Esther Perel on rediscovering desire in long term relationships

Esther Perel, a marriage and family therapist and author of Mating in Captivity: Sex, Lies and Domestic Bliss has a refreshingly modern take on maintaining desire in long term relationships. Here she talks to Big White Wall about how to reconcile the domestic with the erotic, how distance benefits desire and why monogamy should be negotiated, not assumed

If sexual desire has subsided in a long term relationship, does this always mean that the relationship is in danger?

There have been all kinds of ideas about how sexual problems are usually the result of relationship problems and that if you fix the relationship the sex will follow. My experience is that I was seeing more and more couples coming in to my clinic saying that they loved each other very much but were having no sex. I feel that it wasn’t a lack of closeness that stifled desire, but too much closeness; that the very familiarity inherent in intimacy numbed desire. This is the first time in history that couples are invited to sustain a sexual life that is routed in desire and not in reproduction or female marital duty.

Do people want the same things from marriage that they always used to?

We want what we have always wanted from marriage - or committed relationships: support, partnership, companionship, economic support, children and social status. But on top of this, we also want our partners to be our best friend, our trusted confident and our passionate lovers. We need to somehow reconcile the domestic and the erotic; reconcile our need for security, stability and predictability with our wish for transcendence, mystery and awe. And over all of this we also want equal egalitarian relationships too. In the egalitarian model we want something that closer resembles friends or peers – which is wonderful for managing the every day, but doesn’t necessarily respond to the erotic needs that people also bring to a relationship.

You recently said that you never refer to your husband as your ‘best friend’ – do you think couples cannot be friends?

When you deal with friendship you are dealing with similarities, in neutralising differences and power differentials. A partner can be a close friend as well, but they are more than just a friend. The whole definition of a friend is that it is desexualised.

You talk a lot about embracing power differences in relationships yet, in this age of equality, many people might find this uncomfortable – how does power work with desire?

There needs to be a different way of understanding the issue of power. Often today when we refer to power it comes with another word ‘abuse’ – as in the abuse of power or the exploitation of power. We try for good reason to tackle abuses of power by neutralising these power differentials as much as possible, but in this case power is intrinsic to desire. The moment you have a relationship which includes a certain dependency there is an element of power because when you depend on someone they have power over you. The same way no one would think of energy without thinking of power, erotic energy is fed by an element of power.

So, how do you suggest couples who have lost desire for one another over time rediscover the erotic side of their relationship?

It is important to look at to what degree the couple maintains the lust state, because fire needs air. Many couples today don’t give each other enough air to desire each other. When I ask my clients: ‘give me a moment when you find yourself most drawn to your partner’ I always get the same pattern of answer: ‘when I look at him playing with the kids/when I see other people talking to her at a party/when I see him play his guitar/when I see her skiing’. It is when the other witnesses their partner doing something that is ‘theirs’, something that they are passionate about. This person who is already so familiar and known becomes momentarily once again elusive, mysterious and unknown. Love needs closeness, but desire needs space to thrive, it needs a bridge to cross, with someone to meet on the other side.

Does this mean then that libido is psychological and can be controlled?

No there are differences in desire. But it’s how a couple manages or responds to those discrepancies that makes all the difference. You can take a woman, or indeed a man, who has not had any desire for a long time, and put a new person in front of them and their libido will climb. Everyone’s libido ebbs and flows over the course of a lifetime, but it is the relationship that can either totally numb it, or enhance it.

Finally, do you believe that there is still room for monogamy in long term relationships?

Monogamy needs to be negotiated and not assumed. In ‘straighter’ couples there is often a reluctance to address this because the idea of negotiating monogamy is a challenge to the sacred romantic ideals. However, I think that there are ways to rethink monogamy, that it is not always a matter of sexual exclusivity; there are various other ways of expressing loyalty and commitment to each other. The problem with monogamy is that it is no less than 100 per cent; you cannot be partially monogamous or sometimes monogamous, it is an all or nothing affair which leaves couples with an all or nothing solution. But the question of how to negotiate boundaries is essential for all couples.

For more information, visit Esther Perel’s website at www.estherperel.com Esther Perel’s book Mating In Captivity: Sex, Lies and Domestic Bliss is available from Hodder & Stoughton priced £7.99 (UK) and $13.95 (US)

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