The Key To A Sexy Marriage

by Jesse Kornbluth

JK: Are you sanctioning affairs?

EP: No. Not that people need me to give them permission; they’ll have affairs if they want to. But affairs can be powerful detonators. They can invigorate a marriage that’s flat, jolt people out of years of complacency. Fear of loss rekindles desire, makes people have conversations they haven’t had in years, takes them out of their contrived illusion of safety.

JK: In fact, you have written, we never are safe. We don’t “have” our partner. We’re all on lease, with an option to renew.

EP: On some level we trade passion for security, that’s trading one illusion for another. It’s a matter of degree. We can’t live in constant fear, but we can’t live without any. The fear of loss is essential to love.

JK: My wife—she’s not my best friend?

EP: She’d better not be. Friendship has no tension—that’s the whole point. In desire, there must be some small amount of tension. And that tension comes with the unknown, the unpredictable. You can close yourself off at home and say, “Whew, at last I’m in a place where I don’t have to worry,” or you can keep yourself open to the mystery and elusiveness of your partner.

JK: Elusiveness? After years of marriage?

EP: You never know your partner as well as you think. Here’s an easy way to find this out: Each of you opens an email account that you use only to email the other. No daily management stuff allowed. Just two adults in conversation, often about sex: fantasies, questions, memories, no holds barred.

JK: Hotmail—literally! How do your patients respond to that idea?

EP: One guy kept asking his wife, during sex, “Tell me what you like.” She didn’t like the idea of evaluating during sex. She wasn’t hostile to the questions, they just had different styles. I suggested, “Write to him, tell him what sex means to you. Rebellion? Is it where you can be naughty? Do you want a spiritual connection?” They had a lively correspondence….

JK: What about technique? What about favorite places?

EP: This has nothing to do with where he should put his hand. Sex is about where you can take me, not what you can do to me.