Quote

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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Esther Perel
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: January 1
Author
Psychotherapist
Antwerpen
Always
Turning
Partners
Seek
Away
Another
Become
Persons
Gaze
Person
Partner

More quotes by Esther Perel

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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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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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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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We used to moralize today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.
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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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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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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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Love enjoys knowing everything about you desire needs mystery.
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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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It's our imagination that's responsible for love, not the other person.
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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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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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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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Sex is about where you can take me, not what you can do to me.
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Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.
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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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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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Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.
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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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