Mating In Captivity: Reconciling The Erotic + The Domestic (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
Interesting, but not very practical--The main argument of the book is this: intimacy begets comfort and boredom, distance unpredictability and excitement. Pretty commonsensical stuff, but when applied to marriage, it can be a powerful principle.Most couples experience an increase in boredom as they become intimate and comfortable with each other and they start to yearn for the excitement. This transition is not only emotional but biological: a man's testosterone levels plummet after his wife gives birth to the first child and has difficulty achieving an erection.Evolutionarily (see Sex at Dawn), men are wired to seek sexual variety. So this biological response makes total sense. As Sex at Dawn powerfully shows, human beings are NOT suited for monogamy, defined as life-long SEXUAL commitment to one person. Just look at the divorce rates and the number of affairs men have always had, and all those religious and moral strictures to enforce this "natural" pair-bonding, and you start to wonder.And Perel implies this in the introduction. There are two kinds of people when it comes to marriage: idealists and realists. The former seek "the One," with whom they believe they can fall in love for the rest of their's lives, and thus inevitably going from one potential mate to another. Then the latter acknowledge the impossibility of this and stay with one person, sacrificing excitement for comfort and giving up that initial transforming experience of love forever. Perel asks: is there any way to reconcile these two views?This, I thought, was a promising start, but most of the books deal with how she was able to fix some problems for the time being, and we're not told whether her method of creating distance within the relationship really works in the long haul, which is probably the most pressing issue at hand.Her chapters sound like a mix of continental philosophy and romanticism when describing love, and she can wax poetic and that's enjoyable in itself, but she fails to provide anything practical, or at least I didn't gain a whole lot of practical tools from it.One important insight I gained in my campaign to grapple with this issue of monogamy before I get married is that IF I were to marry, I have to be VERY clear from the get-go that sexual infidelity DOES NOT equal emotional fidelity. Granted, proposing to a girl with "I might fuck other girls, but I'll remain faithful to you in my heart" won't get you anywhere, but saying, "Look, if we're going to be life partners, I want you to understand that when shit goes down, we should NOT end it right there because of each other's SEXUAL infidelity and talk things out" might. Perel covers non-traditional bonding configurations in one of her last chapters, and that was probably the most interesting: swingers, polyamorous families, sexual infidelity with consensus (and with STRICT rules). It told me that basically, each couple has to work out its own rules when it comes to sexual infidelity, because these nontraditional arrangements are, as one of the people from a case says, "not for everyone."The important thing is, however, to be in the kind of relationship where sexual infidelity is not a deal breaker. For a traditional marriage to work, I'm pretty convinced, one has to be flexible, understand that sexual infidelity does not automatically mean emotional infidelity, and be able to work things out. Without that, men are almost guaranteed to cheat, women get hurt, and families broken, plus kids' lives destroyed. Not a pretty picture, I have to say.Or, for those select few, polyamory may be the way to go.The bottom line is: you should know the risks of traditional marriage and find your own answer to the problem evolution and biology thrust on us.Good read, but not very practical.
"Joni is quite forthcoming in disclosing her sexual past... But when I ask her, 'What does sex mean to you? What are the feelings that accompany your desire? What do you seek in sex? What do you want to feel? To express? Where do you hold back?' she looks at me, perplexed. 'I have no idea,' she admits. 'No one's ever asked me that before.'"No one's ever asked me that before.Sex is simple—two people (occasionally more), in the same time, in the same place, with the same idea—that's all it is, all it takes. Look at things at a slightly different angle, and things get complicated fast.Paradox underlies every meaningful human experience. As Perel writes beautifully: "We find the same polarities in every system: stability and change, passion and reason, personal interest and collective well-being, action and reflection (to name but a few). These tensions exist in individuals, in couples, and in large organizations. They express dynamics that are part of the very nature of reality... you can't choose one over the other; the system needs both to survive."In this book, Perel explores the polarity of desire and intimacy in modern relationships. She shows that the tension between exciting sex and loving companionship is difficult for many couples to reconcile because it is by nature irreconcilable. We want to believe that passion is intimacy and vice versa, but to do so would be to equate stability and change, or action and reflection. It makes no sense to do so. The idea that the firmer the grasp we have on someone the less we want them is a cliche, but it is also so threatening to certain romantic ideals that we don't examine the mechanics that drive it too closely. We pathologize things instead: the need for erotic variety is commitment phobia, self-destructive chauvinism, or daddy or mommy issues; while the desire for stability can make one seem or feel needy, controlling, or manipulative. We don't realize that it is quite normal to need and want both stimulation and regularity from our romantic and sexual experiences at the same time.Perel avoids simple answers and exposes many sticky assumptions that underlie even relatively sophisticated people's (feminists and the men who love them, LGBT couples, etc.) approaches to love and sex. It's not their (okay, our) fault.Nor is it a specific failing of 21st century American society. My one big gripe with this book is that Perel does the social science thing wherein our struggle with reconciling passion and intimacy in our sexual relationships is a new thing... sexual equality and the pill divorced the institution of marriage from its economic and reproductive purpose and blah-de-blah. I call bullshit. Feminism and birth control have shaped the paradox in a certain way, and perhaps made it difficult to talk about with clarity. However, marriage, the monogamous ideal, has never been only about economics and reproduction and preserving male power. It's always also been about love and sex, intensity and familiarity, trust and risk, as well. Today, as then, there are people who settle for stability without passion. Today, as then, there are people who refuse to settle. Today, as then, neither type are automatically better people than the other because of the type that they are.It's nice, however, to read a thoughtful book whose soul is half poetry, half clinical rhetoric that has been written with the latter group in mind. Recommended.
What do You think about Mating In Captivity: Reconciling The Erotic + The Domestic (2006)?
I thought this book was fantastic! She has straight, gay, and lesbian couples and doesn't preach too much about monogamy being the end all be all. She doesn't discuss open or polyamory, but the premise of the book is abt surviving a domestic relationship of two both emotionally, sexually, and erotically. I'll be using lots of her frameworks when looking at how I perceive my relationship with my boyfriend. Also, she examines the re gender plays in relationships and calls herself out when being gendered. It is her experience, but I definitely think it's a book that people anywhere on the spectrum would appreciate.
—Kerry
I read this several years ago and remember it being a paradigm shifter for me. The main thing I took away from it is that we expect too much from our spouse, who is, after all, only one person. He/she cannot be our "best friend," confidant, protector, object of our frustration, safety net, and also passionate lover. I am now going back to re-read because I've been reminded of it while I am reading "Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships." In that book, the authors argue, with significant scientific evidence, that humans evolved to be promiscuous or polyamorous rather than monogamous. In other words, they demonstrate that we are more closely related and similar to bonobos than to gorillas or baboons, who are polygonous or monogamous. "Sex at Dawn" pretty much poses the question: "Now what?" I'm hoping that "Mating in Captivity" will have some applicable ideas that can help us make monogamy work better. This also would be a very interesting book for a reading group!
—Joni
This could be incredibly useful reading for newly (or not) married couples who feel like a switch was flipped once they found 'their one'. I wish I had read this the day after I got married to prepare myself for the internet shift in my brain once "I can't wait till forever" became "... for.. ever?" I want to counter the reviewers who have said that it doesn't answer the serious questions with, well, you're right, it doesn't. It asks those questions, implores you to ask them yourself and then allows you the right circumstances for you to figure out your own answers. The author's job, in my opinion, is to get you thinking. To make you ask those questions instead of saying, welp, this is my situation and there's nothing I can do to improve it.
—Heather
