The Tamesis
If you ask yourself who is the most famous living psychologist right now, you might choose Esther Perel. her podcast, Where should we start?She talks to a couple each episode, trying to address some core issues, and has attracted hundreds of thousands of listeners. Her two Ted Talks, “The Secret of Desire in Long-term Relationships” in 2013 and “Rethinking Infidelity” in 2015, have received a combined 40 million views. But this is her 2006 book captive matingone new york times A bestseller, it is one of her most iconic and often cited works. Released 20 years ago, re-released this month, captive mating‘s central argument is that maintaining desire in long-term relationships requires a deliberate balancing act between connection and separation.
As a perennial busybody who is also fascinated by the granularity of human relationships, I have always been a fan of Perel’s work. but somehow i never read it captive mating. I wonder, in this age of dating apps and AI girlfriends, does it still make sense? Does this ring true to me, especially as a queer woman? Is there any need to actually read the book when much of Perel’s line of reasoning has become common knowledge to those who follow the 67-year-old psychologist, or couples therapy more generally?
As it happens, there’s a lot to collect captive mating 2026. The idea of it hasn’t aged well enough that I had to double-check that my original release date wasn’t correct. To that end, here’s everything I learned about long-term relationships and long-term desires from Perel’s seminal work.
Many of us can be divided into “romantics” and “realists”
Perel distinguished between two types of people. There are romantics who reject a life without passion (“They vow never to give up on true love. They are eternal pursuers, looking for someone whose desire will never fail”), while realists are at the opposite extreme (“they say lasting love is more important than sexy sex, and that passion makes people do stupid things”).
No matter where you sit, Perel says, “both agree on the basic premise that passion cools over time.” As a result, “both are often disappointed that few people can live happily at either extreme.” Instead, we must begin a “never-ending dance between change and stability,” in which passion and stability ebb and flow over time, but not always in perfect sync.
Security and certainty are an illusion
We like to think that in our long-term relationships we have accumulated a certain level of certainty. We know our partners inside and out, so we can predict their behavior. Perel believes this is just an illusion. We never know our partners as well as we think. “When we trade passion for stability, aren’t we just trading one fantasy for another?” she asks, noting that any relationship carries an element of risk. This is actually a good thing. We must lean into this unknown, because if we are to sustain desire over the long term, Perel says, “we must be able to bring the feeling of the unknown into familiar spaces.”
Good intimacy doesn’t always equal good sex
It is a common belief – both now and at any time captive mating Posted – The more intimate a couple is (i.e. emotionally connected), the better their sex life will be. Perel asserts that while this is true for some couples, it is not true for all. “Ironically, the things that make for great intimacy don’t always make for great sex,” she writes. “It may be counterintuitive, but in my experience as a therapist, increases in emotional intimacy are often accompanied by decreases in sexual desire.” Instead, we’re best understanding sex and intimacy as “parallel narratives.”
