## Metadata - Author: [[Esther Perel]] - Full Title: Mating in Captivity - Category: #books ## Highlights - 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)) - 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)) - Sexual desire does not obey the laws that maintain peace and contentment between partners. Reason, understanding, compassion, and camaraderie are the handmaidens of a close, harmonious relationship. But sex often evokes unreasoning obsession rather than thoughtful judgment, and selfish desire rather than altruistic consideration. Aggression, objectification, and power all exist in the shadow of desire, components of passion that do not necessarily nurture intimacy. Desire operates along its own trajectory. ([Location 811](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=811)) - We long to create closeness in our relationships, to bridge the space between our partner and ourselves, but, ironically, it is this very space between self and other that is the erotic synapse. 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 837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=837)) - 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)) - In my work with patients I stress that intimacy isn’t monolithic; nor is it always consistent. It is intermittent, meant to wax and wane even in the best relationships. The family therapist Kaethe Weingarten steers us away from looking at intimacy as a static feature of a relationship; she sees it instead as a quality of interaction that takes place in isolated moments and that exists both within and without long-term commitment. There’s the synchronization of dance partners, the sudden identification between strangers on a plane, the solidarity of witnesses to a catastrophe, the mutual recognition of survivors—of breast cancer, alcoholism, terrorism, divorce. There’s the intimacy between professionals and those they serve—doctor and patient, therapist and client, stripper and regular. While we expect to experience these discrete moments of recognition in ongoing relationships, they are not necessarily bound to any overarching narrative. They can be circumstantial, spontaneous, and without follow-up. Informed by Weingarten’s ideas, I no longer look at relationships as being either intimate or not. Instead, I track each couple’s ability to engage in a series of intimate bids tendered over time. ([Location 1124](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1124)) - It seems to me that rituals of domination and submission are a subversive way to put one over on a society that glorifies control, belittles dependency, and demands equality. In cultures where these values are at a premium—America, for example—we find more and more people seeking to give up control, revel in dependency, and recognize the very inequities no one wants to talk about. Seen in this light, sex clubs are havens of acceptance for what society rejects. 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 1387](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1387)) - But when we reduce sex to a function, we also invoke the idea of dysfunction. We are no longer talking about the art of sex; rather, we are talking about the mechanics of sex. Science has replaced religion as the authority; and science is a more formidable arbiter. Medicine knows how to scare even those who scoff at religion. Compared with a diagnosis, what’s a mere sin? We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt. ([Location 1450](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1450)) - In my experience, a treatment that places a premium on performance and reliability often exacerbates the very problems it purports to solve. The “sexual performance perfection industry” generates its own inhibitions and anxieties. More often than not, the beauty and flow of a sexual encounter unfurl in a safe, noncompetitive, and non-result-oriented atmosphere. Sensuality simply doesn’t lend itself to the rigors of scorekeeping. ([Location 1453](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1453)) - eroticism is inefficient. It loves to squander time and resources. As Adam Phillips wryly notes, “In our erotic life work does not work…trying is always trying too hard. Eroticism is an imaginative act, and you can’t measure it. We glorify efficiency and fail to recognize that the erotic space is a radiant interlude in which we luxuriate, indifferent to demands of productivity; pleasure is the only goal. Octavio Paz writes, “The moment of merging is a crack in time, a balm against the wounds inflicted by the minutes and hours of time. A moment totally eternal as it is ephemeral.” ([Location 1463](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1463)) - Our desires are not exempt from conflict; nor are our passions free of contradictions. No amount of will or reason can dictate our love dreams. Reason doesn’t know the roots of our dreams; nor does it know the mysterious needs of the heart. ([Location 1485](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1485)) - There’s an evolutionary anthropologist named Helen Fisher who explains that lust is metabolically expensive. It’s hard to sustain after the evolutionary payoff: the kids. You become so focused on the incessant demands of daily life that you short-circuit any electric charge between you. ([Location 1523](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1523)) - We find the same polarities in every system: stability and change, passion and reason, personal interest and collective well-being, action and reflection (to name but a few). These tensions exist in individuals, in couples, and in large organizations. They express dynamics that are part of the very nature of reality. Barry Johnson, an expert on leadership who is the author of Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems, describes polarities as sets of interdependent opposites that belong to the same whole—you can’t choose one over the other; the system needs both to survive. ([Location 1578](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000UODXP0&location=1578))