Esther Perel Musses the Marriage Bed

You can't force desire in another person... you can't "demand" lasting eroticism from an otherwise cherished intimacy.

But what can you do, when sex is vital to your happiness, and you see it slipping away in the secure loft of a long-term relationship?

My guest this week on In Bed is psychologist Esther Perel, and she has come to detonate the All-American marriage bed-death conundrum.

In Bed with Susie Bright 273: Mating in Captivity with Esther Perel

Here's the whole interview...

Or, a little  sample of Esther blowing my mind. Her Belgian accent is so persuasive...

Perel is the author of the Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic. She is not your average advice-monger—   she would be glad to shred every piece of conventional marriage manual wisdom.   

Esther argues that erotic passion— to a certain but critical degree— is built upon distance and ambiguity. In her view, transparency is for politicians, not for lovers.

"It's often assumed," Esther writes, "that intimacy and trust must exist before sex can be enjoyed, but for many women and men, intimacy— more precisely, the familiarity inherent in intimacy— actually sabotages sexual desire. When the loved one becomes a source of security and stability, he/she can become desexualized.

"The dilemma is that erotic passion can leave many people feeling vulnerable and less secure. In this sense there is no 'safe sex.' Maybe the real paradox is that this fundamental insecurity is a precondition for maintaining interest and desire. As Stephen Mitchell, a New York psychoanalyst, used to say, 'It is not that romance fades over time. It becomes riskier.'"

I know that Esther counsels a lot of couples who are afraid NOT to merge, who are flabbergasted that taking erotic risks might preserve rather than imperil their marriages. They think they're going to save their sex life by "talking it out," or planning a few exercises, like it was a weight-training program. On the other side of the spectrum, she meets many married lovers who sexually survive only through complete deception and denial to themselves and their partners. She knows it's complicated— and that's what makes her philosophy so interesting and literate.

If I could have had Esther all to myself... ha!... I would love to ask her what she thinks of "bed death" among the kinky and adventurous. It's not just something Ozzie and Harriet face. Familiarity breeds contempt even among the polyamorous, the bohemian, the tightrope walkers.

In my case,  it is true without my internal intrigue, I'm nothing! And I am a romanticist, in the sense that if I didn't desire my partner, I'ld be heartbroken.

I'm adding Esther's book to my shelf of "read it, or shut up about it"  philosophy-of-the-bedroom classics. She is the anti-Puritan cocktail, and we all need a long, silky swig.

...Also featured on my podcast this week is the story of the Wife Swap invitation I had the pleasure of wallowing in a few weeks ago— and in my "Try This at Home" mailbag, I advise a listener about the pleasures of a Jello shot versus a G-Spot shot.

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, requests for Susie's girly cards (ho! ho! ho!) to susie@audible.com. (Episode 273, December 15, 2006). You can also listen to Esther's entire book on audio, here.

Comments

[Laurie Mann]

Wow...

I think it's true that there are many couples who, as they become emotionally intimate, loose some sense of the erotic. But I'm not so sure emotionally intimacy can ruin physical intimacy.

Couples are different. Some have low sex drives to begin with. Other ones have trouble at times but can recapture their sex lives (and I'm in this category so I know how sex can come and go). Others are going to screw a lot no matter what else is happening.

[B.]

Ya know, this is one of those things that has so much "duh" value it's amazing. I don't write this as any sort of insult, nothing of the kind. I read this post and just thought "well...yeah".

One way to do the experiment here is to simply ask yourself what your most firecracker fantasies are, then notice if "doing guided intimacy exercises with committed partner" is in that list. Hell, most of mine aren't even physically, morally or legally possible. Yet I, like most people, just learn to make compromises so I don't lose my job over some Gidget-pony-paint factory deal...you know...

Cuddly is nice sometimes, there is more to love than a good shag now and then (:-) but if there aren't kinks in someones wire, it just don't don't carry current if ya know what I mean...

B.

[B.]

Article:

http://www.alternet.org/story/16838/

B.

[Greta Christina]

"I would love to ask her what she thinks of 'bed death' among the kinky and adventurous."

Me, too.

Speaking from personal experience, I wonder how often the kinky and adventurous -- especially the very publicly kinky and adventurous, such as sex activists and educators and writers and artists and such -- experience bed-death type problems but don't talk about it out of shame. Not the usual kind of Puritanical sex-negative shame, but the opposite -- the shame of NOT having an amazing sex life all the time.

Hm. Am now thinking I have to write something longer about this soon.

[Steve]

Vulnerable and insecure are not the words I would choose. Those conditions are a turn-off, at least for me. Conquest, new, fantasy, forbidden - those words describe situations that to turn me on. It can be difficult to find these in a long term relationship, no doubt. But maybe in a long term relationship we're looking for something else? And maybe what we find can also be erotic? My own wants, desires, and turn-ons have changed some as I've aged - not as wild, less frequent, more patient, more focused. A long term relationship needs to allow for such evolution. Too many do not, and they fail.

Anyway, that's just my opinion.

[B.]

Upon giving this some more thought and having not read the book yet but just the article two things are interesteing at least from my own experience and understanding:

One is how many couples glady give up the sex for kind of a "working together intimacy" with their jobs or raising their kids. Many don't seem to feel the loss at all...She seems to be offering choices and showing that with some forks in the road you can't have both consistently or even often, yet there is the choice.

I remember the best sex I've ever had was the sex where no one knew what to do. We had no idea what one another was about, elbows and noses are going in all the wrong directions and if filmed would be more slapstick than porn.

I remember also that the best sex seems to happen among us people who for one reason or another (younger-older, boss-employee, wrong or dangerous place etc.) should NOT be fucking and are well aware of it at the time...

The worst possible sex is usually (though sometimes strange things happen) on one of those evenings when you think "well, we should be having sex" then you pursue the endevor with expert technique to accomplish the worthy feat at hand, usually ending in the mere feeling of a job reasonably well done and sleep...

B.

[C.S. Lewiston]

In the 80's I read a newspaper article (forgot which paper) about a British couple who experienced sex-life seize-up and simply elected to sleep in different *rooms* on different *floors* of their London flat. Scarier than Dracula, sez I, 'specially since this situation is no way limited to that side of the big pond! I'm all for any viable alternative to the traditional methods of dealing with this kind of thing, i.e. giving up and resigning oneself to involuntary celibacy, giving up and divorcing/separating or succumbing to Swaggart's Syndrome (clandestine relationships on the side).

Greta - Those activists and educators probably hide whatever problems they might have for fear of losing credibility. IMO, they could probably bolster their credibility by attacking and solving those problems in as visible a way as is possible.

[figleaf]

Oh! Dang it all, somehow or other I just closed the window on a long answer to the bed-death question without submitting it first. %@*#$%! I'll try to reconstruct it on my blog since "Mating in Captivity" happens to be the only book on my desk at the moment. (How's that for coincidence?)

Anyway, yeah, everything you say about her outlook on relationships. It's not so much that she turns our conceptions upside down. Instead she looks at them from the other end and invites us to see that what we put into our relationships doesn't produce the outcomes we think they do.

She's pretty cool. I'm totally envious that you got to interview her.

Anyway, thanks for the great kick in the pants, Susie. I've been meaning to post about her for months and still hadn't gotten around to it.

figleaf

[D'gou]

Isn't it interesting, listening to the interview, how even Susie reacts to Esther's flirting in such an "American" way? I thought that was hil-ar-i-ous! "You're such a flirt!" Isn't part of her point that thinking that way is part of the cultural divide between Americans and, well, a lot of the rest of the globe?