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The secret to desire in a long-term relationship

Esther Perel

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Esther Perel
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: January 1
Author
Psychotherapist
Antwerpen
Relationship
Secret
Term
Desire
Long

More quotes by Esther Perel

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Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.
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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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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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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Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.
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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Today, monogamy is one person at a time.
Esther Perel
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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.
Esther Perel
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Sex is about where you can take me, not what you can do to me.
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.
Esther Perel
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It's our imagination that's responsible for love, not the other person.
Esther Perel
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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..
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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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 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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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.
Esther Perel
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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.
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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You never know your partner as well as you think.
Esther Perel
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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.
Esther Perel