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: 67
Born: 1958
Born: January 1
Author
Psychotherapist
Antwerpen
Passion
Stability
Values
Intensity
Often
Disappointed
Live
Extreme
People
Extremes
Romantics
Value
Realists
Security
Realist
Either
Happily

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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.
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It's our imagination that's responsible for love, not the other person.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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If you start to feel that you have given up too many parts of yourself to be with your partner, then one day you will end up looking for another person in order to reconnect with those lost parts.
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Most of us will get turned on at night by the very same things that we will demonstrate against during the day - the erotic mind is not very politically correct.
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We used to moralize today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.
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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.
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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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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.
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Love enjoys knowing everything about you desire needs mystery.
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The secret to desire in a long-term relationship
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You never know your partner as well as you think.
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Erotic intelligence stretches far beyond a repertoire of sexual techniques. It is an intelligence that celebrates curiosity and play, the power of the imagination, and our infinite fascination with what is hidden and mysterious.
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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.
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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.
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