The alarm went off at 6:30am yesterday, as it does every work and school day, but yesterday I had an unlikely request. “Want to fool around?” I asked my sleepy wife. “What?” she responded dismissively. “April Fools!” I clarified.
Because, from what I gather, I may not be the only married parent who might think of sex as a good April Fool’s joke, I have something very special I want to share. And that is the work of Esther Perel, who I will name drop as an old friend but who, more pertinently, is a therapist who has become a prominent public thinker on matters of marriage and sex.
We profiled Esther a few years ago, when she published Mating In Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, and I’m very frustrated right now (so to speak) because it seems that we’ve lost the interview when we updated our website. In recent years, her ideas and observations on how loving and supportive relationships face inherent challenges to their physical chemistry have made her a popular presence everywhere from Ted Talks to Dr. Oz (I just heard that she’ll be on his show tomorrow).
I loved her recent interview that she did with Slate, provocatively titled ” Why We Cheat: Spouses in happy marriages have affairs. What are we all looking for?”
I love the idea that, as she put it: “Most people today, for the sheer length we live together, have two or three marriages in their adult life, and some of us do it with the same person. For me, this is my fourth marriage with my husband and we have completely reorganized the structure of the relationship, the flavor, the complementarity.”
I love that she’s found a creative and insightful and positive approach to engaging the relationship challenges all couples, to varying degrees, face in long-term relationships.
And this is anything but an April Fool’s joke.
