Esther Perel - Secret to Desire Flashcards
Everywhere where romanticism has entered, there seems to be a crisis of desire.
And at the heart of sustaining desire in a committed relationship, I think, is the reconciliation of two fundamental human needs. Our need for security, for predictability, for safety, for dependability, for reliability, for permanence. But we also have an equally strong need for adventure, for novelty, for mystery, for risk, for danger, for the unknown, for the unexpected and surprise.
So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide. Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one.
Desire needs space.
So the first group is: I am most drawn to my partner when she is away, when we are apart, when we reunite. Basically, when I get back in touch with my ability to imagine myself with my partner, when my imagination comes back in the picture, and when I can root it in absence and in longing, which is a major component of desire.
Secondly, I am most drawn to my partner when I see him in the studio, when she is onstage, when he is in his element, when she’s doing something she’s passionate about, when I see him at a party and other people are really drawn to him, when I see her hold court. Basically, when I look at my partner radiant and confident. Probably the biggest turn-on across the board.
As Proust says, mystery is not about traveling to new places, but it’s about looking with new eyes.
The third group of answers usually would be: when I’m surprised, when we laugh together, as somebody said to me in the office today, when he’s in his tux, so I said, you know, it’s either the tux or the cowboy boots. But basically it’s when there is novelty.
We can experience that powerful thing called anticipation, which is a mortar to desire.
In this paradox between love and desire, what seems to be so puzzling is that the very ingredients that nurture love – mutuality, reciprocity, protection, worry, responsibility for the other – are sometimes the very ingredients that stifle desire.
So in this dilemma about reconciling these two sets of fundamental needs, there are a few things that I’ve come to understand erotic couples do. One, they have a lot of sexual privacy. They understand that there is an erotic space that belongs to each of them. They also understand that foreplay is not something you do five minutes before the real thing. Foreplay pretty much starts at the end of the previous orgasm.
Erotic couples also understand that passion waxes and wanes. It’s pretty much like the moon. It has intermittent eclipses. But what they know is they know how to resurrect it. They know how to bring it back. And they know how to bring it back because they have demystified one big myth, which is the myth of spontaneity,
Committed sex is premeditated sex. It’s willful. It’s intentional. It’s focused and present.
