Esther Perel on Romance Novels, “Heated Rivalry,” and Why Fantasy Matters
For Esther Perel, some uncertainties are more bearable than others. There are, of course, the paralyzing, sweeping uncertainties. The mystifying partial uncertainties. And there are the prosaic day-to-day uncertainties. In fact, while Perel and I speak, we're experiencing the latter, seated in the back of an Uber Black inching through SoHo en route to her next appointment because, despite our careful and immaculate interview planning, this is New York—a city that seems to conspire to disrupt the tidiness of any and all best-laid itineraries. That said, while most versions of uncertainty come with their requisite fears and anxieties, Perel says there's one version we do indeed tolerate—nay, relish: romance.
"It's impossible to stomach so many of the versions of uncertainty that the world throws at us," she says, leaning over her armrest. "But in the realm of romance, we can embrace that ambiguity. We can handle the anxiety. It's exciting—we're rarely risking everything for it, so it’s a safe kind of insecurity."
Perel posits that this breed of safety-netted incertitude may be why Heated Rivalry has captivated so many viewers. It’s not that “horny gay hockey romance” is an entirely universal sell. Rather, it’s that the fantasy of the show is reassuring no matter your gender identity or sexual orientation—or, for that matter, your vague and watery conception of the rules of hockey. "[The show is] like a lullaby or a soft teddy bear. Nothing bad ever really happens; you’re never waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s a beautifully corrective experience,” she says. “Anytime you expect something bad to happen, it doesn’t. You drop a plate? You don’t get fired. Your boss has your back. You’re coming out to your mother, and she has the perfect response. This is precisely how you wish the world would respond to you. All of the uncertainties work themselves out immediately.”
As she puts it, the men on the show are embracing the full arc of expression—sexually and emotionally. There’s the anticipation, the sultry consummation, the trauma discourse, and emotional purging. “I think straight women wish all men were exhibiting the full spectrum of emotion and expression that way,” says Perel. “You get to see this perfect interaction between the soulful and the playful.”
“It's impossible to stomach so many of the versions of uncertainty that the world throws at us. But in the realm of romance, we can embrace that ambiguity. We can handle the anxiety. It's exciting—we're rarely risking everything for it, so it’s a safe kind of insecurity.”
Of course sexually, the show delivers with full-throttle on-screen boning. But per Perel, part of the appeal (beyond the obvious appeal), is in its directness. It doesn’t feel complicated by power dynamics or questions of desire or the plausibility of arousal. “That’s just not how very many women experience sexuality,” she says. “So in that way, it’s a perfect fantasy.”
In the same vein, amid a news cycle that feels, in equal measure, unendingly tragic and terrifying, there is value to fantasy. Escaping into the plush comforts of super-realities—affairs that take place not in this world but in a simpler world that quite closely mimics this one—can be an optimal antidote of sorts. And more important, it can be revelatory. “A fantasy, sexual or otherwise, is how you can determine what someone really wants emotionally. You see, a fantasy both states the problem and offers the solution. It’s a story,” Perel explains. “Think of it like an emotional need translated onto an erotic script. Fantasies teach us about our own desire—and each other’s.”
It’s no secret that desire seems to have little trouble trading in the contemporary economy—from a media standpoint, at least. Running alongside Heated Rivalry, nearly every online platform is spewing Wuthering Heights content ahead of the film’s release (think: photos of the impossibly attractive Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, either in full costume or on their corresponding press tour). Out in the wild, you’ll see just as many folks on the subway or in cafés, rereading—or perhaps consuming for the first time—Emily Brontë’s classic novel. Netflix’s charmingly twee Nobody Wants This topped charts for weeks. The Emily Henry phenomenon is alive and well—in bookstores and on the big screen.
“It’s never about the particular fantasy you’re consuming—it’s about fantasizing on the whole. It’s about freeing yourself up to fantasize.”
And in the realm of publishing, according to global research firm The NPD Group, in the US, romance print sales increased by 52 percent in 2023—and while print book sales across nearly all markets are at historic (dystopian) lows, romance patronage continues to rise annually. Technically speaking, per the definition of traditional, templatized genre romance, these books must guarantee happy endings in order to be labeled as such. It’s not so much a trope as a mandate—and there’s great comfort to be found in absorbing ourselves in a version of suspense and anticipation that will, in the end, inevitably play out gorgeously.
Moreover, in the nontraditional romance sector, even Miranda July’s All Fours—which everyone and their mother read last summer (literally, so many mothers)—contains a similar appeal. July, who appeared last year on Perel’s podcast, offers the same fundamental selling point: desire. “To read a novel where a woman wakes up is to wake up to your own latency, or dormancy,” Perel says. “One of the reasons this book was so beloved was the fantasy. It’s not that you need to share the narrator’s fantasy. The fantasy itself is nonspecific. The point is here’s a woman fantasizing...then, in very rare form, acting on that fantasy. If nothing else, that book let people feel that they were free to fantasize.”
Of course, the romantic novels and television shows we consume are not manuals for living. They’re not relationship templates or proverbs. Instead, their magic is in their implausibility—their vague, blissful unreality. “It’s never about the particular fantasy you’re consuming—it’s about fantasizing on the whole,” Perel says. “It’s about freeing yourself up to fantasize. To see what that teaches you about your own desire.”