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It's our imagination that's responsible for love, not the other person.

Esther Perel

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Esther Perel
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: January 1
Author
Psychotherapist
Antwerpen
Love
Responsible
Imagination
Persons
Person

More quotes by Esther Perel

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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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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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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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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.
Esther Perel
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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.
Esther Perel
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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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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.
Esther Perel
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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.
Esther Perel
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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.
Esther Perel
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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.
Esther Perel
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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?
Esther Perel
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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.
Esther Perel
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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.
Esther Perel
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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.
Esther Perel
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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.
Esther Perel
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Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.
Esther Perel
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Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.
Esther Perel
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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.
Esther Perel