Quote

Today, our sexuality is an open-ended personal project it is part of who we are, an identity, and no longer merely something we do.

Esther Perel

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Esther Perel
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: January 1
Author
Psychotherapist
Antwerpen
Longer
Personal
Open
Ended
Part
Sexuality
Today
Project
Something
Merely
Projects
Identity

More quotes by Esther Perel

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Love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the end of romance, it is the beginning.
Esther Perel
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There is no sex without a cue. People who date have their cues at home, before they meet. You think about where to go, what to eat, what to do and say. Sometimes the cue is short - - just before we reach the bar - - but sex is never just spontaneous. Spontaneity is a myth.
Esther Perel
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Love enjoys knowing everything about you desire needs mystery.
Esther Perel
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In desire, there must be some small amount of tension. And that tension comes with the unknown, the unpredictable. You can close yourself off at home and say, Whew, at last I'm in a place where I don't have to worry, or you can keep yourself open to the mystery and elusiveness of your partner.
Esther Perel
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Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.
Esther Perel
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I want to engage people in an honest, enlightened, and provocative conversation about the nature of erotic desire and the intricacies of intimacy and sexuality. The object of my game is to bring nonjudgmental, multicultural understanding to the challenges and choices of modern relationships.
Esther Perel
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Women want to talk first, connect first, then have sex. For men, sex is the connection. Sex is man's language of intimacy
Esther Perel
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You know what happens to sex in marriage? Instead of inviting desire, you monitor it. Especially men: You let her sleep late, you take the kids to the park, and all that time you're thinking, Tonight I'll get some. That doesn't work.
Esther Perel
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Are you asking a question because you want to know the answer or are you asking the question because you want your partner to know that you are having this question?
Esther Perel
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When we seek the gaze of another, it isn't always our partner we're turning away from, but the person we have ourselves become.
Esther Perel
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In my community there were two groups of people, There were the ones who did not die and the ones who came back to life.
Esther Perel
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Most affairs do die a natural death. Today, you look at your partner's phone to find out the weather, and you find out about a lover. It has never been as easy to cheat as it is today, and it has never been harder to keep a secret.
Esther Perel
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Affairs can be powerful detonators. They can invigorate a marriage that's flat, jolt people out of years of complacency. Fear of loss rekindles desire, makes people have conversations they haven't had in years, takes them out of their contrived illusion of safety.
Esther Perel
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To look at infidelity from the point of view of sex is a complete narrowing of the phenomenon. There's a reason that the commandment is repeated twice in the Bible - once for doing it and once for thinking about it. We have always created structures and broken structures. It is essential to the human spirit.
Esther Perel
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A peer relationship is one where the partners experience an affectionate, companionate coupledom. They are friends. They are the product of the egalitarian model they are good life partners, but are often less sexual.
Esther Perel
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There is no neediness in desire ... there is no caretaking in desire. Caretaking is mightily loving, [but] it's a powerful anti-aphrodisiac.
Esther Perel
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Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.
Esther Perel
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It's our imagination that's responsible for love, not the other person.
Esther Perel
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What is the relationship between love and desire? How do they relate, and how do they conflict? ... Therein lies the mystery of eroticism.
Esther Perel
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Romantics value intensity over stability. Realists value security over passion. But both are often disappointed, for few people can live happily at either extreme.
Esther Perel