Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity: Desire as Two Big Five Facets

A small campfire with a gap of dark space around it under a starry sky

Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity asks a question most relationship books duck: why does desire so often fade in exactly the relationships that feel safest? Her answer is that love and desire run on opposite fuels. As she puts it in an interview, "Love needs closeness. Desire needs space." Security deepens attachment and can quietly starve eroticism, because desire feeds on distance, novelty, and a partner you have not fully solved. In the Big Five, the appetite for that novelty is a specific pair of facets.

Desire runs on Excitement-Seeking and Adventurousness

Two facets supply the novelty Perel is talking about. Excitement-Seeking (E5) is the craving for stimulation and intensity, the part that goes flat when life gets too predictable. Adventurousness (O4) is the pull toward the new and unfamiliar, the willingness to be surprised. High E5 and O4 keep reaching for the bridge Perel describes: in her TED talk she says, "In desire, we want a bridge to cross. Or in other words, I sometimes say, fire needs air. Desire needs space." Partners who run high on these facets generate their own novelty; partners who run low tend to build comfort, which is wonderful for stability and rough on heat.

This is where a facet profile earns its keep in a relationship. The traits that make someone a safe, easy-to-live-with partner are not the same traits that keep desire crackling, and a couple can be beautifully matched on the first and quietly stuck on the second. Two people who both sit low on E5 and O4 will feel deeply secure and may watch the spark dim without understanding why, because neither one is wired to keep introducing the unknown. That is a predictable pattern rather than a broken match, and once the scores flag it, a couple can decide on purpose to bring some air to the fire.

We go deep on how traits predict a couple's fit in the science behind personality compatibility. Perel's contribution is the reminder that compatibility has two layers: the one that makes a relationship comfortable, and the one that keeps it alive. Your E5 and O4 scores, and your partner's, tell you which layer will need the deliberate work.

Read the book: Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence by Esther Perel.

See Where You Fall

Where do you actually fall? The 30-facet OCEAN personality test takes about 15 minutes and scores all five domains and the facets underneath them. Take the test

Research Citations

Perel, E. (2006). Mating in captivity: Unlocking erotic intelligence. HarperCollins.

Aron, A., Norman, C. C., Aron, E. N., McKenna, C., & Heyman, R. E. (2000). Couples' shared participation in novel and arousing activities and experienced relationship quality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 273-284.

Johnson, J. A. (2014). Measuring thirty facets of the Five Factor Model with a 120-item public domain inventory: Development of the IPIP-NEO-120. Journal of Research in Personality, 51, 78-89.

Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) professional manual. Psychological Assessment Resources.