# Mating in Captivity  Author:: Esther Perel ## Highlights > My belief, reinforced by twenty years of practice, is that in the course of establishing security, many couples confuse love with merging. This mix-up is a bad omen for sex. To sustain an élan toward the other, there must be a synapse to cross. Eroticism requires separateness. In other words, eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other. In order to commune with the one we love, we must be able to tolerate this void and its pall of uncertainties. ([Location 267](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=267)) ### 1 From Adventure to Captivity Why the Quest for Security Saps Erotic Vitality > We’re walking contradictions, seeking safety and predictability on one hand and thriving on diversity on the other. ([Location 415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=415)) > There’s a powerful tendency in long-term relationships to favor the predictable over the unpredictable. Yet eroticism thrives on the unpredictable. Desire butts heads with habit and repetition. It is unruly, and it defies our attempts at control. ([Location 504](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=504)) > A sense of physical and emotional safety is basic to healthy pleasure and connection. Yet without an element of uncertainty there is no longing, no anticipation, no frisson. The motivational expert Anthony Robbins put it succinctly when he explained that passion in a relationship is commensurate with the amount of uncertainty you can tolerate. ([Location 507](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=507)) > Introducing uncertainty sometimes requires nothing more than letting go of the illusion of certitude. In this shift of perception, we recognize the inherent mystery of our partner. ([Location 519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=519)) > Eroticism resides in the ambiguous space between anxiety and fascination. ([Location 625](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=625)) ### 2 More Intimacy, Less Sex Love Seeks Closeness, but Desire Needs Distance > If love is an act of imagination, then intimacy is an act of fruition. It waits for the high to subside so it can patiently insert itself into the relationship. The seeds of intimacy are time and repetition. We choose each other again and again, and so create a community of two. ([Location 668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=668)) > Of course, familiarity is but one manifestation of intimacy. Our continued discovery of another person extends far beyond surface habits into an interior world of thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. We penetrate our partner mentally. We talk, we listen, we share, and we compare. We disclose certain parts of ourselves, while we adorn, fiddle with, and conceal others. Sometimes I learn something about you because you tell me: your history, your family, your life before we met. But just as often my understanding comes from watching you, intuiting, and making associations. You present the facts, I connect the dots, and an image is formed. Your singularities are gradually revealed to me, openly or covertly, intentionally or not. Some places inside of you are easy to reach; others are encrypted and laborious to decode. Over time, I come to know your values, and your fault lines. By witnessing how you move in the world, I come to know how you connect: what excites you, what presses your buttons, and what you’re afraid of. I come to know your dreams and your nightmares. You grow on me. And all this, of course, happens in two directions. ([Location 677](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=677)) > Rather than looking at sex as an exclusive outgrowth of the emotional relationship, I’ve come to see it as a separate entity. Sexuality is more than a metaphor for the relationship—it stands on its own as a parallel narrative. ([Location 714](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=714)) #### Separateness Is a Precondition for Connection > Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exist without the other. With too much distance, there can be no connection. But too much merging eradicates the separateness of two distinct individuals. Then there is nothing more to transcend, no bridge to walk on, no one to visit on the other side, no other internal world to enter. When people become fused—when two become one—connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with. Thus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex. ([Location 725](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=725)) > while many of us relish the idea of losing ourselves in sex, the very oneness that we experience through the merging of our bodies can evoke a sense of obliteration. The intensity of sexual passion triggers a fear of engulfment. Of course, few of us are aware of these undercurrents as they’re happening. What we feel instead is the urge to pull out right after orgasm, or the sudden desire to make a sandwich, to light a cigarette. We welcome the intrusion of any random thought: I meant to send an e-mail to…These windows need cleaning…. I wonder how my friend Jack is doing? We appreciate being left alone to meander leisurely in our own mind because this reestablishes a psychological distance, a delineation of the boundaries between me and you. ([Location 772](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=772)) > In his book Arousal, the psychoanalyst Michael Bader offers another explanation for John and Beatrice’s erotic impasse. In his view, intimacy comes with a growing concern for the well-being of the other person, which includes a fear of hurting her. But sexual excitement requires the capacity not to worry, and the pursuit of pleasure demands a degree of selfishness. ([Location 779](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=779)) > It is because he loves her so much that he carries this sense of responsibility for her and can’t enjoy the blithe quest for erotic rapture. ([Location 787](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=787)) > In order to bring lust home, we need to re-create the distance that we worked so hard to bridge. Erotic intelligence is about creating distance, then bringing that space to life. ([Location 839](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=839)) > It wasn’t a rebuff; it was an invitation. You have to imagine it not literally, but as a form of sexual play. Play at not needing me. Play at ignoring me.” ([Location 858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=858)) > I suggest that our ability to tolerate our separateness—and the fundamental insecurity it engenders—is a precondition for maintaining interest and desire in a relationship. Instead of always striving for closeness, I argue that couples may be better off cultivating their separate selves. ([Location 905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=905)) > Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it. If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected. Love is about having; desire is about wanting. ([Location 913](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=913)) ### 3 The Pitfalls of Modern Intimacy Talk Is Not the Only Avenue to Closeness > Dare I say it’s not even considered a desirable one?—at least, not yet. When it comes to loving relationships, “talk intimacy” inevitably leaves many men at a loss. In this regime, they suffer from a chronic intimacy deficiency that needs ongoing repair. So much of masculine identity is predicated on self-control and invulnerability. ([Location 987](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=987)) > The mandate of intimacy, when taken too far, can resemble coercion. In my own work, I see couples who no longer wait for an invitation into their partner’s interiority, but instead demand admittance, as if they are entitled to unrestricted access into the private thoughts of their loved ones. Intimacy becomes intrusion rather than closeness—intimacy with an injunction. ([Location 1030](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1030)) > The bargain of reciprocity goes something like this: “I’ll tell if you will, and I want to, so you have to.” We don’t like to be intimate alone. ([Location 1036](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1036)) ### 4 Democracy Versus Hot Sex Desire and Egalitarianism Don’t Play by the Same Rules > “Because sex is a place where you can safely lose control?” I ask. “Yes.” “It is the one area where you don’t have to make any decisions, where you don’t have to feel responsible for anyone else.” “For me it’s like a vacation,” she explains. ([Location 1192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1192)) > Elizabeth wants to be manhandled, told what to do—as if, through her erotic self, she can correct an imbalance in her life and replenish something vital. ([Location 1196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1196)) > she also gets a charge from playing in the forbidden zone of inequality. ([Location 1198](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1198)) > stepping out of ourselves is exactly what eroticism allows us to do. In eros, we trample on cultural restrictions; the prohibitions we so vigorously uphold in the light are often the ones we enjoy transgressing in the dark. It’s an alternative space where we can safely experience our taboos. The erotic imagination has the force to override reason, convention, and social barriers. ([Location 1236](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1236)) > What threatens in public becomes enchantment in private. He parlays his daily fears into nightly seductions. ([Location 1251](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1251)) > “I can see why S-M was so attractive to you,” I reply. “You could make demands and not fear hurting anyone. The unambiguous codes, the negotiating beforehand, made it safe for you. Emotionally, you tend to put other people first. Sexual domination is a way for you to override the other person’s supremacy. It’s a clever answer to your more typical emotional subordination.” ([Location 1305](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1305)) > Most fans of kinky sex, at least those I’ve encountered, are drawn by the erotics of power and not, as it may appear to an outsider, by violence or pain. ([Location 1374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1374)) > The social critic Camille Paglia sees this rise in domination and submission as a collective fantasy that tweaks the rough spots of our egalitarian culture. ([Location 1386](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1386)) > This explicit exchange of power, which transfers freely and consensually from one party to another, is a far cry from the rigid distribution of power that pervades our society. In real life, power is much harder to negotiate, and almost impossible either to acquire or to relinquish. No one wants to give up her piece of the pie. ([Location 1390](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1390)) ### 5 Can Do! The Protestant Work Ethic Takes On the Degradation of Desire > So let’s not talk about work. Instead, let’s talk about freedom. Play.” ([Location 1494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1494)) > his renewed desire came from her reassertion of her separateness and her dreams. When she voiced her unrequited longings, she gave Ryan permission to unleash his. ([Location 1559](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1559)) ### 6 Sex Is Dirty; Save It for Someone You Love When Puritanism and Hedonism Collide ### 7 Erotic Blueprints Tell Me How You Were Loved, and I’ll Tell You How You Make Love > The more he loves and respects his wife, the harder it is for him to fuck her. ([Location 1961](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1961)) > When sex feels like an obligation it’s very efficacious to come fast—it brings a quick end to the discomfort. When lovers engage sexually as free agents, turning surrender into an act of self-assertion, there is no need to get it over with. Precipitating the grand finale isn’t so much the point as savoring the mutual trust and intimacy along the way. ([Location 2151](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=2151)) ### 8 Parenthood When Three Threatens Two ### 9 Of Flesh and Fantasy In the Sanctuary of the Erotic Mind We Find a Direct Route to Pleasure > Through fantasy we repair, compensate, and transform. For a few moments, we rise above the reality of life and, subsequently, the reality of death. ([Location 2670](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=2670)) > Our fantasies allow us to negate and undo the limits imposed on us by our conscience, by our culture, and by our self-image. ([Location 2680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=2680)) > Fantasy expresses the problem and provides the solution. It is a fervid space, where our inhibiting fear is transformed into brazenness. What a relief to find that our shame is now curiosity, our timidity is now assertiveness, and our helplessness is now sovereignty. ([Location 2685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=2685)) > Joni is overcome by the consequences of dependence on all fronts: her own neediness is abject, and the emotional needs of others are likewise overwhelming. She resolves this by peopling her fantasies with caricatures of machismo. These are forceful men who have no weaknesses and need no care. These men don’t ask; they take. Joni is thus relieved of the social imperative of female caretaking, and her own carefree sexual greed is liberated. ([Location 2830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=2830)) ### 10 The Shadow of the Third Rethinking Fidelity > “So this wasn’t an exit affair. Maybe more like a stabilizer, where the third person helps keep the other two in place?” ([Location 3072](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3072)) ### 11 Putting the X Back in Sex Bringing the Erotic Home > Oscar Wilde wrote, “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is getting what one wants, and the other is not getting it.” ([Location 3496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3496)) > Gail Godwin wrote, “The act of longing will always be more intense than the requiting of it.” ([Location 3502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3502)) > The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility. It’s remarkable to me how a sudden threat to the status quo (an affair, an infatuation, a prolonged absence, or even a really good fight) can suddenly ignite desire. There’s nothing like the fear of loss to make those old shoes look new again. ([Location 3508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3508)) > It’s ironic that in such a willful society, willfully conjuring up sex seems obvious and crass. It embarrasses us, as if we’ve been caught doing something inappropriate. ([Location 3533](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3533)) #### Cultivating Play > Animals have sex; eroticism is exclusively human. It is sexuality transformed by the imagination. In fact, you don’t even need the act of sex to have a full erotic experience, though sex is often hinted at, envisioned. Eroticism is the cultivation of excitement, a purposeful quest for pleasure. Octavio Paz likens eroticism to the poetry of the body, the testimony of the senses. Like a poem, it is not linear; it meanders and twists back on itself. It shows us what we see not with our eyes but with the eyes of our spirit. Eroticism reveals to us another world inside this world. The senses become servants of the imagination, letting us see the invisible and hear the inaudible. Eroticism, intertwined as it is with imagination, is another form of play. I think of play as an alternative reality midway between the actual and the fictitious, a safe space where we experiment, reinvent ourselves, and take chances. Through play we suspend disbelief—we pretend something is real even when we damn well know it is not. Earnestness has no place here. Play, by definition, is carefree and unself-conscious. The great theoretician of play, Johan Huizinga, maintained that a fundamental feature of play is that it serves no other purpose. The purposelessness associated with play is hard to reconcile with our culture of high efficiency and constant accountability. ([Location 3595](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3595)) #### Erotic Intelligence > “Instead of having secrets from each other, we have secrets from the world.” ([Location 3617](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3617)) > Nurturing eroticism in the home is an act of open defiance. ([Location 3639](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3639)) --- Title: Mating in Captivity Author: Esther Perel Tags: readwise, books date: 2024-01-30 --- # Mating in Captivity  Author:: Esther Perel ## AI-Generated Summary None ## Highlights > My belief, reinforced by twenty years of practice, is that in the course of establishing security, many couples confuse love with merging. This mix-up is a bad omen for sex. To sustain an élan toward the other, there must be a synapse to cross. Eroticism requires separateness. In other words, eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other. In order to commune with the one we love, we must be able to tolerate this void and its pall of uncertainties. ([Location 267](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=267)) ### 1 From Adventure to Captivity Why the Quest for Security Saps Erotic Vitality > We’re walking contradictions, seeking safety and predictability on one hand and thriving on diversity on the other. ([Location 415](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=415)) > There’s a powerful tendency in long-term relationships to favor the predictable over the unpredictable. Yet eroticism thrives on the unpredictable. Desire butts heads with habit and repetition. It is unruly, and it defies our attempts at control. ([Location 504](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=504)) > A sense of physical and emotional safety is basic to healthy pleasure and connection. Yet without an element of uncertainty there is no longing, no anticipation, no frisson. The motivational expert Anthony Robbins put it succinctly when he explained that passion in a relationship is commensurate with the amount of uncertainty you can tolerate. ([Location 507](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=507)) > Introducing uncertainty sometimes requires nothing more than letting go of the illusion of certitude. In this shift of perception, we recognize the inherent mystery of our partner. ([Location 519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=519)) > Eroticism resides in the ambiguous space between anxiety and fascination. ([Location 625](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=625)) ### 2 More Intimacy, Less Sex Love Seeks Closeness, but Desire Needs Distance > If love is an act of imagination, then intimacy is an act of fruition. It waits for the high to subside so it can patiently insert itself into the relationship. The seeds of intimacy are time and repetition. We choose each other again and again, and so create a community of two. ([Location 668](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=668)) > Of course, familiarity is but one manifestation of intimacy. Our continued discovery of another person extends far beyond surface habits into an interior world of thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. We penetrate our partner mentally. We talk, we listen, we share, and we compare. We disclose certain parts of ourselves, while we adorn, fiddle with, and conceal others. Sometimes I learn something about you because you tell me: your history, your family, your life before we met. But just as often my understanding comes from watching you, intuiting, and making associations. You present the facts, I connect the dots, and an image is formed. Your singularities are gradually revealed to me, openly or covertly, intentionally or not. Some places inside of you are easy to reach; others are encrypted and laborious to decode. Over time, I come to know your values, and your fault lines. By witnessing how you move in the world, I come to know how you connect: what excites you, what presses your buttons, and what you’re afraid of. I come to know your dreams and your nightmares. You grow on me. And all this, of course, happens in two directions. ([Location 677](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=677)) > Rather than looking at sex as an exclusive outgrowth of the emotional relationship, I’ve come to see it as a separate entity. Sexuality is more than a metaphor for the relationship—it stands on its own as a parallel narrative. ([Location 714](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=714)) #### Separateness Is a Precondition for Connection > Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exist without the other. With too much distance, there can be no connection. But too much merging eradicates the separateness of two distinct individuals. Then there is nothing more to transcend, no bridge to walk on, no one to visit on the other side, no other internal world to enter. When people become fused—when two become one—connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with. Thus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex. ([Location 725](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=725)) > while many of us relish the idea of losing ourselves in sex, the very oneness that we experience through the merging of our bodies can evoke a sense of obliteration. The intensity of sexual passion triggers a fear of engulfment. Of course, few of us are aware of these undercurrents as they’re happening. What we feel instead is the urge to pull out right after orgasm, or the sudden desire to make a sandwich, to light a cigarette. We welcome the intrusion of any random thought: I meant to send an e-mail to…These windows need cleaning…. I wonder how my friend Jack is doing? We appreciate being left alone to meander leisurely in our own mind because this reestablishes a psychological distance, a delineation of the boundaries between me and you. ([Location 772](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=772)) > In his book Arousal, the psychoanalyst Michael Bader offers another explanation for John and Beatrice’s erotic impasse. In his view, intimacy comes with a growing concern for the well-being of the other person, which includes a fear of hurting her. But sexual excitement requires the capacity not to worry, and the pursuit of pleasure demands a degree of selfishness. ([Location 779](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=779)) > It is because he loves her so much that he carries this sense of responsibility for her and can’t enjoy the blithe quest for erotic rapture. ([Location 787](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=787)) > In order to bring lust home, we need to re-create the distance that we worked so hard to bridge. Erotic intelligence is about creating distance, then bringing that space to life. ([Location 839](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=839)) > It wasn’t a rebuff; it was an invitation. You have to imagine it not literally, but as a form of sexual play. Play at not needing me. Play at ignoring me.” ([Location 858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=858)) > I suggest that our ability to tolerate our separateness—and the fundamental insecurity it engenders—is a precondition for maintaining interest and desire in a relationship. Instead of always striving for closeness, I argue that couples may be better off cultivating their separate selves. ([Location 905](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=905)) > Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it. If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected. Love is about having; desire is about wanting. ([Location 913](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=913)) ### 3 The Pitfalls of Modern Intimacy Talk Is Not the Only Avenue to Closeness > Dare I say it’s not even considered a desirable one?—at least, not yet. When it comes to loving relationships, “talk intimacy” inevitably leaves many men at a loss. In this regime, they suffer from a chronic intimacy deficiency that needs ongoing repair. So much of masculine identity is predicated on self-control and invulnerability. ([Location 987](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=987)) > The mandate of intimacy, when taken too far, can resemble coercion. In my own work, I see couples who no longer wait for an invitation into their partner’s interiority, but instead demand admittance, as if they are entitled to unrestricted access into the private thoughts of their loved ones. Intimacy becomes intrusion rather than closeness—intimacy with an injunction. ([Location 1030](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1030)) > The bargain of reciprocity goes something like this: “I’ll tell if you will, and I want to, so you have to.” We don’t like to be intimate alone. ([Location 1036](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1036)) ### 4 Democracy Versus Hot Sex Desire and Egalitarianism Don’t Play by the Same Rules > “Because sex is a place where you can safely lose control?” I ask. “Yes.” “It is the one area where you don’t have to make any decisions, where you don’t have to feel responsible for anyone else.” “For me it’s like a vacation,” she explains. ([Location 1192](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1192)) > Elizabeth wants to be manhandled, told what to do—as if, through her erotic self, she can correct an imbalance in her life and replenish something vital. ([Location 1196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1196)) > she also gets a charge from playing in the forbidden zone of inequality. ([Location 1198](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1198)) > stepping out of ourselves is exactly what eroticism allows us to do. In eros, we trample on cultural restrictions; the prohibitions we so vigorously uphold in the light are often the ones we enjoy transgressing in the dark. It’s an alternative space where we can safely experience our taboos. The erotic imagination has the force to override reason, convention, and social barriers. ([Location 1236](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1236)) > What threatens in public becomes enchantment in private. He parlays his daily fears into nightly seductions. ([Location 1251](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1251)) > “I can see why S-M was so attractive to you,” I reply. “You could make demands and not fear hurting anyone. The unambiguous codes, the negotiating beforehand, made it safe for you. Emotionally, you tend to put other people first. Sexual domination is a way for you to override the other person’s supremacy. It’s a clever answer to your more typical emotional subordination.” ([Location 1305](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1305)) > Most fans of kinky sex, at least those I’ve encountered, are drawn by the erotics of power and not, as it may appear to an outsider, by violence or pain. ([Location 1374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1374)) > The social critic Camille Paglia sees this rise in domination and submission as a collective fantasy that tweaks the rough spots of our egalitarian culture. ([Location 1386](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1386)) > This explicit exchange of power, which transfers freely and consensually from one party to another, is a far cry from the rigid distribution of power that pervades our society. In real life, power is much harder to negotiate, and almost impossible either to acquire or to relinquish. No one wants to give up her piece of the pie. ([Location 1390](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1390)) ### 5 Can Do! The Protestant Work Ethic Takes On the Degradation of Desire > So let’s not talk about work. Instead, let’s talk about freedom. Play.” ([Location 1494](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1494)) > his renewed desire came from her reassertion of her separateness and her dreams. When she voiced her unrequited longings, she gave Ryan permission to unleash his. ([Location 1559](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1559)) ### 6 Sex Is Dirty; Save It for Someone You Love When Puritanism and Hedonism Collide ### 7 Erotic Blueprints Tell Me How You Were Loved, and I’ll Tell You How You Make Love > The more he loves and respects his wife, the harder it is for him to fuck her. ([Location 1961](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1961)) > When sex feels like an obligation it’s very efficacious to come fast—it brings a quick end to the discomfort. When lovers engage sexually as free agents, turning surrender into an act of self-assertion, there is no need to get it over with. Precipitating the grand finale isn’t so much the point as savoring the mutual trust and intimacy along the way. ([Location 2151](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=2151)) ### 8 Parenthood When Three Threatens Two ### 9 Of Flesh and Fantasy In the Sanctuary of the Erotic Mind We Find a Direct Route to Pleasure > Through fantasy we repair, compensate, and transform. For a few moments, we rise above the reality of life and, subsequently, the reality of death. ([Location 2670](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=2670)) > Our fantasies allow us to negate and undo the limits imposed on us by our conscience, by our culture, and by our self-image. ([Location 2680](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=2680)) > Fantasy expresses the problem and provides the solution. It is a fervid space, where our inhibiting fear is transformed into brazenness. What a relief to find that our shame is now curiosity, our timidity is now assertiveness, and our helplessness is now sovereignty. ([Location 2685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=2685)) > Joni is overcome by the consequences of dependence on all fronts: her own neediness is abject, and the emotional needs of others are likewise overwhelming. She resolves this by peopling her fantasies with caricatures of machismo. These are forceful men who have no weaknesses and need no care. These men don’t ask; they take. Joni is thus relieved of the social imperative of female caretaking, and her own carefree sexual greed is liberated. ([Location 2830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=2830)) ### 10 The Shadow of the Third Rethinking Fidelity > “So this wasn’t an exit affair. Maybe more like a stabilizer, where the third person helps keep the other two in place?” ([Location 3072](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3072)) ### 11 Putting the X Back in Sex Bringing the Erotic Home > Oscar Wilde wrote, “In this world there are only two tragedies. One is getting what one wants, and the other is not getting it.” ([Location 3496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3496)) > Gail Godwin wrote, “The act of longing will always be more intense than the requiting of it.” ([Location 3502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3502)) > The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility. It’s remarkable to me how a sudden threat to the status quo (an affair, an infatuation, a prolonged absence, or even a really good fight) can suddenly ignite desire. There’s nothing like the fear of loss to make those old shoes look new again. ([Location 3508](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3508)) > It’s ironic that in such a willful society, willfully conjuring up sex seems obvious and crass. It embarrasses us, as if we’ve been caught doing something inappropriate. ([Location 3533](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3533)) #### Cultivating Play > Animals have sex; eroticism is exclusively human. It is sexuality transformed by the imagination. In fact, you don’t even need the act of sex to have a full erotic experience, though sex is often hinted at, envisioned. Eroticism is the cultivation of excitement, a purposeful quest for pleasure. Octavio Paz likens eroticism to the poetry of the body, the testimony of the senses. Like a poem, it is not linear; it meanders and twists back on itself. It shows us what we see not with our eyes but with the eyes of our spirit. Eroticism reveals to us another world inside this world. The senses become servants of the imagination, letting us see the invisible and hear the inaudible. Eroticism, intertwined as it is with imagination, is another form of play. I think of play as an alternative reality midway between the actual and the fictitious, a safe space where we experiment, reinvent ourselves, and take chances. Through play we suspend disbelief—we pretend something is real even when we damn well know it is not. Earnestness has no place here. Play, by definition, is carefree and unself-conscious. The great theoretician of play, Johan Huizinga, maintained that a fundamental feature of play is that it serves no other purpose. The purposelessness associated with play is hard to reconcile with our culture of high efficiency and constant accountability. ([Location 3595](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3595)) #### Erotic Intelligence > “Instead of having secrets from each other, we have secrets from the world.” ([Location 3617](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3617)) > Nurturing eroticism in the home is an act of open defiance. ([Location 3639](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=3639))