"There's a powerful tendency," she writes in her introduction, "in long-term relationships to favour the predictable over the unpredictable.
Perel claims that the closer a couple bind together in emotional, verbal and domestic intimacy (compounded by the stress of parenting), the less chance they have of remaining lovers. Space between husband and wife, space between mother and child and, most challenging of all, space between a kitchen table covered in bills and a steaming hot boudoir. To keep the heat up, Perel proposes an unlikely ruse - not more gooey closeness but a little more distance. In her book, Perel's main point is that a happy marriage is a sexy one. But, not wanting to live in a Fellini movie where some strumpet gets to wear all the high heels, I turned my mind to the 21st-century alternative: sex inside marriage, or what Americans call "hot monogamy". The mistress system is what made middle-class marriage (possibly all marriage) work for centuries across different cultures. The spectre of infidelity haunts most couples like the hairline crack in the Golden Bowl. "That's your only chance at erotic bliss, preferably in the rain, in the back seat of a car." His voice trailed off like an ambulance siren while we held hands under the table. Married for just four years and now host to a 17-month-old baby, we felt the chill wind of marital mortality gust through the room.
"Frilly black knickers!" he bellowed, "They're just not going to cut it after you've been ringside for the C-section."
"I mean sexy sex is the stuff of affairs, NOT marriage." His wife, bejewelled, beautifully dressed, intelligent, sat opposite him, unblinking. I may as well have thrown a grenade on the table: "Sex!" an older gentleman almost vomited the word. I broached the question of conjugal passion after reading Mating in Captivity, the unnerving book written by the Belgian New Yorker Esther Perel, and published here this month. Asking if there is sex after marriage is about as bad as asking if there is life after death. One can gauge the heat of an issue by the level of discomfort it generates at a dinner party.
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