Love, Desire, and the Space Between: Reflections on Mating in Captivity
Mating in Captivity By Esther Perel (Read 2024)
One of the questions Esther Perel returns to throughout the book is one I think many people quietly wrestle with, whether they're in long-term relationships, newly dating, or simply trying to understand themselves a little better:
How can we feel deeply connected to someone while still maintaining curiosity, desire, and a sense of aliveness?
At first glance, those things seem like they should naturally go together. If we feel safe with someone, if we love them deeply, shouldn't desire simply follow? Perel suggests it isn't quite that simple. As I read, I found myself thinking less about "fixing" desire and more about the tension she describes between two deeply human needs. On one hand, we long for safety, predictability, and the comfort of being known. On the other hand, we also long for growth, autonomy, novelty, and the feeling that there is still something left to discover.
Rather than presenting those needs as opposing forces, Perel invites us to stay curious about how they continually dance with one another throughout a relationship. That idea felt surprisingly relevant not only to romantic relationships, but to how we relate to ourselves.
Security and Desire Aren't Always Looking for the Same Thing
One of the central ideas in Mating in Captivity is that love and desire don't necessarily grow under the same conditions. Love often flourishes through closeness. We build trust by being dependable, learning each other's histories, creating rituals, and becoming a safe place to land after difficult days. Desire, however, sometimes grows through a little more distance. Not emotional distance but think of it as psychological space. The recognition that our partner remains a whole person outside of us someone who continues growing, changing, surprising us, and having an inner life that isn't completely knowable.
Reading this reminded me quite a bit of attachment theory. Attachment research teaches us that secure relationships create safety. They become places where our nervous systems can settle because we know someone is there for us. Perel isn't arguing against that. Instead, she's asking us to notice that security alone doesn't automatically sustain eroticism. Sometimes desire asks us to remember that our partner isn't simply an extension of ourselves. They're still their own person. That idea kept bringing me back to the concept of differentiation—the ability to stay deeply connected while still remaining ourselves.
Remaining Curious About Ourselves
One of the places my mind naturally went while reading was Internal Family Systems (IFS). (It is my currently special interest in therapy) Perel spends quite a bit of time talking about remaining interesting to our partners, not because we should be performing or trying to become someone different, but because we continue growing throughout our lives. That idea reminded me a lot of how IFS talks about people. We aren't one fixed personality. We have many different parts of ourselves that show up depending on our experiences, relationships, and circumstances.
Sometimes we assume we already know our partner because we've been together for years. I think we can accidentally do the same thing with ourselves. We decide, "This is just who I am," and stop expecting that there might still be parts of us waiting to be discovered. One of the things I appreciate about IFS is that it assumes there is always more to learn about ourselves. There are parts we haven't noticed yet, parts asking for care, and strengths that may not have had the opportunity to emerge.
That made me wonder if part of what keeps relationships feeling alive isn't constantly trying to reinvent them, but allowing ourselves and our partners permission to keep changing. If we stay curious about our own growth, it becomes easier to stay curious about the person sitting across from us.
The Stories We Learn About Relationships
Another place my mind wandered while reading was Narrative Therapy. I am a big bibliophile myself and know how important stories are to use humans. We all grow up surrounded by stories about what love is supposed to look like. Some of those stories come from our families. Others come from movies, religion, culture, or past relationships. Many of us are taught that a successful relationship means knowing everything about each other, spending as much time together as possible, and becoming almost inseparable.
Perel gently pushes back on that idea. She argues that knowing someone completely may actually make it harder to remain curious about them. That doesn't mean creating distance for the sake of distance. Instead, it means allowing room for each person to continue growing into someone new.
I found myself thinking about how often we create stories not only about our partners, but about ourselves. We decide who we are, what our role is in the relationship, or what we can expect from one another, and then we stop noticing when those stories no longer fit.
Curiosity can become a way of rewriting those stories together.
Power Lives in Every Relationship
Another thread I kept coming back to while reading was power, a favorite topic of mine.
Perel spends time talking about erotic power, who pursues, who initiates, who leads, who follows. While I found those conversations interesting, my mind kept wandering to power in a much broader sense. I started thinking about all the little ways power quietly shows up in relationships that have nothing to do with sex.
Who apologizes first after an argument?
Who carries the emotional labor of remembering birthdays, planning vacations, or noticing when something feels off?
Whose career shapes where a family lives?
Who is expected to initiate difficult conversations? Who feels comfortable asking for what they need, and who has learned that asking might be too risky?
Most of us don't consciously divide up these responsibilities. They develop over time until they begin to feel normal. That's part of what made me think about Michel Foucault. One of the ideas I took from his work is that power isn't only something held by governments or institutions. It also lives in everyday interactions. Often, it becomes so familiar that we stop noticing it's there at all.
Reading Perel through that lens made me wonder if healthy relationships aren't relationships without power, but relationships where power can be talked about, questioned, and renegotiated over time. That feels much more realistic to me. None of us enters a relationship with perfectly equal experiences, resources, identities, or histories. The goal isn't perfect balance every moment. It's having enough trust to notice when something feels out of balance and being willing to adjust together.
Perel also writes about erotic play, fantasy, and exploring different relational roles. What I appreciated was that she doesn't frame these experiences as inherently good or bad. Instead, she invites us to become curious about what they might mean.
That curiosity was what stayed with me.
Rather than asking whether a fantasy is "normal," I found myself wondering what it might be expressing. Sometimes our fantasies reveal longings that don't have much to do with sex at all. They might reflect a desire for freedom, competence, surrender, playfulness, confidence, creativity, or being fully seen.
In that way, fantasy can become less about escaping ourselves and more about discovering parts of ourselves that everyday life doesn't always make space for.
Love, Play, Humor, and the Body
One of the quieter ideas in the book ended up being one of my favorites and one that I have put time and effort into exploring in my own relationships.
Perel reminds readers that intimacy doesn't only happen through conversation.
As therapists, we spend a lot of time helping people communicate more openly, and I think that's incredibly important. But reading this reminded me that some of the moments people remember most in their relationships aren't long conversations. They're laughing so hard they can't breathe, dancing in the kitchen while dinner cooks, exchanging a look across the room that says everything, or sharing an inside joke that no one else understands.
Those moments aren't distractions from intimacy.
Sometimes they are intimacy.
That also had me thinking about how often we privilege words over the body. We tend to assume that talking is always the deepest form of connection, but I don't think that's always true. Some people connect most easily through movement, shared projects, physical affection, humor, or simply being alongside someone without needing to explain themselves.
This felt especially meaningful to me because so much of my work is grounded in mindfulness and paying attention to what our nervous systems are telling us. Our bodies are often communicating long before we've found the words. Sometimes slowing down enough to notice that is what allows the conversation to happen in the first place.
It also made me think about clients who find talking about emotions incredibly vulnerable. For them, beginning with a shared activity, a walk, a moment of laughter, or even noticing what they're feeling physically can feel much safer than jumping straight into difficult conversations.
Connection isn't only built through insight. It's also built through shared experience.
Looking at the Book Through My Own Lens
Like many books that become influential, Mating in Captivity is also very much a reflection of the time in which it was written.
Published in 2006, many of the examples center heterosexual, cisgender couples and occasionally rely on assumptions about masculinity and femininity that don't feel as universal today as they may have twenty years ago. I found myself mentally translating many of those examples into questions that felt more expansive.
Instead of asking what men want versus what women want, I found myself wondering how different people experience desire altogether.
How does being autistic or ADHD change the experience of intimacy? How might trauma shape someone's relationship with vulnerability or eroticism? What happens when disability, chronic illness, race, culture, religion, or gender identity become part of the conversation? How do queer relationships challenge some of the assumptions that traditional relationship books have taken for granted?
Those questions felt richer to me than trying to fit people into categories.
I also found myself thinking about privilege. Throughout the book, there's an assumption that people have enough time, energy, privacy, and financial stability to intentionally cultivate novelty in their relationships. For many people, that simply isn't the reality they're living in.
It's difficult to prioritize curiosity when you're exhausted from working multiple jobs. It's hard to create space for play when you're navigating chronic illness, caring for children or aging parents, or living under the weight of discrimination or financial stress.
That doesn't make Perel's ideas wrong. It simply reminds me that relationships don't exist in isolation. They exist inside larger systems. As a therapist, that's an important distinction for me. I rarely find it helpful to ask, "Why aren't you doing this relationship skill?" I'm much more interested in asking, "What makes this difficult right now?" or "What conditions would make this feel more possible?"
That shift feels deeply aligned with how I practice. I don't believe people struggle because they lack motivation or insight. More often, they're trying to build meaningful relationships while carrying histories, identities, responsibilities, and systems that make that work more complicated.
And somehow, acknowledging that complexity doesn't make me less hopeful.
It makes me more compassionate.
I honestly think this sounds like Abelee. It feels reflective rather than polished, curious rather than certain, and grounded in your way of thinking. One thing I especially like is that the theories (Foucault, mindfulness, systems thinking) show up naturally as part of your reflections instead of becoming mini-lectures. I think that's the direction I'd take for every future blog post.
Reflections to Take Into Your Own Relationship
One of the things I appreciated most about this book was that it repeatedly invited me to pause and reflect rather than simply absorb ideas. These were some of the questions and exercises that stayed with me after I finished reading.
Exploring Your Love Story
Spend a little time journaling about these prompts:
When I think about love, I think…
When I love someone, I feel…
When I feel loved, I notice…
In relationships, I'm usually looking for…
When I experience desire, I notice…
There aren't right answers here. The goal is simply becoming more familiar with your own internal landscape.
Compare Your Love Maps
The Gottmans often talk about "Love Maps," or how well partners know each other's inner worlds. Perel's book reminded me of this idea too.
Try writing a short letter from your partner's perspective. Imagine how they experience the world. What worries them? What brings them joy? What do they wish you understood?
Then compare notes together.
You aren't aiming for perfection.
You're practicing curiosity.
Notice Bids for Connection
Throughout the week, pay attention to the small ways people invite connection.
A question.
A joke.
A sigh.
A text.
A request to watch a show together.
Often relationships don't struggle because people stop caring. They struggle because these small bids get missed in the busyness of everyday life.
Rather than focusing only on the words being used, try asking yourself:
"What need might be underneath this?"
Think Beyond Conversation
If talking about feelings feels difficult, consider other ways of creating connection.
Take a walk.
Cook together.
Dance.
Laugh.
Play a game.
Try something neither of you has done before.
Sometimes our nervous systems find connection through shared experiences before they find it through words.
Final Reflections
As I finished Mating in Captivity, I realized the book wasn't actually asking me to think differently about sex as much as it was asking me to think differently about curiosity.
One of the things I see happen in long-term relationships is that familiarity slowly turns into certainty. We begin to feel like we already know our partner. We know how they'll respond, what they'll say, what they're thinking, what they like, what they don't. There is something deeply comforting about that kind of knowing. It creates safety, shared history, and a sense of home.
At the same time, I wonder if there are moments when that certainty quietly closes the door to discovery.
Reading this book was yet another reminder to me that none of us ever really stop changing. We continue growing, grieving, learning, becoming, and discovering new parts of ourselves throughout our lives. Our relationships do the same. The challenge isn't figuring out how to get back to the excitement of the beginning. It's noticing whether we're still making room for one another to evolve.
That idea feels just as relevant outside of romantic relationships as it does within them. I found myself thinking about friendships, family relationships, and even the relationship we each have with ourselves. It's easy to decide we already know who we are. It's much harder, and perhaps much kinder, to leave room for surprise, growth and curiosity.
As I was reading, I found myself sitting with questions like:
Where in my life have I confused familiarity with truly knowing someone?
What parts of myself haven't had much room to emerge yet?
Where do I feel most alive, curious, or playful? (And how do I do MORE of this in my life?!)
When do I feel most like myself in my relationships?
How do I balance my need for security with my need for growth?
What assumptions do I keep making about the people I love, and are those assumptions still true?
I don't know that this book offers definitive answers to those questions, and I don't think that's really the point. What it offered me was a different way of looking at relationships. Rather than asking how we preserve what we already have, it invites us to wonder how we continue growing alongside one another without losing ourselves in the process.
Whether I agreed with every example or not, that felt like a worthwhile question to spend some time with. And if nothing else, this book reminded me that curiosity isn't only something we bring into therapy. It's something we can practice in our relationships, in our communities, and in the ongoing process of getting to know ourselves.
To Learn More
If these ideas resonate with you, you may also enjoy exploring on my Learning page:
Relationship Therapy
Narrative Therapy
Women Who Run With the Wolves (Book Reflection)
How to Be Perfect (Book Reflection on values and ethics)
If you're interested in exploring these ideas in therapy, I'd love to connect. Visit my Contact page to schedule a consultation.