So, that’s not the sense of security that we need to eliminate in our relationships.

All of those things are awesome and they’re essential to a healthy relationship.

Ideally, you should be able to rest in the knowledge that your partner loves you, that they’re faithful to you, and that they’re committed to keeping your relationship healthy and alive. In a committed relationship, you certainly should feel as though you’re able to relax and feel safe with your partner. Now that you have “your person” for life, you can relax and feel secure!. Gone are the lonely days of dates with incompatible losers gone is the exhausting quest of trying on other people to see if they fit. Here’s how it works in practice: when you enter into a long term relationship with someone - especially if you marry them! - our default assumption is to assume that that person will bring us a sense of security. She believes that “security” is one of the most harmful and pervasive misconceptions. Flinging the doors open on erotic life and domesticity, she invites us to put the 'X' back in sex.But the author asserts that it’s also important to eliminate some other common misconceptions that cause dysfunction in our relationships. While Mating in Captivity shows why the domestic realm can feel like a cage, Perel's take on bedroom dynamics promises to liberate, enchant, and provoke. More exciting, playful, even poetic sex is possible, but first we must kick egalitarian ideals and emotional housekeeping out of our bedrooms. It thrives on power plays, unfair advantages, and the space between self and other.

Sexual excitement doesn't always play by the rules of good citizenship. There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love, the great humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm wrote in his 1965 classic on mastering the art of loving. In this explosively original book, Perel explains that our cultural penchant for equality, togetherness, and absolute candor is antithetical to erotic desire for both men and women. They describe relationships that are open and loving, yet sexually dull. In her 20 years of clinical experience, Perel has treated hundreds of couples whose home lives are empty of passion. She invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home. Esther Perel takes on tough questions, grappling with the obstacles and anxieties that arise when our quest for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion.

Mating in captivity audio book