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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
Today
Version
Versions
Performance
Guilt
Performances
Anxiety
Moralize
Religious
Normalize
Used
Secular

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Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.
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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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Today, monogamy is one person at a time.
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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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You never know your partner as well as you think.
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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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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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Romantics value intensity over stability. Realists value security over passion. But both are often disappointed, for few people can live happily at either extreme.
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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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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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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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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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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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We know desire is rooted in absence and yearning. What you don't have is often ten times richer than what you actually experience. An affair is a perfect erotic plot because it fits the erotic equation of psychotherapist Jack Morin: Attraction plus obstacle equals excitement..
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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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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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Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.
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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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