Low libido, infidelity and the hidden life of desire
Betrayal often arrives inside relationships already carrying years of caregiving, compromise, ambition, routine, and unspoken change. Perel refuses simple categories of villain and victim without minimizing the damage of secrecy. She asks what an affair reveals about longing, identity, grief, power, and the self someone believes has disappeared. Low libido may be part of that landscape, but the book resists treating sex as the sole explanation. Within the MHS library, it offers language for a difficult crossroads: whether rebuilding, leaving, or redefining the relationship, healing requires a story more honest than blame alone.
About Esther Perel
Esther Perel spent about seven years of her therapy practice working almost exclusively with couples affected by infidelity before writing this book. She approached affairs not as spectacle, but as a lens onto modern love, identity, rupture, and possible repair.
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