Monday, December 18, 2006
“Transparency is for politicians, not for lovers.”
filed under: Dating 2.0, Love & Other Glitches by Melissa Gira
Susie Bright interviews sex & relationships psychologist (no, don’t run screaming) Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic, and it’s too good not to quote them both excessively…
Esther argues that erotic passion— to a certain but critical degree— is built upon distance and ambiguity. In her view, transparency is for politicians, not for lovers.
“It’s often assumed,” Esther writes, “that intimacy and trust must exist before sex can be enjoyed, but for many women and men, intimacy— more precisely, the familiarity inherent in intimacy— actually sabotages sexual desire. When the loved one becomes a source of security and stability, he/she can become desexualized.
“The dilemma is that erotic passion can leave many people feeling vulnerable and less secure. In this sense there is no ’safe sex.’ Maybe the real paradox is that this fundamental insecurity is a precondition for maintaining interest and desire. As Stephen Mitchell, a New York psychoanalyst, used to say, ‘It is not that romance fades over time. It becomes riskier.’”
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You know of those things where you have always had an inklin of an idea, but because you weren’t able to articulate it properly, you figure that you weer wrong? This is one of those times. This is exactly what I figured. I look forward to reading the rest of what she has to say.