“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. One does not exist without the other.” – Esther Perel

This is the relationship paradox of love, the closeness needed for intimacy with the individuality that fuels desire.

The seeds of intimacy are time and repetition. We choose each other again and again, and so create a community of two. As a couple grows emotionally intimate through this repetition, which furnishes the building blocks of trust and security, desire begins to diminish. Noting that sex is not a function of emotional intimacy but a separate state of being,

It is too easily assumed that problems with sex are the result of a lack of closeness. But perhaps the way we construct closeness reduces the sense of freedom and autonomy needed for sexual pleasure. When intimacy collapses into fusion, it is not a lack of closeness but too much closeness that impedes desire. Cultivating our individuality, our own personal growth which is set apart from our partner can create the desire and curiosity for our partner again.

Eroticism is a movement toward the Other, this is its essential character. Yet in our efforts to establish intimacy we often seek to eliminate otherness, thereby precluding the space necessary for desire to flourish.

We seek intimacy to protect ourselves from feeling alone; and yet creating the distance essential to eroticism means stepping back from the comfort of our partner and feeling more alone.

Our ability to tolerate our separateness and the fundamental insecurity it engenders is a precondition for maintaining interest and desire in a relationship. Instead of always striving for closeness, couples may be better off cultivating their separate selves. There is beauty in an image that highlights a connection to oneself, rather than a distance from one’s partner.

Adapted from an article in Brain Pickings which talks about Esther Perel’s work on the topic of erotic intelligence.