Tethered...

Another TED suggestion:
http://www.ted.com/talks/esther_perel_the_secret_to_desire_in_a_long_term_relationship.html

The important-to-me part:

"But more importantly, for me to begin to understand who are the couples who have an erotic spark, what sustains desire, I had to go to the original definition of eroticism, the mystical definition, and I went through it through a bifurcation by looking at trauma, which is the other side,  and I looked at it looking at the community I had grown up in, which was a community in Belgium, all Holocaust survivors, and in my community there were two groups:  those who didn't die and those who came back to life.   And those who didn't die lived very often tethered to the ground, could not experience pleasure, could not trust, because when you're vigilant, worried, anxious, and insecure, you can't lift your head and go take off in space and be playful and safe and imaginative.  Those who came back to life were those who understood the erotic as an antidote to death.  They knew how to keep themselves alive.  And when I began to listen to the sexlessness of the couples I work with, I sometimes hear people say, "I want more sex." but generally people want better sex, and better is to reconnect with that quality of aliveness, of vibrancy, of eros, of energy that sex used to afford them, or that they've hoped it would afford them."   

-Esther Perel