Reading List

Authors Like Esther Perel

Q: Who should I read if I love Esther Perel?

Start with Stephen Mitchell's Can Love Last?, the book Perel has named as the reference point for her thinking on security and freedom, and Adam Phillips' Monogamy. For couples therapy from other angles, read Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight and John Gottman's The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Emily Nagoski covers the science of desire, bell hooks and Erich Fromm the question of what love is, and Alain de Botton the long marriage as a novel.

Q: What books are like Mating in Captivity?

Stephen Mitchell's Can Love Last? makes the same argument from psychoanalysis: that the wish for safety undermines romance. Emily Nagoski's Come Together (2024) asks how desire survives in long relationships, using research. Alain de Botton's The Course of Love (2016) tells the same story as a novel, and Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight (2008) argues the opposite case, that secure connection is what desire needs.

Q: What should I read after The State of Affairs?

Adam Phillips' Monogamy (1996) is the closest: short reflections that treat fidelity and betrayal as psychological questions rather than moral verdicts. Alain de Botton's The Course of Love includes an affair inside a long marriage, told without villains. Lori Gottlieb's Maybe You Should Talk to Someone shows the therapy room from the therapist's side.

Q: Does Esther Perel have a podcast?

Two. Where Should We Begin?, launched in 2017, is made from real couples' therapy sessions, anonymised. How's Work?, launched in 2019, applies the same approach to colleagues and business partners. In July 2026 Apple TV also announced The Last Person on Earth, a dating documentary series in which she leads the team that selects the couples.

Esther Perel was born in Leuven in 1958 to Polish Jewish parents who had survived the Holocaust, and grew up in Antwerp in a community of survivors. She studied in Jerusalem, trained in family therapy with Salvador Minuchin and has practised as a couples therapist in New York for decades. Mating in Captivity (2006) asked a question most relationship books avoid: why the safety that makes a long relationship work so often drains the desire out of it. Her TED talk on the subject followed in 2013, The State of Affairs, a book about infidelity that refuses to moralise, in 2017, and the same year Where Should We Begin?, a podcast built from real couples' sessions. In May 2026 Harper Perennial published a twentieth-anniversary edition of Mating in Captivity with a new preface, and in July Apple TV announced The Last Person on Earth, an eight-part dating documentary in which she leads the team that chooses the couples. What readers come to her for is the refusal of easy answers: love and desire treated as two different needs that pull against each other, and a tension to be managed rather than a problem to be fixed. The writers below share that seriousness about love — psychoanalysts and researchers, a philosopher and a cultural critic — and most of them, like Perel, write for the general reader without talking down.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Love and desire · Couples therapy · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Esther Perel, start with Stephen Mitchell, the psychoanalyst whose Can Love Last? she calls her reference point, and Adam Phillips, whose Monogamy treats fidelity as a puzzle rather than a rule. For the other side of the couples-therapy argument, read Sue Johnson on attachment and John Gottman on what his lab measured. And for love as a moral question, bell hooks' All About Love.

10 authors like Esther Perel

Her own reference point · Closest match

Stephen Mitchell

American · b. 1946 · Psychoanalyst

Mitchell was a leading figure in relational psychoanalysis, the school that puts relationships rather than drives at the centre of the mind. He founded the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues in 1990 and edited it until his death in December 2000. Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance over Time, published after he died, applies that thinking to long relationships.

The source of the central idea in Mating in Captivity. Perel has called Mitchell “the reference person” for her thinking on the pull between security and freedom, and Can Love Last? argues the case she later made famous: that romance does not simply decay over time, but is undermined by the very wish for safety. He is denser and more theoretical than she is, and the clearest place to see where her argument comes from.

— Lisanne

Fidelity as a puzzle

Adam Phillips

British · b. 1954 · Psychoanalyst and essayist

Phillips was born in Cardiff in 1954, was principal child psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital in London from 1990 to 1997, and has been general editor of the Penguin Modern Classics translations of Freud since 2003. On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored (1993) made his name as an essayist. Monogamy (1996) is a short book of meditations on coupledom; Missing Out (2012) is about the lives we do not live.

The closest in voice: Phillips, like Perel, is at his best turning a moral question into a psychological one and leaving it open. Monogamy treats fidelity the way The State of Affairs treats infidelity — as something couples have to think about rather than simply obey — in fragments that are often funny. He gives no advice at all, which is either the point or the problem, depending on what you came for.

— Lisanne

Attachment, the other side of the argument

Sue Johnson

British · b. 1947 · Psychologist

Johnson was born in Chatham, Kent, in 1947 and spent her career in Canada, where she was professor of psychology at the University of Ottawa. With Les Greenberg she developed Emotionally Focused Therapy, an attachment-based model of couples therapy now taught worldwide. Hold Me Tight (2008) brought it to general readers, and Love Sense (2013) set out the science behind it. She died in April 2024.

The most useful disagreement on this list. Perel argues that too much closeness can smother desire; Johnson argues that most couples' trouble comes from too little secure connection, and that safety is what makes everything else possible. Both are working therapists writing about the same couples, and reading Hold Me Tight after Mating in Captivity shows how much depends on which need is starving.

— Lisanne

Every book by Sue Johnson →

What the lab measured

John Gottman

American · b. 1942 · Psychologist

Gottman taught psychology at the University of Washington, where his “Love Lab” observed hundreds of couples over many years, and in 1996 co-founded the Gottman Institute with his wife, the psychologist Julie Schwartz Gottman. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (1999), written with Nan Silver, introduced the “four horsemen” — criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling. His claims to predict divorce have been criticised: in 2001 the psychologist Richard Heyman argued that the models rested on small samples and had not been tested on new couples.

The data-driven counterweight to Perel's clinical storytelling. Where she works from individual sessions and cultural history, Gottman works from coded observation, and his books are practical to the point of exercises. He has much less to say about desire and much more about the daily habits that wear a relationship down; the two together cover more ground than either alone.

— Lisanne

Every book by John Gottman →

Desire, explained

Emily Nagoski

American · b. 1977 · Sex educator

Nagoski holds a PhD in health behaviour, with a minor in human sexuality, from Indiana University. Come As You Are (2015, revised 2021), a guide to the science of women's sexual desire, became a New York Times bestseller. Burnout (2020) was written with her twin sister Amelia, and Come Together (2024) is about keeping a sexual connection alive in a long relationship.

If it was the desire half of Mating in Captivity you wanted more of, this is the science underneath it. Nagoski explains why desire behaves so differently from one person and one context to the next, and Come Together takes on Perel's question directly — what keeps sex alive between people who have been together for years — with research where Perel uses stories.

— Lisanne

The therapist's chair, in prose

Lori Gottlieb

American · b. 1966 · Psychotherapist

Gottlieb was born in Los Angeles in 1966, studied at Stanford and took a master's in clinical psychology at Pepperdine in 2010. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (2019) interleaves four of her patients' stories with her own time in therapy after a breakup. She writes the “Dear Therapist” advice column for The Atlantic, and her earlier book Marry Him (2010) argued against holding out for a perfect partner.

The book version of what Where Should We Begin? does on audio: real-feeling sessions, the therapist's own reactions on the page, and the conviction that the stories people tell about their relationships are where the work starts. Gottlieb is warmer and more confessional than Perel and less interested in desire, but readers who love the podcast tend to love her.

— Lisanne

Every book by Lori Gottlieb →

The philosopher of the long haul

Alain de Botton

British · b. 1969 · Philosopher

De Botton was born in Zürich in 1969 and was educated in England. His first book, Essays in Love (1993), dissected a love affair from first sight to break-up; The Course of Love (2016) is its sequel in spirit, following a couple through marriage, children and an affair. In 2008 he co-founded The School of Life, which teaches emotional education in books, classes and videos.

The novelist's version of Perel's argument that the real story begins after the falling-in-love ends. The Course of Love is a novel interrupted by short philosophical commentary, and its subject — how two ordinary people survive a long marriage, including its boredom and betrayal — is exactly hers. He is more consoling and more systematic than she is.

— Lisanne

Every book by Alain de Botton →

Love as a practice

bell hooks

American · b. 1952 · Writer and critic

Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Kentucky in 1952, hooks wrote more than thirty books on race, feminism, class and culture, beginning with Ain't I a Woman? (1981). All About Love: New Visions (2000) argues that love is an action and a choice rather than a feeling, and that there can be no love without justice. Its annual sales rose more than sixfold between 2018 and 2023. She died in December 2021.

The moral argument Perel mostly leaves aside. Where Perel asks what keeps desire alive, hooks asks what love actually is, and answers with care, commitment, honesty and respect rather than romance. Both distrust the cultural script about love; hooks pushes the critique further, into the families and politics that teach people how to love in the first place.

— Lisanne

Every book by bell hooks →

The classic on love as an art

Erich Fromm

German-American · b. 1900 · Psychoanalyst

Fromm was born in Frankfurt in 1900, was part of the Frankfurt School of social theorists, and left Germany for the United States after the Nazis came to power. Escape from Freedom (1941) examined why people give up liberty for security. The Art of Loving (1956) argues that love is a skill that takes knowledge and effort, not something one falls into.

The book behind a great deal of modern writing about love, including the line Perel works in. Fromm's tension between freedom and belonging is close to her tension between adventure and security, and his insistence that mature love keeps two separate people intact anticipates her case for distance inside a couple. Short, old-fashioned in places, and still the best brief argument on the subject.

— Lisanne

Every book by Erich Fromm →

Vulnerability, researched

Brené Brown

American · b. 1965 · Researcher

Brown is a research professor of social work at the University of Houston, where she took her PhD in 2002, and has studied shame, vulnerability and courage for more than twenty years. Her 2010 TEDxHouston talk, “The Power of Vulnerability”, became one of the most viewed TED talks. Daring Greatly (2012) applies her findings to relationships, parenting and work; Atlas of the Heart (2021) maps eighty-seven emotions and experiences.

The broadest match for readers who came to Perel through her talks and podcasts. Brown shares her willingness to stay inside discomfort instead of resolving it into a rule, and her research on shame explains much of what happens in the sessions Perel records. She writes about connection in general rather than desire in particular, so she widens the subject rather than deepening it.

— Lisanne

Every book by Brené Brown →

Where to start if you loved Esther Perel

If you want the idea behind Mating in Captivity, read Stephen Mitchell.

Can Love Last?: the psychoanalyst Perel calls her reference point.

If you want The State of Affairs in a different key, read Adam Phillips.

Monogamy — fidelity as a question, not a rule.

If you want the counter-argument, read Sue Johnson.

Hold Me Tight: safety as the start of desire, not its enemy.

If you want it as a novel, read Alain de Botton.

The Course of Love: one marriage, from the honeymoon to the affair.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Esther Perel

Who should I read if I love Esther Perel?

Start with Stephen Mitchell's Can Love Last?, the book Perel has named as the reference point for her thinking on security and freedom, and Adam Phillips' Monogamy. For couples therapy from other angles, read Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight and John Gottman's The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Emily Nagoski covers the science of desire, bell hooks and Erich Fromm the question of what love is, and Alain de Botton the long marriage as a novel.

What books are like Mating in Captivity?

Stephen Mitchell's Can Love Last? makes the same argument from psychoanalysis: that the wish for safety undermines romance. Emily Nagoski's Come Together (2024) asks how desire survives in long relationships, using research. Alain de Botton's The Course of Love (2016) tells the same story as a novel, and Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight (2008) argues the opposite case, that secure connection is what desire needs.

What should I read after The State of Affairs?

Adam Phillips' Monogamy (1996) is the closest: short reflections that treat fidelity and betrayal as psychological questions rather than moral verdicts. Alain de Botton's The Course of Love includes an affair inside a long marriage, told without villains. Lori Gottlieb's Maybe You Should Talk to Someone shows the therapy room from the therapist's side.

Is John Gottman similar to Esther Perel?

Both are couples therapists writing for the general reader, but their methods differ. Gottman built his advice on decades of observing couples in a laboratory and coding their behaviour; Perel works from clinical sessions, cultural history and storytelling. Gottman focuses on the habits that make relationships stable, Perel on what keeps desire alive inside a stable one. His divorce-prediction claims have been criticised for relying on small samples.

Who influenced Esther Perel?

In an interview with Psychotherapy.net she named the psychoanalyst Stephen Mitchell as “the reference person” for her thinking on balancing security and freedom, and described family systems therapy, in which she trained with Salvador Minuchin, as her long-time professional home. She has also drawn on the sociologist Anthony Giddens' writing on modern intimacy.

Is there a new edition of Mating in Captivity?

Yes. Harper Perennial published a twentieth-anniversary edition in May 2026 with a new preface by Perel about the book's origins and how attitudes have changed since 2006.

Does Esther Perel have a podcast?

Two. Where Should We Begin?, launched in 2017, is made from real couples' therapy sessions, anonymised. How's Work?, launched in 2019, applies the same approach to colleagues and business partners. In July 2026 Apple TV also announced The Last Person on Earth, a dating documentary series in which she leads the team that selects the couples.

Footnotes

List last reviewed 15 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

Authors Like Esther Perel

10 authors like Esther Perel

Stephen Mitchell

Adam Phillips

Sue Johnson

John Gottman

Emily Nagoski

Lori Gottlieb

Alain de Botton

bell hooks

Erich Fromm

Brené Brown

Where to start if you loved Esther Perel

Frequently asked questions about authors like Esther Perel

Who should I read if I love Esther Perel?

What books are like Mating in Captivity?

What should I read after The State of Affairs?

Is John Gottman similar to Esther Perel?

Who influenced Esther Perel?

Is there a new edition of Mating in Captivity?

Does Esther Perel have a podcast?

Footnotes

Lisanne Swart

Thanks for reading,

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