Want to understand how to keep desire alive in long-term relationships? Esther Perel offers groundbreaking ideas on balancing intimacy and eroticism in her bestsellers 'Mating in Captivity' and 'The State of Affairs.'
Who is Esther Perel?
Esther Perel is:
Renowned psychotherapist and author;
Focuses on understanding the connection between intimacy and eroticism;
Famous for books like 'Mating in Captivity.' Key idea: security kills desire unless you manage it.
Esther Perel is a Belgian-American psychotherapist with 40 years of experience. She is one of today's most influential voices on human relations, known primarily for exploring fundamental tension in human relationships between the desire for security (love, connection, and intimacy) and freedom (erotic desire, adventure, and distance).
In this article, you'll learn more about Esther Perel as a leading psychotherapist and take a closer look at her bestsellers 'Mating in Captivity' and 'The State of Affairs.' Her insights can revitalize your sexual life and even help to increase sex drive in your relationships.
Esther Perel's core ideas at a glance
1. Desire needs mystery, distance, and unpredictability
2. Love seeks closeness and security — but that can dull passion
3. Infidelity is not always about betrayal — sometimes it's about identity
4. Erotic intelligence means embracing paradox: freedom and connection
These ideas form the foundation of Perel's work, which is explored in her books and podcasts. The New York Times has dubbed her the leading expert on sexuality and relationships since Dr. Ruth Westheimer (the pioneering German-American sex therapist, sex educator, and talk show host in the 1960s-70s). Perel's insights have also been featured in major publications like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and Vogue.
Beyond her clinical practice, Esther Perel is a famous lecturer and consultant for Fortune 500 companies. Her impressive client roster includes Nike, Johnson & Johnson, and Tony Robbins Productions.
Media contributions by Esther Perel
Esther Perel is also a popular speaker and a regular guest on famous TV shows. Her presentation on Rethinking Infidelity alone attracted over 15 million views, contributing to a combined viewership of more than 18 million across her TED appearances.
Perel's podcasts, Where Should We Begin and How's Work, are produced by VOX Media and have further expanded her reach. Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and other platforms, Where Should We Begin? is a psychological counseling format in which real couples seeking help reveal the details of their problems. In addition to her brilliant experience as a psychotherapist, Esther Perel has a talent as a presenter, and her podcasts are worth listening to.
She gave speeches at SXSW (South by Southwest, an annual event with many music, film, and media festivals and conferences) and shared her ideas about modern relationships.
Using her experience as a relationship therapist, Perel created a card game of stories, Where Should We Begin, for deeper communication with loved ones and family. This game can help you open up with good questions and conversation starters. It's available for purchase through her official website, estherperel.com.
Main works of Esther Perel
She is known for her two books. Her first bestseller discussed the challenge of combining and diversifying your sex life in married life with everyday life and routine. Her second investigation of infidelity provides insight into why people in relationships seek new partners or engage in short-term intrigues for something fresh and exciting.
1. 'Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence'
Peral uses her skills as a relationship expert to explore one of the biggest questions facing any long-term relationship: how to maintain passion and desire between partners over time.
She searches for the secret of this happiness — the golden key that will open the doors to the world of a happy, multifaceted family life that harmoniously balances everyday life and eroticism. Her most provocative insight turns traditional couples therapy on its head. She claims that when intimacy becomes a complete fusion between partners, the issue isn't insufficient closeness but rather its excess, which can suffocate desire.
Using many examples and research, Perel proves that exciting, intense, and romantic sex is indeed possible in long-term relationships. Through wise, witty, and deeply honest writing, 'Mating in Captivity' offers practical guidance for transforming relationships and rekindling the passion that was present in the early days of falling in love.
Balancing love and desire
A person can't choose just to inhale or exhale; they must do both. The same logic governs passion and emotional closeness. Love and desire are opposing forces, constantly conflicting and striving for balance. The contradiction between reliability and adventurism is a paradox that couples must actively manage rather than resolve.
The power of unpredictability
Perel explains how the attention and care required in family life can often suppress the rebellious nature of physical love. In long-term relationships, people typically prioritize stability. However, eroticism thrives on unpredictability. Passion cannot coexist with routine and repetition.
Why distance and mystery spark desire
People often seek immediate connection to protect themselves from loneliness, yet maintaining eroticism requires creating space and distance. To do this, you need to step out of your comfort zone and feel a little lonely. Instead of striving for ever greater intimacy, each partner must develop as an individual. By exploring real-life stories from Perel's practice, she guides readers to expand their beliefs and not be afraid to have a certain distance to enhance their desire. Based on the responses of many couples, your passion ignites when you can miss your partner a little and wait for a spicy meeting.
2. 'The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity'
"We seek connection, predictability, and dependability to root us firmly in place. But we also have a need for change, for the unexpected, for transcendence." — Esther Perel, 'The State of Affairs'
This book explores the desire that arises when you see your partner from a different perspective, in a different role.
Through intertwining the real stories of her patients with sharp psychological and cultural analysis, Esther Perel offers a fresh perspective on marriage in the 21st century that will strengthen relationships and make them more honest. In this book, the author proposes rethinking infidelity, which teaches many lessons about relationships and calls for discussing what is usually not discussed.
Why do people cheat even in happy relationships?
Is it true that love and passion fade after three years?
Why are men willing to pay for sex?
Why do women agree to be the secret mistresses of married men for years?
What can marriage learn from infidelity?
The book presents ideas in an easy-to-remember format, encouraging readers to reflect deeply on marriage and romantic relationships. The author offers a rich historical perspective on marriage, addressing modern expectations that can sometimes be unrealistic. People can become lost in their marriages, seeking a new identity through a new romance. Betrayal may stem from a loss of feelings for a partner and an individual's struggle to express their own identity within the relationship.
Perel is careful to emphasize that examining infidelity does not mean that she justifies infidelity. The goal is to understand why people cheat and what others can learn from the experience. She emphasizes that people behave differently even in the same situations, and the motivations and reasons for cheating can vary. But there is something familiar for the majority. Essentially, this is mystery, passion, and novelty.
"At their peak, affairs rarely lack imagination. Nor do they lack desire, abundance of attention, romance, and playfulness. Shared dreams, affection, passion and endless curiosity — all these are natural ingredients found in the adulterous plot." — Esther Perel, 'The State of Affairs'
Top takeaways from Esther Perel on erotic desire
Based on Perel's consultations with various families from different countries, Esther Perel has developed valuable conclusions on the topic of sex, desire, and why people often seek novelty in relationships outside their primary relationships.
1. Aliveness
"Proust, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." — Esther Perel, 'Mating in Captivity'
Perel observes that families often lose their spirit of adventure and spontaneity as they become more stable. Partners begin to identify primarily as a unit ("we") rather than as separate individuals ("I" and "you"). While this change creates security, it also does not add sexual desire, though Perel acknowledges it would be unrealistic to maintain the uncertainty of new relationships forever.
So, how can couples introduce an element of uncertainty into their intimate lives? How can they create this necessary yet fragile balance?
Eroticism generally carries risks. People are afraid to look at their partner from a different angle. It turns out that the other person is an entirely independent, free person with desires. Partners or spouses are not one whole but two separate, unique personalities. This uniqueness and highlight initially affected everyone who started a relationship. Esther Perel claims that the conditions of desire are imagination, freshness, vitality, and energy.
2. Erotic Intelligence
"For [erotically intelligent couples], love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning." — Esther Perel, 'Mating in Captivity'
In long-term relationships, many people often want their partner to be their best friend and sexual partner. But as Esther Perel argues, good and devoted sex is based on two basic needs: the need for security and pleasant surprise.
"Erotically intelligent" couples can build relationships without compartmentalizing roles. They can integrate seemingly incompatible things and feel complete freedom, interest, development, change, stability, and confidence.
For Perel, eroticism is the vitality, curiosity, and spontaneity that make you feel alive. She notes that relationships characterized by mutual care, attentiveness, honest communication, respect, trust, and empathy create the foundation for intense erotic connection. On the other hand, when couples fall into rigid patterns and routines, passion and excitement naturally decrease.
"Eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other." — Esther Perel, 'Mating in Captivity'
3. Maintaining desire in long-term relationships
"We're walking contradictions, seeking safety and predictability on one hand and thriving on diversity on the other." — Esther Perel, 'Mating in Captivity'
For Perel, betrayal primarily relates to shifts in identity. This point is where narratives about discovering new aspects of yourself and the challenge of integrating these changes with your existing relationships often begin. Additionally, betrayal involves the difficulty of balancing eroticism — which brings novelty and a sense of adventure — and the need for stability in life.
Borrowing from poet Octavio Paz, Perel describes eroticism as "the desire for otherness" — explaining why it can be so challenging to maintain desire for someone with whom you've shared years of daily life.
Yet she insists that vivid sex is achievable in long-term relationships. For example, foreplay doesn't start five minutes before sex but immediately after the previous session.
4. Leave room for mystery and unpredictability
Love seeks to know everything, but desire cannot live without mystery and uncertainty. Love reduces the distance between partners, but desire can diminish without such distance. Repetition and routine create intimacy, while repetition dulls eroticism. To maintain erotic attraction, mystery, novelty, and the unexpected are necessary. Love seeks to have — desire is essential to want.
Desire requires that the object of attention constantly elude and maintain a certain inaccessibility. Here, what has already happened is not so important — much more important is what can still happen. Partners often become too comfortable in love and forget to maintain desire. Passion cannot ignite without air.
What shaped Perel as both a person and a professional
Esther Perel was born in 1958 in Antwerp, Belgium, to Jewish parents who were Holocaust survivors from Poland. This knowledge and experience also helped her later in analyzing relationships and intimacy in various difficult survival circumstances, and she recalled her hometown in her books. She studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem before continuing her education at the Institute of Family and Sexual Therapy in New York City.
In 2006, she published 'Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence,' which has since been translated into 25 languages. This book became popular because the author combined psychology, sociology, and cross-cultural research to offer an unconventional perspective on love and sexuality. Additionally, the issue of maintaining passion in marriage is universal, regardless of culture or country. Following the success of the book, Perel became an international family therapist on sex and relationships. In 2017, she further cemented her reputation with her second bestseller, 'The State of Affairs.'
Professional journey
Psychotherapist Esther Perel works at the New York University Medical Center and Columbia University. She is a charismatic woman who captivates her audience with engaging stories. Her writing reflects her charm, quick wit, and humor. Perel's podcasts with real couples are like therapy for listeners. Her perspective is multicultural, making Esther Perel a popular speaker worldwide. The topic is relevant and painful for many, regardless of age, status, or geography, sex, betrayal, and the development of harmonious and close relationships.
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FAQ
What is Esther Perel's therapy style?
Esther Perel's therapy style is couples and family therapy, psychodynamic counseling with cultural implications, and a practical style.
What are Esther Perel's most famous quotes?
"Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery."
“Where there is nothing left to hide, there is nothing left to seek.”
What languages does Esther Perel speak?
Esther Perel is a polyglot. She speaks French, Dutch, English, German, and Hebrew and understands Polish.
What is the "burden of knowing" in relationships?
The burden of knowledge in a couple involves knowing secrets and some truths you don't want to remember, such as betrayal that you can't forget or realizing that the relationship is no longer the same as before but you're afraid to address it.
How can couples rebuild trust and desire?
Perel talks about creating a new version of relationships to build trust. Partners should give each other space for themselves — their interests, their physicality, their sexuality — for greater desire in a couple. Couples who know how to "play," flirt, and be a little unpredictable — maintain desire longer. She calls on couples to have sexual dialogue without shame.
