The couples therapist argued that passion needs space, imagination and trust, and that modern marriage asks one partner to provide what a community once did
Esther Perel on Why Closeness and Desire Pull Apart: Notes From a USC Lecture
The couples therapist argued that passion needs space, imagination and trust, and that modern marriage asks one partner to provide what a community once did
The Lecture
Esther Perel, a Belgian-born couples therapist based in New York and author of Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (Harper, 2006), delivered the Barbra Streisand Professor Lecture at the University of Southern California on April 27, 2015, in Seeley G. Mudd Hall. USC Dornsife published an account by Susan Bell on May 7, 2015.
The lecture is a decade old, so it is best read as a statement of a clinician’s ideas rather than a report of new research. Those ideas continue to shape how many therapists and writers discuss desire.
Where the Ideas Came From
According to the USC account, Perel’s career and book grew out of her interest in the 1998 Lewinsky scandal and in why American attitudes toward infidelity differed from those in other cultures. That interest led her to question assumptions about fidelity, intimacy and desire in modern relationships.
She is a clinician, not a laboratory researcher, and her observations come from practice and cultural analysis. That makes her work useful for generating questions and less useful as evidence about how common any pattern is.
Security Versus Novelty
A central idea in the lecture is that modern love contains a contradiction. People want the security of marriage and also novelty and risk. Perel argues that current expectations place unrealistic demands on a single partner. In her words, “We are asking one person to give us what once a whole community used to provide.”
She also said, “For most couples, the concept of a passionate marriage is an absolute contradiction in terms.” The statement is deliberately provocative and should be read as a claim about the tension between comfort and excitement, not as a measured finding.
Her proposed resolution is not to abandon commitment but to rethink what a partner is asked to supply, and to recognise that some needs can be met elsewhere in a person’s life, through friends, work, creative activity and community.
Desire and Distance
The USC account says Perel contends that closeness builds love but can dampen desire. Desire, in her view, needs some mystery and space, and a shift in perception can renew it. She summarised the point with the line, “The unknown is right next to you, if you are willing to engage with it.”
This idea has research counterparts and also research complications. Studies of couples show that desire levels vary with stress, health, mood and relationship quality, and that women’s and men’s patterns differ on average. The Sex and Psychology podcast episode with Marta Meana discusses a related argument that the qualities that make a relationship satisfying can sometimes conflict with what is arousing, though that episode cites no specific studies.
The empirical question of whether distance helps desire remains open. Some couples report that time apart or independent interests renew attraction. Others report that distance erodes connection.
Trust and Play
Perel drew on her family’s experience with Holocaust survivors to argue that eroticism depends on imagination, playfulness and trust. She is quoted as saying, “Sex isn’t just something we do, sex is a place we go.” The idea is that sexuality is a space of experience as well as a behaviour.
Sheila Briggs, an associate professor of religion and gender studies and interim director of the gender studies program at USC, said both Perel and the other speaker in the lecture series “have a passionate commitment to keeping us thinking about what love and sex mean in an age of gender equality.”
The framing of intimacy as something that needs both trust and imagination also appears in clinical work, where therapists often encourage couples to talk openly about preferences and anxieties.
Why the Ideas Persist
Ideas like these last because they name something many couples recognise: the sense that comfort and excitement can pull in different directions. A long relationship offers predictability, shared routines and deep knowledge of a partner. Those are goods in themselves, and they may also reduce the sense of novelty that heightens attraction.
Researchers have looked at this from several angles, including studies of sexual boredom. In a 2023 Journal of Sexual Medicine paper reported by PsyPost, researchers analysed 1,559 Portuguese adults in monogamous cohabiting relationships and found that boredom did not always accompany low desire, and that some people kept strong desire for their partner with little boredom. The study was cross-sectional and drew on an online sample that was 81.1 percent women, so it cannot establish what keeps desire alive.
What it does suggest is that long-term desire is not simply doomed. Some people sustain it, and the open question for researchers is what they do differently.
Reading Perel Critically
A fair reading acknowledges both the appeal and the limits of this approach. The ideas have resonated with many readers and clients. They are not, however, validated by controlled trials, and the lecture account contains no data. People whose relationships are strained by a partner’s behaviour or by safety concerns need practical help, not philosophical reframing.
For readers considering therapy, the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists and similar bodies maintain directories of certified professionals. A qualified therapist can assess a couple’s situation individually, which no lecture can do.
Reading the Funny Page Alongside the Data
Readers meet comedy and reporting in the same feed, so it helps to know the difference. On one overseas property story, see Manila News, the London Prat (see https://prat.uk/cebu-estate-agents-demand-character-references/) and Bohiney: each starts from a recognisable market fact and signals its tone through exaggeration. More material sits at prat.uk and bohiney.com.
For the lighter side of the news, there is always The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/cebu-realtor-cant-sell-beachfront-listings/