Esther Perel: The Languages of Love are Not What You Think
Posted at 2:29 PM Jul 09, 2008
Esther Perel is a licensed marriage and family therapist who practices in New York and uses her fluency in eight languages to work with multilingual clients. She's the author of Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence
Naked City editor Audacia Ray had a few questions for Esther about her theories on therapy and the challenges of developing and maintaining intimacy and eroticism in a long term relationship.
Audacia Ray: One of the main tenets of your work is the idea that good intimacy doesn't necessarily create good sex in a long term relationship. What are some basic things you recommend to couples who find themselves in this situation?
Esther Perel: The conundrum between intimacy and sexuality is that love seeks closeness, it seeks to minimize the threats, neutralize the unknown, maximize the feeling of security. While for some these ingredients fuel their desire, for others desire is much more in need of the unpredictable, the unknown, the mysterious. So what nurtures love isn't necessarily what fuels desire.
Second, some people confuse intimacy with merging. So they forget that fire needs air, and the lack of space and separateness between the partner douses the fires.
Third, for some people the very qualities that nurture love, the reciprocity, mutuality, care and responsibility for the well being of the partner, can result in a burden that makes it harder to experience the selfishness, the unselfconsciousness, and the freedom necessary for desire.
Three more questions and their answers after the jump.
AR: What is "erotic intelligence"? How is it different from "emotional intelligence"?
EP: I use the word erotic in the mystical sense of the word, far beyond the the strictly sexual meaning that modernity has ascribed to it. Erotic intelligence is the sum total of all the ingredients that makes us feel alive, give us a sense of vibrancy, vitality, energy, and exuberance. Playfulness, curiosity, mystery, imagination, a sense of anticipation,
novelty, etc. They fill us with a sense of aliveness and renewal, so I see the the erotic
is an antidote to death. It is an intelligence because it is part of culture. It is not innate, pure biological, it is learned and cultivated.
Animals have sex, we humans have eroticism, this is sexuality transformed by our imaginations. We are the only ones who can make love in our heads for hours, have tremendous pleasure, and touch no one. One way to understand the breakdown of desire, is to see it as the failure of the imagination. We are all in need of an erotic intelligence. Emotional intelligence is part of it.
AR: Your perspective on sex and culture is unique because you speak eight languages, and as a result can work in a therapeutic capacity with people from a range of backgrounds. Do you find a lot of differences across the cultures? To what extent do you adjust your approach for people with different cultural backgrounds?
EP: I practice therapy in NYC in 6 languages with people from over 15 countries. So it must have a cross cultural perspective. The concepts of intimate relations, commitment, intimacy, pleasure, fantasy are all bound by context and culture. One main difference across cultures is the degree of individualism, and thus the extent to which the right to happiness, or sexual fulfillment in one's relationship is central to life. The amount and the meaning of physical touch varies greatly from one culture to another. What is considered intimate, personal and private also has different meanings.
The degree to which women can claim their sexuality, switch from sexual duty to sexual pleasure, separate reproduction from sexuality, aspire to sexual satisfaction, transcend a passivity that is traditional to female sexuality, are some of the cultural aspects I track. I suppose that it is clear from this that I aspire to a cultural sensitivity and an awareness of my own cultural biases.
AR: You have a therapy practice in addition to teaching workshops, like the one you did at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck over the July 4 weekend. How do the experiences differ for couples? How do people decide between therapy and workshops - and what is the relationship between the two?
I conduct couples retreats and find them enormously enriching for the couples. If you go to therapy, you go to present your problems. It is a problem-ridden approach to life. Couples come to workshops to celebrate an anniversary, a birthday, a week end away to focus on their relationship. It is much more positive. They complement one another.
Weekly therapy is not always conducive to change while a group experience with multiple couples who share with each other has an intensity and can generate new thoughts, normalize the predicaments couples find themselves in as they witness it in
others as well. I like to do both, the depth of the therapeutic experience between four walls, and a communal collective experience at a beautiful retreat in nature.
