There’s no such thing as safe sex, argues Esther Perel in her book “Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic.”
Because in order for the sex to be good, and desire to live in a relationship, there needs to be an element of risk or adventure or suspense. Perel debunks the assumption that good sex follows intimacy–the philosophy among therapists that if a couple works on their communication and on various aspects of their relationship, that fireworks will then happen in the bedroom. She views sexuality and emotional intimacy as two different animals, who speak two separate languages.
In her work with couples, Perel has worked with wives who’d rather be labeled as libido-less or having low sexual desire than have to explain to their husbands the importance of foreplay; people so desperate to fight the deadness they feel in their relationships that they’d risk it all for moments of forbidden excitement in an extramarital affair; older men who can’t accept their unresponsive penises and rush out to buy Viagra; guys who surf porn not because their wives aren’t desirable but because their wives never express any enthusiasm or interest in sex; and lots of men and women who know that they are loved but want so badly to be desired.

“For those who aspire to accelerate their heartbeat periodically, I give them the score,” Perel writes, “excitement is interwoven with uncertainty, and with our willingness to embrace the unknown rather than to shield ourselves from it. But this very tension leaves us feeling vulnerable. . . . The challenge for modern couples lies in reconciling the need for what’s safe and predictable with the wish to pursue what’s exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring.”
The way we do that, she suggests, is by maintaining our “otherness” or autonomy in the relationship. The mistake so many couples make, according to her, is trying to fuse into one person, to take the stability and the familiarity too far in their relationship, so that there are no secrets or mystery of the other person to discover. “When intimacy collapses into fusion,” she writes, “it is not a lack of closeness but too much closeness that impedes desire.”
I’m fascinated by her philosophy of separateness before connection:

Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exist without the other. With too much distance, there can be no connection. But too much merging eradicates the separateness of two distinct individuals. Then there is nothing more to transcend, no bridge to walk on, no one to visit on the other side, no other internal world to enter. When people become fused—two become one—connection can no longer happen. Thus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex.

I tend to be a conservative investor, a play-it-safe type of gal. If desire is “fueled by the unknown,” that’s, well, bad news for me. The otherness I get. I like maintaining a separate life apart from my marriage. But the control thing I have a problem with, naturally, being the control freak that I am.
Perel says I have a choice of responding to Eric’s “otherness” (pretending not to have shared 13 years of my life with him and to not know the exact rhythm of his belches, or how he holds his fork, or what he likes on his eggs) with fear or curiosity. I can either reduce him to a “knowable entity,” or I can “embrace his persistent mystery.” If I can keep from grabbing the steering wheel–and placing him and our relationship into the neat and safe little boxes I just bought at Sam’s Club–then I can keep on discovering who he is.
“Eroticism resides in the ambiguous space between anxiety and fascination,” Peres writes.
That sounds kind of scary, but I think I’m willing to try it. If I don’t, the sex fairy might visit me again.