Quote

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

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Esther Perel
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: January 1
Author
Psychotherapist
Antwerpen
Values
Intensity
Often
Disappointed
Live
Extreme
People
Extremes
Romantics
Value
Realists
Security
Realist
Either
Happily
Passion
Stability

More quotes by Esther Perel

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In committed sex, in marriage, people don't feel the need to seduce or to build anticipation - - that's an effort they think they no longer need to do now that they have conquered their partner. If they're in the mood, their partner should be too.
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Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.
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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
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In dating, if you say no, your lover goes on to the next person. In marriage, if you say no, the person stays.
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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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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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Success, to me, is helping one person or many people counter the isolation and pseudoconnectivity of our lives by boosting their ability to connect to themselves and to others.
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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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The secret to desire in a long-term relationship
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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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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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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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Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.
Esther Perel
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Sometimes it has to do with other longings that are much more existential. Sometimes you go elsewhere not because you are not liking the one you are with you are not liking the person you have become.
Esther Perel
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Sex is about where you can take me, not what you can do to me.
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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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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Love enjoys knowing everything about you desire needs mystery.
Esther Perel
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We used to moralize today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.
Esther Perel