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Esther Perel on desire and long relationships

5 min read

Esther Perel's best-known work isn't about meeting someone. Her subject is what happens afterward: how desire and closeness coexist once a relationship is real. That makes her an unusual name on a site about meeting people, but her ideas about what people expect from a partner are widely discussed, and some readers find it useful to know them before a relationship starts.

Background

Perel was born on August 13, 1958, in Belgium and grew up in Antwerp. Her parents were Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors, according to Wikipedia. She studied educational psychology and French literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, then earned a master's in expressive art therapy at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She trained in couple and family therapy at the Family Institute of Cambridge and settled in New York, where she was a clinical instructor at NYU School of Medicine for 13 years, according to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia says she initially worked as a cross-cultural psychotherapist with couples and families, and her site calls her a practicing therapist. Wikipedia also lists her as married to Jack Saul since 1985, with two children.

Mating in Captivity

Her first book, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, was published by Harper in 2006. It grew out of her article "In Search of Erotic Intelligence," and her website cites 30 translations. Her website describes it as an examination of the "tension between love and desire in long-term relationships," asking why desire can fade even when partners love each other, and whether familiarity kills passion.

Her central argument appears in her 2013 TEDSalon talk, "The secret to desire in a long-term relationship," which TED lists with more than 23 million plays. She starts from the observation that people now expect one partner to be both a best friend and an erotic partner. Then she says, in a line TED quotes: "good and committed sex draws on two conflicting needs: our need for security and our need for surprise." TED's description says she explores how couples can keep desire alive. The book's subtitle uses the term "erotic intelligence."

The State of Affairs

The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity came out from Harper on October 10, 2017. Perel's site describes it as an examination of why affairs happen, including in otherwise happy relationships, based on case studies from her practice. Kirkus Reviews described her approach as that of a veteran therapist who treats affairs as a window into attitudes about love, desire and commitment, and who looks at how each partner may see the same events differently. Wikipedia also lists a 2015 TED talk of hers titled "Rethinking infidelity."

The book is about people who are already partnered. Kirkus notes that she argues healing should move from blame toward understanding.

Podcasts and projects

Where Should We Begin? first aired on Audible in May 2017, and it was available on iTunes from October 9, 2017, according to Wikipedia. Wikipedia describes it as live recordings of sessions with anonymous couples, followed by her reflections. It won a Gracie Award in 2018. A card game of the same name, Where Should We Begin? A Game of Stories, followed, and Wikipedia cites a Forbes article about it. A second podcast, How's Work?, launched in November 2019 and is about workplace relationships; Vox Media's podcast network acquired it in March 2023.

She was named to Oprah Winfrey's Supersoul 100 list in 2016 and was included in the first Forbes 50 Over 50 list in 2021, and she teaches a relational intelligence class on MasterClass.

Her main ideas, briefly

These are her positions as a therapist, drawn from her clinical work and writing. The sources used here don't present them as results of a controlled study. If you want a research-based counterpoint, John Gottman's work comes from decades of lab observation of couples, and Logan Ury comes at dating from behavioral science.

Where it fits for someone who's still meeting people

Early dating and long-term desire are different stages, and her work is about the second. A few of her themes may still be useful early. When you're deciding whether to move from a few dates to something exclusive, ask her to be your girlfriend covers the conversation. The first month of dating someone and jealousy early in dating cover things that tend to come up before the questions in her books do. For audio, dating and social skills podcasts lists other shows.

What to take from Esther Perel

These are practical ways to try her themes, not instructions from her.

  1. Listen to one episode of Where Should We Begin? Choose a couple whose situation is nothing like yours, and write down two questions Perel asks that you could ask on a date.
  2. Ask about meaning, not just facts. Next conversation, try "What did you like about that?" instead of "What did you do?" Aim for two of these.
  3. Keep your own interests. One common way to apply the security-and-surprise idea is to keep a life of your own alongside the relationship. Hold a regular plan of your own, such as a weekly class or run, once you're seeing someone.
  4. Say your expectations out loud early. By the third or fourth date, tell the other person in one sentence what you want, for example "I'm looking for something serious," and ask what they want.
  5. Try the card game with a friend. Where Should We Begin? also exists as a story-based card game; a round with a friend is a low-stakes way to practice open questions.

Run Game's forum has a Field reports topic where you can write up how a conversation went using its template: where, what happened, what worked, and what you'd do differently. Visit Run Game when you want to log what you tried.

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