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A review by alicedroni
Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Esther Perel
2.0
This book was for someone, and that someone was not me.
Its not like she has bad observations, they're just incredibly normative. If you're queer, poly, aromantic, childfree, anti-marriage, or any combination of those, you wont find anyone you relate to in this book. At the beginning of the book she mentions asking for help representing queer folks, and though there are technically two queer couples mentioned, both are extremely upper middle class, typical married couples and are essentially indistinguishable from a regular heterosexual married couple.
Her main hypothesis about desire and intimacy being separate feelings seems like an extremely simplified and hetero-normative version of the split attraction model many queer theory and aro/ace books talk about (and I think generally do a better job of explaining).
Its not like she has bad observations, they're just incredibly normative. If you're queer, poly, aromantic, childfree, anti-marriage, or any combination of those, you wont find anyone you relate to in this book. At the beginning of the book she mentions asking for help representing queer folks, and though there are technically two queer couples mentioned, both are extremely upper middle class, typical married couples and are essentially indistinguishable from a regular heterosexual married couple.
Her main hypothesis about desire and intimacy being separate feelings seems like an extremely simplified and hetero-normative version of the split attraction model many queer theory and aro/ace books talk about (and I think generally do a better job of explaining).