Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Esther Perel
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: January 1
Author
Psychotherapist
Antwerpen
Loss
Flats
People
Marriage
Affairs
Takes
Affair
Invigorate
Safety
Jolt
Powerful
Illusion
Contrived
Desire
Havens
Complacency
Fear
Haven
Conversations
Makes
Conversation
Flat
Years

More quotes by Esther Perel

Image
You never know your partner as well as you think.
Esther Perel
Image
Today, monogamy is one person at a time.
Esther Perel
Image
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
Image
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.
Esther Perel
Image
The secret to desire in a long-term relationship
Esther Perel
Image
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.
Esther Perel
Image
We used to moralize today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.
Esther Perel
Image
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
Image
Women want to talk first, connect first, then have sex. For men, sex is the connection. Sex is man's language of intimacy
Esther Perel
Image
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
Image
It's our imagination that's responsible for love, not the other person.
Esther Perel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Sex is about where you can take me, not what you can do to me.
Esther Perel
Image
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
Image
Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.
Esther Perel
Image
Love enjoys knowing everything about you desire needs mystery.
Esther Perel