Contents

1. Dedication
2. Epigraph
4. Introduction
5. 1 From Adventure to Captivity: Why the Quest for Security Saps Erotic Vitality
6. 2 More Iintimacy, Less Sex: Love Seeks Closeness, but Desire Needs Distance
7. 3 The Pitfalls Of Modern Intimacy: Talk Is Not the Only Avenue to Closeness
8. 4 Democracy Versus Hot Sex: Desire and Egalitarianism Don’t Play by the Same Rules
9. 5 Can Do! The Protestant Work Ethic Takes On the Degradation of Desire
10. 6 Sex Is Dirty; Save It for Someone You Love: When Puritanism and Hedonism Collide
11. 7 Erotic Blueprints: Tell Me How You Were Loved, and I’ll Tell You How You Make Love
12. 8 Parenthood: When Three Threatens Two
13. 9 Of Flesh and Fantasy: In the Sanctuary of the Erotic Mind We Find a Direct Route to Pleasure
14. 10 The Shadow of the Third: Rethinking Fidelity
15. 11 Putting the X Back in Sex: Bringing the Erotic Home
16. Notes
17. Bibliography
18. Searchable Terms
19. Acknowledgments
20. About the Author
21. Credits
22. Books by Esther Perel
23. Copyright
24. About the Publisher