Esther Perel has spent decades working with couples who say the same thing: we love each other very much, and we have no sex. In this clip from her 2015 London Real interview, she explains how that puzzle led to her best-known work, and offers one of her most practical pieces of advice for a long marriage.
It’s five minutes long, and it challenges several things most of us assume about love.
▶ Watch the full episode: Esther Perel – Sex & Infidelity
Assumptions, not truths
Brian asks how she finds the hidden conflicts in what looks like a normal marriage. Perel says she was confronted with a set of assumptions that people treated as facts: that when we love, we desire; that greater intimacy always means better sex; that security and adventure go hand in hand; and that sexual problems are always a consequence of relationship problems, so fixing the relationship will fix the sex.
As a practising couples therapist, she saw many couples improve their relationships a great deal, without anything changing in the bedroom.
Love and desire
Couples who stop liking each other and lose their sexual connection, she says, are easy to understand. What interested her were the couples who still love each other deeply, yet one partner hasn’t felt wanted in years, and they know the difference.
So she began to explore whether love and desire, while related, might also conflict. Her conclusion was that there can be a puzzling inverse relationship: “What nurtures love isn’t necessarily what fuels desire,” she says. Sometimes greater intimacy leads to less desire.
A partner on loan
The romantic ideal, Perel says, tells us we have our partner: they are the one, and they belong to us. Her reframe is striking. Your partner is “only on loan, with an option to renew.” They don’t belong to you. They could leave at any moment, through illness, death, falling in love with someone else, or any other reason.
That’s an uncomfortable idea, and she acknowledges we have enough uncertainty in the rest of life. We would rather our partner were a piece of furniture we could always reliably sit on. But if we accept that we never fully “have” them, she argues, we will probably want them more.
Treat your partner like your best client
How do you keep desire alive in a long relationship? Recognise the mystery of the person next to you, the one you think you know like the inside of your pocket. If you know they could leave, you make an effort.
Her advice to business people is memorable: treat your partner the way you treat your client, with the same charm, seductiveness, humour and kindness, and you’ll have a great marriage. We stay on our best behaviour with clients because they could always take their business elsewhere. But too many of us, she says, are on our best behaviour at work and bring the leftovers home.
What to take from it
Perel’s message is not to make relationships more anxious, but more alive. Taking a partner for granted is what quietly kills desire. Treating them as someone you still have to win is what keeps it going.
Who is Esther Perel?
Esther Perel is a Belgian psychotherapist, born in Antwerp in 1958, known for her work on relationships and sexuality. She is the author of Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, and hosts the podcast Where Should We Begin?
In her full 2015 London Real episode, she talks with Brian Rose about desire, security, affairs and modern love. You can also watch another clip from the same interview: Esther Perel – “Desire Needs Space”.
See everything Esther Perel has done with London Real on her guest page: Esther Perel on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Esther Perel – How To Have A Great Marriage: Love, Desire And The Partner “On Loan”
0:00 Brian Rose: How did you find these pieces that are really in conflict with each other, but which to us just look like normal marriage?
0:06 Esther Perel: This is a good example of where I was confronted with a set of assumptions, and at one point I began to think: maybe they’re exactly that, assumptions, not truths and facts. Such as: when we love, we desire. Greater intimacy begets better sexuality, always; it’s the “always” that mattered. Security and adventure in a relationship go hand in hand. If you have sexual problems, they’re the consequence of relationship problems, hence if you fix the relationship, the sex will follow.
0:50 Esther Perel: I’m still very much a practising psychotherapist, working with couples, and I saw many couples improve a great deal in every area of their relationship, but it didn’t necessarily change what was going on in the bedroom. So I began to think maybe it’s not so simple. To talk about people who don’t like each other and lose their sexual and erotic connection is kind of obvious. What’s to write? What I was interested in is all the people who come to see me and say, “We love each other very much and we have no sex.” “I know he loves me very much,” or “she loves me very much, and it’s been years since I felt wanted.” And they know the difference.
1:33 Esther Perel: So I began to think love and desire relate, and maybe they also conflict. Let me go and explore that. Why is it that people who continue to love each other as much as ever sometimes lose the very erotic connection that brought them into being? Why is it that good intimacy doesn’t always guarantee good sex? In fact, quite the opposite: there seems to be a puzzling inverse correlation, where greater intimacy sometimes leads to decreased desire. Because what nurtures love isn’t necessarily what fuels desire, and may even be paradoxical.
2:11 Esther Perel: And can we desire what we already have? Because in the romantic ideal it’s all about: I have my partner, I am the one, I am the chosen one. So what does it mean that your partner is actually only on loan, with an option to renew, and doesn’t belong to you? What would it be like if we actually said: I don’t have what I already want. Actually, we never have it. Hence if we can live with that, we probably will want it more. It’s an illusion to think that we have, and then to complain of boredom.
2:48 Esther Perel: You don’t have. In fact, your partner can leave at any moment: from death, from illness, from falling in love somewhere else, for any other reason. And living with that is a certain anxiety we don’t want these days, because we have enough unknown and enough anxiety in our business lives and everywhere else. So our partner should just become a piece of furniture on which we can reliably sit, and it will always receive us in the same way. Not true.
3:13 Brian Rose: So how do you continue desire when you have a long-term relationship?
3:20 Esther Perel: I think one element is this. Once you understand that this partner next to you, whom you think you know so well, like the inside of your pocket, for whom you sometimes think you can answer their questions, is other, right next to you; if you know the persistent mystery of your partner is right there; if you know that they could actually leave at any moment, you make an effort. A different effort. The effort you make with your clients, with all your business partners, because you never take those for granted.
4:04 Esther Perel: I often say to people: treat your partner the way you treat your client, with the same charm, the same seductiveness, the same humour, the same kindness, and you will have a great marriage. But you no longer do that. It’s as if you do it when you’re not sure you have the client yet. And since the client can always leave you if they get better service somewhere else, you continue to be on your best behaviour. But many of us are on our best behaviour at work, and we bring the leftovers home.
