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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

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Esther Perel
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: January 1
Author
Psychotherapist
Antwerpen
Versions
Performance
Guilt
Performances
Anxiety
Moralize
Religious
Normalize
Used
Secular
Today
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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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The secret to desire in a long-term relationship
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Today, monogamy is one person at a time.
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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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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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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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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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What is the relationship between love and desire? How do they relate, and how do they conflict? ... Therein lies the mystery of eroticism.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.
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It's our imagination that's responsible for love, not the other person.
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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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Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.
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Love enjoys knowing everything about you desire needs mystery.
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.
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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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