Mating in Captivity

Separate to strengthen.

That is the theme of Perel's book. Perel address the problem: sex life declines as couples become closer in their day to day lives - moving in, getting married, sharing more activities, raising kids. Perel challenges the notion that that's just how things work.

For Perel, the underlying problem is that each person gradually loses their identity as relationships become more intimate and supportive. Often a person wants to be too giving or too thoughtful. That's nice for the rest of life but not for the erotic. So Perel encourages people to develop their own identities and not be so nice.

Perel acknowledges that part of the problem is the cultural and familial baggage we carry into relationships. Being America, there is a Puritan strain - we've all heard that it should be confined to marriage for reproduction. There is also a secularist strain that demands equality and democracy, which like being thoughtful is a generally nice idea but not always for the erotic.

The key points of the book could be put into a short essay. But the rest of the book is filled with examples of Perel's patients and illustrates her points. At times these examples are repetitious, but make the abstract more concrete. Another problem with the examples is how she quotes herself and her patients. This is the difference between character dialog in a novel and real life. In a novel the characters always say things in context with the text, the author tries to be as pithy, witty, or concise as possible. In real life people overuse pronouns, use non-standard syntax and indirect diction.

The most controversial part of Perel's book is not that she withholds judgement on cheating spouses, but at times encourages it. To say that she encourage cheating is wrong. She finds that in some cases it may be useful to bring in a third party. Sometimes the third party is imagined or figurative and other times it's real.

Where Perel misses, is not her advice, but why most people reject it. She sees how we've become more excepting of gays and premarital sex, but not extra marital sex and she doesn't understand why. She thinks that extra martial sex the next taboo to go and that our fidelity fixation has something to do with our mothers caring for us, but not everyone has had a strong consistent mother figure and the slippery slope is often a sticky staircase.

Whether we come from a puritan or secularist or in-between background almost all of us feel strongly about fidelity in monogamous relationships - married or not. Why is that? I think its because we are materialistic, legalistic society based on property rights and capitalism. Fidelity is the key and universal clause in all monogamous relationship contracts - implicit or explicit. The rule of law and the sanctity of contracts must be upheld, we demand. Divorce is ok, because it ends the contract. Friends with benefits is ok because there is no fidelity clause. Two men or two women can enter into a contract, but you can't contract with a horse. There are two parties to a contract, you can't have multiple spouses. Where there is a contract, we must punish violators of the fidelity clause in the court of the public commons.

Looking at an intimate relationship as a contract - whether you think its like property law or corporate law - is part of the problem with the decline of eroticism. Law is pretty boring. The law of man runs counter to the law nature and blocks nature from taking its course.

If you are looking for a step by step how to, this isn't it. If you are looking for a better point of view read Perel's book.