BEDROOM BOREDOM
Esther Perel: This country's best features - democracy, equality, compromise - can result in boring sex
BY DOUG FRENCH

Keeping a fire lit in the bedroom is an issue for many couples. How is it that two people start out enjoying white-hot sex, but as the relationship matures the passion cools? Couples and family therapist Esther Perel explores this phenomenon in her insightful book, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic. 

Perel makes the case that as couples become secure in their relationships, they confuse love with merging and this saps the desire for sex. In the author's view, "eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other. In order to commune with the one we love, we must be able to tolerate this void and its pall of uncertainties."

The author points out that it is a fight against nature to keep the sparks flying. Quoting evolutionary anthropologist Helen Fisher, Perel writes, "the hormonal cocktail of romance (dopamine, norepineprine and PEA) is known to last no more than a few years at best. Oxytocin, the cuddling hormone, outlasts them all."

According to her website, Perel was born and raised in Belgium, and holds degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Lesley College. She serves on the faculties of the Department of Psychiatry, New York University Medical School and the International Trauma Studies Program at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. This background positions her to objectively judge the state of married sex in America, writing that some of this country's best features, the belief in democracy, equality, compromise and the like, "can, when carried too punctiliously into the bedroom, result in very boring sex." 

That good old American work ethic also takes a toll on desire. America's obsession with goal setting and efficiency crowds out time for sex. Americans are trained to control their desires, at least those that are unproductive. As Perel explains, "eroticism is inefficient. It loves to squander time and resources." And as most Americans struggle to stay ahead of inflation, bills and taxes, quality time in the bedroom is sacrificed. 

America's Puritan heritage also butts in: Just look at this past year's election season scandals. Whether the paramours are young male pages, a male prostitute, or a curvaceous cocktail waitress, sexuality runs smack into family values. Sex is still dirty in America; family values are good, but that likely means a boring, irregular sex life. 

Kids are also a desire killer. For many lovers, once the baby arrives, they trade romance for parenthood. Perel sees this as striving for security in the unknown world of parenting. Sex is all about letting go, having fun and being vulnerable. Parenting is all about the opposite. "We are afraid that our adult sexuality will somehow damage our kids," Perel explains, "that it's inappropriate or dangerous. But whom are we protecting?"

But leaving American culture's influence aside, Perel's main point is that people feel a rush and excitement in the initial romance that also generates fear and uncertainty. It is this separation that makes the lovemaking so hot. But, as couples become more attached, they have more to lose and seek security. Freedom is exchanged for stability. Couples get comfortable with certain habits and routines. They become a single unit - a couple. 

With this predictability comes boredom. Eroticism thrives on the unpredictable. Thus the paradox: "A sense of physical and emotional safety is basic to healthy pleasure and connection," Perel writes. "Yet without an element of uncertainty, there is no longing, no anticipation, no frisson."

So what's it take to put the sexual heat back in a relationship? In a word: work. The author quotes Adam Phillips: "If it is the forbidden that is exciting - if desire is fundamentally transgressive - then the monogamous are like the very rich. They have to find their poverty. They have to starve themselves enough. In other words they have to work, if only to keep what is always too available sufficiently illicit to be interesting."

The more you practice something, the better you get. And the better you get at something, the more you enjoy doing it. The more skills you develop, the more risks you will take and the more exciting the game is. Forget about spontaneity, says the author; it is planning that will create anticipation, and that in turn will fuel desire. 

Complaining about sexual boredom is the easy way out, like everything else in life; happiness in the bedroom takes work. LW

Doug French, associate editor of Liberty Watch: The Magazine, is an executive vice president of a Nevada bank. He is the 2005 recipient of the Murray N. Rothbard Award from the Center for Libertarian Studies.