Mating in Captivity: How to keep desire and passion alive in long-term relationships - Softcover

Esther Perel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340943750 ISBN 13: 9780340943755

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 2007

Synopsis

When you love someone, how does it feel? And when you desire someone, how is it different?

In Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel looks at the story of sex in committed couples. Modern romance promises it all - a lifetime of togetherness, intimacy and erotic desire. In reality, it's hard to want what you already have. Our quest for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. And often, the very thing that got us to into our relationships - lust - is the one thing that goes missing from them.

Determined to reconcile the erotic and the domestic, Perel explains why democracy is a passion killer in the bedroom. Argues for playfulness, distance, and uncertainty. And shows what it takes to bring lust home. Smart, sexy and explosively original, Mating in Captivity is the monogamist's essential bedside read.

About this title

Review:

'An elegant sociological study, complete with erudite literary and anthropological references' (Daily Telegraph)

'Reads like a cross between the works of Jacques Lacan and French Women Don't Get Fat' (The New Yorker)

'At precisely the same moment that you're being shocked by her, you're also acknowledging the validity of her ideas. Perel's ideas are like the chorus of a really good pop song - instantly familiar because they resonate deeply. It's all rather terrifying in its intuitiveness and its pure rightness' (Observer)

From the Author:

I wrote this book because, in 22 years of practice in six
different languages, I've met couples over and over again who were having a
good relationship, who love each other, but who have no sex, no tingle! I
met couples who had a bad relationship, and who I helped to have a good
relationship again, and the expectation was that the sex would just come
back - but it didn't. I began to think there's something in this premise -
that if sex is wrong, the relationship is wrong; and equally that more
talk, intimacy and closeness will equal more sex, better sex - that just
doesn't work. I knew I was on to something.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0340943750
• ISBN 13: 9780340943755
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272