Book Review: "Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic + the Domestic" by Esther Perel

There is no denying that our 21^st century existence is more complicated than it has ever been.  We are all stretched and stressed to the max in every aspect of our lives, in harried pursuit of balancing our personal, financial, and professional goals.  When one area of our lives is thriving, the rest seem to fall by the wayside.  And in many cases, the suffering victim tends to be our romantic relationships.

So how do we sustain romance and sexual relations in a long term monogamous relationship?  Is it possible to have or expect "it all" from our mates?  Are passion and security in a relationship synonymous, or even achievable? In her recently published book, "Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic + the Domestic," couples and family therapist Esther Perel addresses these as well as many other issues that couples face today.

Having been swept up in the self help book (of all sorts) phenomenon in the past with disappointing results, I have become a skeptic of this genre. I was the reluctant recipient of this book over the holidays from my mother, no less.  Even when she said, "I wish I had this information when I was married to your father," I dismissed her comment.  But after reading Perel's book (in one sitting), I have to say that Mom was spot on.

Throughout her twenty plus years as a therapist, Perel has seen it all. In "Mating," she documents a wide array of relationships and their sociological evolution, and her observations are fascinating, eye opening, and uncomfortably familiar.  "In the past fifty years, we have opened ourselves to a wealth of new marital and family configurations. We can have straight, gay, or transgender marriages. We can have domestic partnerships. We can be single parents, stepparents, adoptive parents, or child-free. Successive marriages and blended families are common. We can cohabitate and never marry, or we can be a commuter marriage with only brief stints under one roof." (p. 177) But with so many types of relationships, Perel notes, the same problems crop up.  Why does romance wane after children come into the picture?   Does too much communication and honesty translate to a quagmire in the bedroom?  And are we expecting our partners to fulfill all of our expectations of a friend, lover, and play mate?

Whereas a partnership used to be a "partnership for life" based on survival (think agrarian societies and lower life expectancy), it is now a lifelong partnership of the heart and mind, ideally meant to survive the twists and turns modern life throws at us.  "Modern relationships are cauldrons of contradictory longings: safety and excitement, grounding and transcendence, the comfort of love and the heat of passion.  We want it all, and we want it with one person. Reconciling the domestic and the erotic is a delicate balancing act that we achieve intermittently at best. It requires knowing your partner while recognizing his persistent mystery; creating security while remaining open to the unknown; cultivating intimacy that respects privacy. Separateness and togetherness alternate, or proceed in counterpoint. Desire resists confinement, and commitment mustn't swallow freedom whole." (p. 219) Perel talks about relishing individuality and pursuing the cultivation of your own "secret garden" in order to bring a fresh aspect to the relationship. Grown ups need play time too and it is possible to sustain a relationship successfully over the long term.

Perel writes with an honest, straight forward voice that makes no consolations for an easy fix. Some of the aspects of relationships she addresses and the panaceas she suggests may fall into uncomfortable territory for some, but this lifelong process takes patience, imagination, communication, commitment, and most of all an open mind.