How to Maintain Passion in a Long-Term Relationship

Honest and effective advice from a leading expert on erotic intelligence and an experienced psychotherapist on how to maintain the passion of the early days of falling in love in a long-term relationship.

When entering into a long-term love relationship, we crave peace, stability, and security. But having found all this, we often lose interest in a permanent partner, since novelty, mystery, uncertainty, and spontaneity—the indispensable companions of sexual desire—simultaneously leave our lives.

It would seem that this forces us to make a choice: comfort and confidence in the future or exciting, vibrant, and romantic sex. But Esther Perel argues that overcoming this contradiction is quite possible. From this book you will learn how to build a harmonious relationship that combines sexual attraction to a partner and emotional intimacy, long-term love and all-consuming passion.

The book also contains interesting research results and fascinating examples from the author's psychotherapeutic practice.

Previously published under the title 'Reproduction in Captivity'.

Who is this book for?

For couples in long-term relationships who strive to maintain the passion and desire of the first days of falling in love.

For everyone interested in the psychology of relationships.

From the author

Love strives to know everything, and desire cannot live without mystery and the unknown. Love reduces the distance between partners, but desire fades in the absence of such distance. Intimacy arises from routine, and eroticism dulls with repetition. Maintaining sexual attraction requires mystery, novelty, and surprise. Love strives to have—desire strives to want. Desire demands that the object of attention constantly elude and remain somewhat inaccessible. What has already happened is less important here—what can still happen is far more significant. And too often, partners find themselves entangled in the comfort that love brings, and forget that the fire of desire must be kept alive. And there is no combustion without air.