| I. From adventure to captivity
Understanding the dual human needs for safety and adventure.
The tension between committed love and its muting effects on erotic vitality.
Explore the challenge of reconciling the wish for stability and predictability with the need for novelty, transcendence and awe.
Map the development of separateness and connection, of dependence and autonomy in children and adults.
II. Current views of sexuality and couplehood
Cultural values and beliefs that surround sexuality within a committed relationship.
The place of sexuality in couples: a historical perspective.
The legacies of the romantic ideal.
Working with sexuality as a metaphor of the relationship, not as a parallel narrative.
Conceptualizing problems of desire.
III. Intimacy begets sexuality only sometimes
Modern western views of intimacy.
Cultural shift from a focus on love to a focus on intimacy.
The centrality of intimacy.
Perversions of intimacy—when closeness becomes control.
Exploring the accepted notion that intimacy is the foundation of sexuality—that good intimacy necessarily leads to good sex.
Examine how emotional closeness can inhibit desire.
IV. Is waning desire inevitable - can we want what we already have?
The nature of erotic desire and its relation to long term relationships.
Sexual desire as the territory for the unwelcome feelings of love.
Tackling the interaction between pursuer-distancer.
Gender differences, age, sexual orientation.
Exploring the cornerstones of desire.
Outlining the differences between sexuality and eroticism.
V. When three threatens two: sex and parenthood
Why does the transition to parenthood deliver such an erotic blow.
Challenging the cultural stereotype of desexualized motherhood.
Helping couples cordon off an erotic space despite the presence of children.
VI. Erotic blueprints: tell me how you were loved, I’ll tell you how you make love
The psychology of our desire is buried in the details of our childhood.
The cornerstones of desire.
Sexual preferences arise from the challenges, thrills and conflicts of our early life.
Helping couples engage with playfulness, novelty, curiosity and imagination.
VII. Fantasy and imagination
A look into the erotic mind - eroticism is neither neat nor fair.
Sexual fantasy as a source of information about the internal life of the individual partners and the couple’s dynamics.
Function and meaning of sexual fantasies, their place in relationships, and how they can help make desire more fluid.
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