I recently got my hands on Esther Perel's book "Mating in Captivity." Although I am also an evangelist of the "You should never take relationship advice from a woman" expression, she raises some very interesting points and I thought I should share.

As Esther Perel proposes in her book, many people confuse intimacy with eroticism. Whereas intimacy is integrating two into one, eroticism is the separation and connection between the two separate identities.

While the level of intimacy is governed by trust, sharing, and security, the level of eroticism is governed by space and power. Intimacy is using the past to accurately predict the future, while eroticism is all about living in the now.

Why does it make sense for eroticism to be different from intimacy? This is my conjecture and it’s only a conjecture. This might be a product of evolution’s attempt to balance care-giving and sexual selection. As humans, we need caregiving in our infancy and developmental years more than any other species. This produces a lot of neediness from us on our parents.

However, in order to find better mates, we also need to break away from this protective shell and connect with others erotically. The more successful we are in this context (with compatibility and chemistry) is governed by the strength of eroticism, or the desire in the separation.

Compatibility and chemistry may as well be a product of the need for genetic variety. If we only wanted to mate with people who are close to us (genetically, which meant also geographically in the past), then we would not obtain the genetic variety required to grow our human brains. While the rest of the animal kingdom adapts to their specific environments (survival of the fittest), humans had to adapt to the changing environments (survival of the smartest).

Our human brains vary widely in many types of intelligence required to overcome a variety of environments, physical and social. This range of variety is also expensive to maintain. It needed a constant investment in mating with those who are different than us. It required eroticism. This is how you get the foreigner effect that is deeply erotic.

The upshot is that there must be some sort of separation for eroticism to grow, according to Esther Perel. She also mentions that separation is inherently dangerous and vulnerable. So the person who is the most comfortable being vulnerable produces the most erotic feeling. A person who is able to create separation, while also closing the gap, is the most erotically charged.

Eroticism is also governed by the power difference between two people. Those who seem to be in control will be erotically attracted to those they control, and vice versa. This is S&M in a nutshell, but it encompasses much more than that. The power play is vulnerability at its core.

Those willing to completely surrender to another, or to be deeply vulnerable, must trust the other person to be responsible in some way. This is why eroticism builds on top of intimacy.

To circle back on why the embrace of one’s own vulnerability tends to allay anxiety and reduce neediness: since neediness is defined as wrong or over-reaction to loss of intimacy, eroticism fills in the void caused by this perceived loss. When one no longer sees space and separation as alarming, but an opportunity for play and arousal, anxiety is converted into flow (more on that later).

Aroused by his own vulnerability, the man seeks to take the right course to deal with it. When he erotically charged by showing his vulnerable side, he also arouses the woman that he is vulnerable toward.

However this embrace of vulnerability needs to be an emotional one. It maybe also be called a way of life, since being vulnerable requires one to also be more aware, more accepting, more responsible, more assertive, more honest, and more purpose-driven. This might also explain why a confident man is very attractive to women around him.