Book Review: Mating in Captivity

a counter intuitive approach to love

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What are the first things that come to your mind when I ask you what forms the basis of a good relationship? Let’s do this Freud-style. Take a minute and write down the first 3 words that come to your mind first when you hear the phrase a good relationship. I’ll give you some space.

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more space

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Okay, so if you wrote equality and freedom and trust and security and all the other values inscribed in your Constitution, then Mating in Captivity is the overhaul that your over-cultured brain needs. Mating in Captivity takes all of your intuitions about how relationships should work, and then flings them straight into the garbage bin. Written by the Belgian-American therapist Esther Perel, this book is a bold attempt to throttle most of the assumptions that are popularly held about love, sex and relationships.

What’s fascinating is the finesse with which Perel does it. It’s admirable, for instance, how she reveals to the feminists that their decaying sex life might be a result of their own doing. Like an experienced surgeon, in one swift, painless motion, Perel splits you open and shows you how gender equality too, comes with its own set of consequences, and how some of them have invaded your bedroom. 

We live in times where as long as you have lived experience of the issue that you’re talking about, you gain the right to never be invalidated. Forget what science says, forget what evidence says, I’ve-experienced-this-so-it-cannot-be-anything-else-but-true type of thinking. As a woman, when I first read this stuff, I felt a strong instinct to defend my gender but then I’m reminded that she too, identifies as a woman. But even without this lived experience licence, Perel would probably still emerge from this book largely spotless because deep down, as wild as her ideas sound, you understand what she’s trying to say and you know that she makes sense. So you do the right thing - you open your mind, and listen.

So what does Perel have to offer to the discourse on love, sex and relationships?

I. Mockery

She first makes you look at the floating debris of the sexual liberation of the 60s, and she laughs out loud. If the 60s brought vitality and vibrance to sex, the millennium brought mundanity and dullness to it. All this in the background of immense sexual freedom. Sex today is permitted within and without marriage. Privacy is deeply respected. Instagram is flooded with sex therapists and sex-positive influencers. Sex both as an idea and an act is allowed to roam about freely on the fertile grounds of our private and public emancipation. Yet the correlation between sex and freedom is overall negative.

The modern world sees men struggle with sexual dysfunction, women struggle with sexual disappointment, and everybody struggling with sexual desire. It is a little funny when you think of it. One would think that all this sexual freedom would have made us sexual fanatics, that we’d be going to the doctor to get our sexual behaviour under control, that pharmacies would be making money off sexover pills, but the opposite seems to be happening.

At the very least, you would think that the licence to engage in free sex has enhanced the quality of our relationships. But instead it has become the very reason for our doubts and insecurities as romantic partners. People today are so confused on what to make of the role of sex in a marriage (I use marriage and relationships interchangeably throughout) - Is sex important? What does it mean if my wife and I can’t have sex? Can there be love without sex?

Sexual dissatisfaction has become a legitimate reason (though far from the only one) that makes a couple consider opening up their marriage. The inferior alternative to this is infidelity but that never goes well for obvious reasons. I do want to point out here that infidelity is more complex than that and sexual dissatisfaction has only about 1/8th the chance of being correctly attributed to as causing cheating. If you don’t want to be open, there are several other helpers in the market for your sexual woes - pills, toys, accessories, porn, chat rooms, apps. Sometimes you make these purchases with hope, other times with a lingering sense of guilt, and some other times, deep frustration.

What makes the sexual scarcity even more amusing is the fact that we live in unprecedented times when it comes to sexual identities- there are gazillions of them. It is 2023 and we could be straight, gay, bisexual, demisexual, pansexual, asexual, transsexual or intersexual. We could also be two-spirited, questioning or autosexual. Basically, we can be anything-sexual. The best part is once we decide, we don’t necessarily have to stick with it because sexuality is no longer considered to be static, it’s a fluid part of our identity. The Kinsey scale is for our exploration. But still no sex, what a pity.

One of the most remarkable feats in sexual revolution history, if you ask me, is the invention of contraception. You can now override evolution and unwanted pregnancies and use this newly gained time to have more sex but the opposite seems to be happening. Maybe this is what you get for trying to beat evolution. You get an illusion of abundance. There is plenty of food but we are all still starved. When we ushered in the era of pleasure, an era of displeasure inadvertently followed.

II. Counter-intuitive Logic

Mating in Captivity takes notions that we have for a long time accepted as unquestionable, and pokes gigantic holes in them. Take for example, the solutions that are usually proposed to mitigate our problems of sex. We’re asked to communicate more, organise our time better and make sex a standing meeting on our calendars. We are asked to discuss our troubles and our stressors and our preferences. We are asked to be more gentle and loving and caressing in the bedroom. Aggression has no place in the relationship, not even in the bedroom. Submissive behaviour is unacceptable, especially in the bedroom. And if we’re unable to talk about any of this, we’re asked to talk about not being able to talk about any of this.

Today, your romantic partner is considered as the one-stop shopping destination for all of your needs. We want our partners to provide us with safety, security, peace, meaning, inspiration. We also want them to provide us with adventure, excitement, newness, and fun. At the end, we find safety in knowing their phone passwords and excitement in screaming at their messy bathroom habits. We figure out ways to feel all the feelings we want to feel but something doesn’t feel right.

We forget that safety and adventure cannot co-exist, love and desire are many times at loggerheads with each other, that security and excitement rarely intersect. For a few lucky couples, maybe it does come together easily but for most, feeling safe and at peace with your partner can be off-putting in the bedroom! 

a. Safety and adventure cannot room together

“To sustain an élan toward the other, there must be a synapse to cross”

As humans, we all have an understandable need for safety and stability. In love, even the most reckless of risk-seekers hesitate. What if she’s just with me for the money? What if he just wants sex? What if she says no? What if he’s thinking of breaking up with me? What if I end up alone without her? 

Many couples manage to secure safety and a lifelong commitment but still feel like they’ve lost the battle. They have a partner to take to parties and share babysitting responsibilities with but in the bedroom, they feel alone. Perel suggests that perhaps poor sex is a problem of over-unionising. She says that maybe the problem lies in two trying to forcefully become one. Couples aspire to think the same things, dream the same dreams, talk the same language, eat the same food and prefer the same positions.  When two merges to become one, there is no more space to transcend, there is no other person to love. And let’s be honest, humans are terrible with self-love. Most of us associate self-love with indulgence - eating that last slice of pizza, bingeing on Netflix, sleeping in on a Sunday, trading gym for hangovers. Rarely do we associate work, productivity and strong routines with self-love. In an environment where we treat ourselves so badly in the name of self-love, is it genuinely a good idea to adopt your partner into your weak, frail sense of self?

According to Perel, a strong sense of selfhood is non-negotiable for desire. This can be best observed in the early stages of a relationship. There is already a psychological distance so love is naturally passionate. You want to please the other person, make them feel good, you’re worried if they seem upset. You share with each other the difficulties of your childhood and the emptiness of your adulthood, all of this leads to fiery lovemaking. As your relationship progresses, the psychological distance reduces, you get comfortable with each other and feel less compelled to keep at the discovery process. And just when you thought you made it, your love begins to decline. You begin to have more fights, less sex, more complaints, less compliments. You wonder what went wrong. You and your partner truly became one flesh, that’s what happened. When mystery and uncertainty disappeared, drudgery sneaked in.

Love by its very nature is highly unstable. When we try to anchor such a highly volatile feeling in familiarity, domesticity and predictability, you’re basically throwing your bedroom doors wide open and asking boredom to join you in your misery. Sexuality and domesticity are a little bit like oil and water. The earlier we accept their insolubility in each other, the better our love and sex lives will be for it.

This inverse relationship between intimacy and sex goes against almost everything that we’re taught about sex and love. Hell, it goes against everything most couples’ therapists and self-help books teach you about love. Intimacy has for a long time now been unquestionably established as the best route to great sex and deep love. Couples are encouraged to do more activities together, spend more time together, go on picnics together, stare at each other’s face for hours all in service of more intimacy which is supposed to lead to better sex.

Since what seems like forever now, the critical question to ask a struggling couple has been - Tell me what’s happening in your relationship and I’ll tell you what’s happening in your bedroom. Your sexual relationship is seen as an extension of your emotional relationship. That’s incorrect in most cases, says the author of Mating in Captivity. Sexual intimacy and emotional intimacy run distinctly and parallel to each other only intersecting on a few occasions. Her experience as a therapist showed that in a few cases, increased emotional intimacy can even decrease sexual desire. It’s often love that gets in the way of connection. Popular psychology often lectures at people (mostly men) for their fear of intimacy. Maybe what many of them truly fear is not more intimacy but the decrease in desire that intimacy tends to bring with it.

b. Leave democracy outside your bedroom
This is the part where Perel oh-so-cleverly holds up a mirror to us feminists. We’ve for many centuries now been fighting for an equal place at the poll booth, on the dining table, in our parents’ will. We’ve literally and metaphorically struggled to get into the driver’s seat. We’ve fought long and hard to get out of the kitchen and on top of our lover. Women today demand equality across all spheres of life and are well within their rights to get upset when they don’t receive it. America and the rest of the world is continuously being moulded into beacons of feminism and egalitarian values, which makes all of us extra sensitive to the power dynamics in any relationship. And this, to a large extent, makes sense. Having to monitor abuse of power especially in matters of sex is necessary when we live in a world coloured with violence, rape, sexual trafficking and child pornography. But when we bring strict surveillance into our bedrooms, that often throws a spanner in the works, says Perel.

When we attempt to nullify any and all expressions of power in the bedroom, we numb sex. Even consensual sex today comes with guidelines. BDSM is cheap, aggression is weak, domination is tawdry. But negotiating power is part and parcel of every relationship. We learn how to do this from the time we are little children. We know when to cry, when to laugh, when to obey and when to threaten to run away. Sometimes our parents win, other times we win.

Of course there are noticeable differences in how men and women negotiate with power - men learn to do it directly while women master indirect, subtler expressions of power. But the dance with power is what keeps the relationship alive. Building our capacity for aggression and submission is what builds our capacity for love. BDSM for many is more about one’s love for power, less about their love to inflict pain or engage in violence. Instead of trying to understand how the need for power and the reluctance to relinquish it manifests in our relationships, we take the easy way out. We say no to power. Unfortunately ejecting the shadow sides of love instead of learning to integrate it more often than not ejects love too from the relationship. 

For sex to be enjoyable, we need to allow some political incorrectness and engineer a little disrespect into our private chambers, says Perel. Purging sex of its many expressions of power strips it off all erotic desire both for men and surprisingly even women. Maybe the ideal partnership is not where partners are equal to the 10th decimal point but rather one where equality is balanced with intentional and healthy doses of power imbalances and gender-subscribing behaviour. Women should feel less scared of embracing being the submissive, and so should men (playing the macho man can get tiring). Men should feel emboldened to objectify their women, and women shouldn’t feel that they’re letting down the Suffragettes for allowing it.

c. Talking intimacy is a man’s latest inadequacy
We are obsessed with talking. “We hardly talk anymore, do we even love each other?” “He never has anything to say to me.” “She’s never willing to talk after a fight.” “He is the strong, silent type, not the romantic kind.” As the world got more feminised, so did our love. Today how much a couple talks has become the strongest indicator of the depth of their love. If you’re a couple facing issues, you’re encouraged to talk about what’s bothering you, what’s not bothering you, what you like about each other, what you don’t like about each other, what you’d like to do together and everything else under the sun. 

Women are usually excellent in the art of verbal communication. We’ve had centuries of practice trying to build relationships under constraints. We built meaningful relationships while borrowing salt from our neighbours, notes from our colleagues, clothes from our friends, cash from our fathers, jewellery from our mothers, and time from our children. We learnt how to get the things that we want even when we were nobody’s first thought - we taught ourselves to ask, to quid pro quo, to be good communicators. 

For men, on the other hand, their mother tongue, for the longest time, has been their bodies, points out Perel. They used their bodies to fight and to make love. The erotic sphere used to be an avenue for men to also show their tender side, where men could pursue the pleasure of connection without getting trapped in their masculinity. When feminism and along with it verbalism permeated into the realm of love, men were naturally disadvantaged. Today you can take long baths together, raise many children together, laze in each other’s arms all weekend, cook for each other but if you don’t talk, are you really in love? 

Here’s another question Perel wants us to consider: Do we really even want our men to talk and express a lot of their feelings? Modern times paint vulnerable and emotive men as desirable but how many women actually prefer their men feely-touchy? Men today are more vulnerable than ever but that hasn’t made finding mates any easier for them, it’s probably made things tougher. All this to say communication is not equivalent to talking. 

Adherents of talk intimacy often forget this. There are more than one love languages and verbal communication should not be allowed to play monopoly. Instead of pressuring the non-talker to talk, maybe the talker can adapt to other ways of connecting every once in a while. Isn’t that true equality? Perel is not convinced (nor, for that matter, am I) that incessant talking and full disclosure is the secret of a harmonious relationship. Too much talk can perhaps do the opposite of what was intended. Words have the power to both connect and sever. Not only does talk leave men at a disadvantage, it often, unbeknownst to them, leaves women trapped in their repressed sexuality. Female carnality can and should be allowed to operate outside of the spoken word too. When we emphasise on verbal speech over our bodies, feminists are colluding against women. We, of all the people, should understand the need for inclusivity in love.

d. Inefficient sex is efficient sex
The European in Perel can’t help but marvel at how Americans have made sex too a goal-oriented activity akin to the way they have organised the rest of their lives. She compares this attitude with other cultures such as European where sex is viewed in a much more fatalistic, resigned way. Somewhere she also seems to imply that other cultures associate sex with languor. Maybe the Europeans did but where I come from, for example, sex was always associated with the goals of reproduction. You get married so that you could have sex and you had sex so that you could have children. Children, above all, were economic assets. Once you have had a healthy dozen of them, sex would become less important and almost embarrassing to continue to indulge in. 

Anyway, Perel observes that if you can’t have sex, for some strange reason, the problem is almost always regarded to be in your genitals. You are asked to try pills or books or videos and if none of that works, a visit to the doctor is warranted. Sex then becomes a medical issue where your body is reduced to your penis whose resurrection becomes the sole goal of all treatment. Sexual functioning takes precedence, sexual desire bows out. Intimacy, power, excitement too are pushed into the background. But taking the efficiency angle to sex sits in stark contrast with the inefficient nature of eros. There would have been no need ever for foreplay then. When you constantly keep track of the number of orgasms, the length of sex, the intensity of performance, sex begins to feel more like a competitive sport and less as a pleasurable activity. We forget that desire and arousal are more subjective than physical, more emotional than rational. In fact the rational way to approach issues of low desire and weak sexual functioning (unless you have a medical reason) is to take the plunge into the ice cold, murky waters of your fears and fantasies.

e. Fantasies are our secret-keepers
The dissonance between what we are encouraged to want and permitted to have is very strong when it comes to sex. Esther describes it as a collision of puritanism and hedonism. “Don’t do it till you find the right person.” “Don’t take sex so seriously, it’s no big deal.” “ Don’t tell me this was your first time.” “Love is for losers, just enjoy the sex.”

The embargoes start getting placed at shockingly early ages. Sexuality is seen as a phase of puberty that needs to be carefully circumvented rather than normally integrated. Adolescent sexuality is considered as deviant behaviour. Abstinence is advised and all sex, no matter how safe is discouraged. While prohibitions blare in the background, our sexual fantasies take silent birth - in our minds, in our genitals, in the movies we rent, in the posters we hang, in the books that we read, in the crushes that we have and in the dreams that we see.

“In the antechambers of the erotic mind, the rules of propriety are turned on their heads, often invited in for the sole purpose of being trampled. Forbidden frontiers are crossed, gender roles are reversed, modesty is corrupted, and imbalances of power are luxuriously played out, all for the sake of excitement. In fantasy we act out what we dare not do in reality.”

Our fantasies hold a depth of information, even when they seem strikingly bizarre. They provide an outlet for our improper preferences, become an avenue to express aggression without hurting and permit us to be submissive without feeling weak. Our fantasies have the strength to hold even the deepest of our insecurities and the loudest of our wishes. Perel talks about how she along with everybody else for a long time viewed fantasies as the poor man’s bread - a place where the sexually deprived sought shelter. But fantasies occupy a critical role even in our marriages. They help us deal with boring sex, preserve equality among spouses, have imaginary threesomes and become physically attractive. Fantasies in that sense help us thwart the reality of our struggles. You can be skinnier or curvier, you can be taller or shorter, you can sustain long erections, you are always in the mood, you can talk dirty, you can be selfish, you can be clingy, you can punish, you can reward.

Instead of banishing fantasies from your sexual relationship, Perel urges us to take the help of our fantasies to alleviate the dullness of our marriages, to traverse it as a route that could potentially lead to greater intimacy. Exploring what underlies the narratives of our fantasies can guide us to what our relationships could maybe do more with. This by no means is a campaign for full disclosure especially in cases where one partner’s erotic wavelength is very different from the other’s. The encouragement is to approach these conversations more as a gender-reveal party than as a christening ceremony. If your fantasies are filled with spicy encounters with powerful men, you could jointly consider introducing some measured inequality into your bedroom. Or if you find yourself fantasising about a different woman each time, maybe what you are craving is variety, not necessarily more women. In this case, you might enjoy what role-playing might bring to your sexual relationship. What’s crucial in this process is to accept the invitation to your partner’s imagination with openness, holding back the urge to criticise or condemn while reminding yourself that surveying your partner’s fantasies are also opportunities to help unleash your own imagination, on your own terms.

f. Our marriage is wed to our parents’ marriage
Our principles in love are often a reaction to our parents’ love. Freud shakes hands with yet another one of his disciples when Perel says that we either imitate our parents’ marriage or we rebel against it. She says that our need to feel safe and completely submit ourselves into our mother’s breasts and father’s laps are expressed in the arguments we have with our partner. Attachment theory stands, like many other psychological theories, strong in theory and weak in evidence. Notwithstanding this fact, we often come across its personifications. 

Perel says that how we interpret our parents’ actions as young children profoundly influences our own beliefs, fears and expectations of love. If we grew up in a family that fought unapologetically, we wonder if peace in a relationship means less love. If we grew up in an over-enmeshed family where boundaries didn’t exist, we may find it hard to comprehend our partner’s request for space. If our father was an alcoholic, we either forgive addiction too easily or refuse to pardon the smallest slip. The discovery of our mother’s affair either made us a serial monogamist or a compulsive cheater. If we were punished for masturbating, we either repress our sexuality or rule whoredom. If we were abused as a child, we discover BDSM with delight or disgust. If we had to play the protector of our parents, we crave to submit in bed or sex is just dutiful.

“We’re members of a society but we’re also the children of our parents.” 

The urge to lose ourselves in love but fearing abandonment while doing it began the day we were held by our mothers. We want to wander away from our love but we also expect them to be waiting for us when we return. The best of relationships lets you freely dance this delicate dance of safety and adventure, and gradually increases your capacity to hold yourself in the presence of your beloved. It’s a little bit like playing peek-a-boo, Perel says. To enjoy love, you need to let go, embrace the uncertainty, focus on your pleasure and trust that your partner will reappear.

g. Children are intruders

Speaking of playing peek-a-boo, nothing kills love like parenthood. We’ve all witnessed or experienced how the waning of desire coincides with the advent of child rearing. Children, as adorable as they may be, violently expunge romance.

Sooner or later, a couple creates, adopts or fosters. Once this happens, children’s needs overwrite that of the lovers’. Bedroom doors now have to remain open, the kitchen counter is now only for cooking, cars are only reserved for picking and dropping off children and baby-proofing is the new exciting activity. When parents are born, the couple goes into hibernation.

Mothers struggle to integrate motherhood and their sexuality. Fathers struggle to see the mother of their children as their former lovers. What I find fascinating in Perel’s work is how she points out that the decrease in sexual desire is remarkably evident in one parent over the other, usually the primary caregiver, never mind the gender. What this means is that even among gay couples, the one who takes on more of the responsibility of child rearing is often the one who primarily retreats from sex. Perel posits that this could be because children replace lovers (not in the gross, illegal way). Try to recall or observe interactions between a new parent and their baby. There’s kissing, fondling of breasts, nibbling of toes, cuddling, biting, gazing, basically the G-rated version of adult sex. This kind of deep bond and attachment makes evolutionary sense. Parents being hypersensitive to their infant’s needs ensures the survival of their kin. But it comes at the cost of sensitivity to their partner’s needs.

Another big change that new parents adapt to is a life of routines and patterns. Both puppies and children thrive and grow best in an atmosphere of predictability. In creating the perfect home for our children, we make our houses not just baby-proof but also desire-proof. We stock up the fridge, take out the garbage and Marie Kondo our wardrobes. But desire loves chaos and mystery. Prioritising your children’s needs over that of your marriage can be the kiss of death for your relationship, warns Perel. Being there for your children does not have to automatically mean straying away from your partner.

h. “Acting liberated doesn’t necessarily mean being liberated”
Not much to say here except that new forms now serve old functions. We used to rush to commit earlier, now we avoid commitment for life. We used to propose at the first chance we get, now we hook up and exit at the first rays of light. We used to take pride in saying that we are in a committed relationship, we now pity the constraints of the married. We used to go to great lengths to prove our virginity, we now are ashamed of not having lost it sooner. The same anxieties, different manifestations. We want to be held, but we’re so afraid that we won’t be. So we run, either deep into the woods or far, far away from it.

i. “We’d rather kill a relationship than question its structure.”
Perel describes fidelity as the mother of all relationship boundaries. Trends have come and trends have gone, but our insistence on fidelity remains.

When Perel traces the origins of fidelity, I find myself having the rare opportunity to disagree with her. She makes fidelity primarily a patriarchal issue, that it was a means to control property and concentrate wealth. While this is not untrue, there is an evolutionary angle to fidelity. Our society is held in its place with strong, long nails of monogamy. At a time when contraception and paternity tests didn’t exist, when religion was more powerful than science and infant mortality was high, monogamy was what stabilised society. It’s what helped more resources to be distributed amongst less children, ensured our genes proliferated and that our species survived. It was not that people didn’t cheat then, but that more severe punishments were meted out to cheaters especially if you were a woman. Adultery was barely tolerated in a man but it meant death to a woman in many cultures.

Today, times have changed but the same struggle remains. In part, it could be because we are being forced to adapt too quickly. Even couples who are in open relationships struggle to manage hard-wired feelings of sexual jealousy. Even if we are ready to trade sexual jealousy for sexual variety, the trade is emotionally hard to make. But this is in the case of couples who are attempting to dismantle monogamy. The vast majority of marriages out there continue to be monogamous. But that doesn’t mean they don’t struggle to be faithful. We track each other’s locations on Google maps and feel relieved when we see that our partner is home. 

Perel views the threat of infidelity differently. She asks you to consider the possibility of recognising and inviting the third person into your marriage, even if only symbolically. When you occasionally link love to a threat of an affair, desire can be ignited. Studies on infidelity confirm that contrary to popular perception, the act of infidelity rarely (~20% of the time) leads to the end of a relationship. In many cases, it actually serves as a wake-up call to the couple. It becomes the reason to address neglect, resolve anger and renew commitment.

“If it is the forbidden that is exciting—if desire is fundamentally transgressive—then the monogamous are like the very rich. They have to find their poverty. They have to starve themselves enough. In other words they have to work, if only to keep what is always too available sufficiently illicit to be interesting.”

Instead of fearing the third that permanently resides on the boundary of our marriages, Perel asks us to recognise it, allow it to be seen, accept it and in cases where there is the will and trust to experiment, even embrace it.

III. Perel’s advice and my final words

In a book that I consider to be a landmark against the backdrop of trite ideas and platitudinous beliefs about love, Perel encourages all of us to question what was always considered as absolute in love. More importantly, she asks us to be wary of popular psychology and culture that paints relationships in the light of contemporary politics. The politics and the poetics of love can often be read distinctly, she says.

While reading this book, I searched enthusiastically for points to disagree with Perel given my affinity and responsibility towards critical inquiry but I don’t know what it says about me when what I have to report is mostly agreement with her ideas and applause at her ability to air controversies without being controversial. She tells us that great love can be selfish, ambitious and ridden with incentives. Too much intimacy can make sex boring. Children need not be loved at the cost of your marriage. Instead of organising your sex life, Perel encourages us to cultivate a fertile ground for erotic desire. She asks us to stop chasing clarity and instead engage in a process of discovery. She reaffirms the need to build intimacy but reminds us to leave enough air for the spark to stay alive. She argues that love is capable of transcending words. She says that true liberation is when you don’t feel obligated to pretend to be liberated. She predicts that you get the maximum ROI on sex when you take efficiency out of it.

Basically, what good relationships demand most is effort and balance. I bet those were not the adjectives you wrote down when I first asked you the question!