title: Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence
author:  Esther Perel 
description: Her advice is refreshingly counterintuitive. (Salon.com)<br /><br />Mating in Captivity...articulates a poignant and unacknowledged modern crisis for the first time. (The Evening Standard (London))<br /><br />An elegant sociological study, complete with erudite literary and anthropological references. (Daily Telegraph (London))<br /><br />A charming blend of wit and wisdom...this book will give you a fresh perspective on long-term love. (Gold Coast Bulletin (Australia))<br /><br />Well argued points written with considerable eloquence. (Jerusalem Post)<br /><br />This is a brave book...refreshing. (The Times Higher Education Supplement)<br /><br />So honest it hurts. (Irish Times)<br /><br />An excellent book, full of provocative prose and entertaining case illustrations. (Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy)
zlib_text: Mating in Captivity
  Reconciling the Erotic + the Domestic
  
  Esther Perel
  
  Dedication
  To my parents, Sala Ferlegier and Icek Perel.
   
  Their vitality lives on in me.
  
  Epigraph
  WILD THINGS IN CAPTIVITY
  Wild things in captivity
  while they keep their own wild purity
  won’t breed, they mope, they die.
  All men are in captivity,
  active with captive activity,
  and the best won’t breed, though they don’t know why.
  The great cage of our domesticity
  kills sex in a man, the simplicity
  of desire is distorted and twisted awry.
  And so, with bitter perversity,
  gritting against the great adversity,
  the young ones copulate, hate it, and want to cry.
  Sex is a state of grace.
  In a cage it can’t take place.
  Break the cage then, start in and try.
                                D. H. Lawrence
  
  Contents
  Dedication
  Epigraph
  Introduction
  1 From Adventure to Captivity: Why the Quest for Security Saps
  Erotic Vitality
  2 More Iintimacy, Less Sex: Love Seeks Closeness, but Desire Needs
  Distance
  3 The Pitfalls Of Modern I