Mating in Captivity

We've both been reading Esther Perel's excellent book Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic. It is well worth your time, whether you are partnered or not. Perel treats individuals and couples; she has a wonderfully clear-headed and non-judgmental approach, and her views on contemporary relationships and what it takes to make them function well, erotically and emotionally, are very much in line with our own. We discuss some of these issues in Chapter Five of The Essence of Tantric Sexuality and will examine them in even more depth in Tantra for Erotic Empowerment.

Here's a brief quote from Perel:

"For many of us, premeditated sex is suspicious. It threatens our belief that sex is subject only to the machinations of magic and chemistry. The idea that sex must be spontaneous keeps us one step removed from having to will sex, to own our desire and to express it with intent."

The Tantric approach to sexuality is all about consciousness and intentionality. The result of bringing awareness to sex and treating it as something to be discovered, again and again and again, is magic, not the illusory magic of infatuation and chemical attraction, but something deeper and more powerful because it is willed.