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
Either
Happily
Passion
Stability
Values
Intensity
Often
Disappointed
Live
Extreme
People
Extremes
Romantics
Value
Realists
Security
Realist

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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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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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It's our imagination that's responsible for love, not the other person.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Love enjoys knowing everything about you desire needs mystery.
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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.
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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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Our partner's sexuality does not belong to us. It isn't just for and about us, and we should not assume that it rightfully falls within our jurisdiction.
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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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Sex is about where you can take me, not what you can do to me.
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You never know your partner as well as you think.
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Today, monogamy is one person at a time.
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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?
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Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.
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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.
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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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