within captivity can also be rekindled when couples are not afraid to occasionally make space for a third party in their relationship.
Esther: 'Every relationship has a third, often unspoken, often unacknowledged, but always present.'
Some long time relationships can occasionally accommodate a third, and benefit from it, but more traditional relationships have difficulty coping with the idea.
Esther: 'Some couples, who hold on tenaciously to the romantic ideal that you and I are everything to each other and can share everything with together, can't accept the idea of the third because it means that I am not enough. If I am everything then it means you shouldn't want or think about anybody else but me. And they exclude the third.'
Some couples who occasionally invite in the third do it in fantasy only, but there are couples from whom it actually works in real life.
Esther: 'They understand that the other person has sovereignty of their erotic mind and they respect it and they don't think that because you are with me that I own your sexuality completely. Those are often people who rethink fidelity. They see fidelity not only in terms of sexual exclusivity, but in terms of emotional commitment and relationship loyalty. They distinguish between faithful and loyal.'
In many stable, loving relationships erotic desire plummets with the arrival of children. Esther had such a case.
Esther: 'Here was a man who no longer could bring that raw edge of desire - that lustfulness to the mother of his children - to the same breast that had nurtured these babies.'
Bonita: 'In therapy he also discovered that his strict upbringing led him to separate the home and family from erotic desire. For him erotic desire and families and especially mothers did not match at all. And now his wife was a mother. His wife attended the session.'
Esther: 'She listens and that night she says to him: 'Honey do you want a blowjob?' And he says: 'Of course.' She says: 'Do you want a regular or do you want a special?' He says: 'A special'. She does whatever she does and when she is done she says to him, 'It is going to cost you a hundred bucks'. And then she says, 'You will never confuse me for the mother of your children again.' She was able to step outside and to help him retrieve the woman behind the mother.'
Esther is convinced that even in long-term relationships the flame or erotic desire can be kept alive.
Esther: 'Poetry is the eroticism of language and eroticism is the poetry of the body and that is what people long for.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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