Sex therapist Esther Perel's parents saw being erotic as an antidote to death during the Holocaust. She thinks couples could learn a lot from their experience.
It happened that my parents had a very good relationship. My father adored my mother. He looked up to her and my mother loved being adored. So it worked really well.My entire community in Antwerp in Belgium — about 15,000 Jews — all of them were refugees, all of them were concentration camp survivors or hidden children. And my parents, in addition to that, spent five years as illegal refugees in Belgium before they were given permission to stay.
And I always noticed that the houses of my friends were dark, there was no energy in the house. You felt like people were on lockout — they were surviving, but they were not living. They couldn't allow themselves to experience joy, because when you experience joy or pleasure, you're not vigilant, you're not on guard, and if you're not on guard some bad stuff may happen that you were not prepared for. So they lived in an utter state of disaster-preparedness.
And I think it's the same for a couple. When couples complain about the listlessness of their lives. They sometimes may want more sex, but they always want better. And that better is to connect with the quality of aliveness, of pleasure, of fun, of vibrancy.
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