Not Tonight

How desire transforms — What You Don’t Know About Yourself

De: Zak Maymin

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

It is the most common night in a long marriage — and almost no one ever talks about it.
One in the morning. You reach across the bed. She shifts an inch, just enough, and your hand becomes a thing with nowhere to be. You asked without asking. She refused without refusing. And now you lie two inches apart, faces to opposite walls, each privately wondering if the other has already left the marriage.
The slow cooling of desire is one of the two oldest mortal threats to marriage — and the one no one warns you about.
This book breaks the silence — and not only asks the questions every long marriage is afraid to ask, but answers them: fully, honestly, and with original analysis.
Is it possible for desire to fade even when the love hasn’t?
What makes desire genuine?
Is the cost of desire the same for him and her?
Is there a science to desire — or is it all emotions you can’t analyze and control?
If the fire ever calms, is that a loss — or something else?
And before it happens — can the fire be protected on purpose, or only feared for?
And to more than one of these, the honest answer is the opposite of what you’ve been told.
A word about this book, because it is not the usual one. It is, at times, controversial. It reaches conclusions you will not find elsewhere — and it never asks you to take them on faith. Every claim is built on evidence: state-of-the-art science, with exact references; the behavior of animals in the wild; the logic of evolution; and thousands of years of how custom, religion, and marriage itself have tried to keep the fire from going out.
Its companion, It Just Happened, takes on the other threat — not the marriage gone cold, but the marriage broken by betrayal. And a third, Do You Love Me?, asks the question beneath both: knowing everything that can go wrong, why marry at all? Each stands complete on its own; together they map the whole territory.
The cooling of desire is older, gentler, and far less inevitable than you have ever been told. You cannot understand your marriage — or rekindle it — until you understand why the fire changes.
From the Author
Everything you ever wanted to know about sex and marriage — and never learned. Not in kindergarten. Not in school. Not even at Harvard. Why? Two reasons: they're afraid to talk about it — and they don't really know.
I had a long, happy marriage — a perfect one. Can’t think of a thing to change. Yet, borrowing a phrase from one of my sons, I would have given my left testicle for a chance to read this before I married. I didn’t write it for the money, and I didn’t wing it — four research papers came out of working on these books. I sincerely hope it will help you and, eventually, maybe, save the entire institution of marriage. Questions, comments, your own story — mayminzak at — well, guess. I read every one. I answer some.

And I can promise you this: you will never again look at love, cheating, and marriage the way you do now.