Home > Author > Esther Perel

Esther Perel QUOTES

Esther Perel QUOTES

141 " It is ironic that some people, like Guy, will minimize the emotional involvement to lessen the offense (“It meant nothing!”), while others, like Charmaine, will highlight the emotional nature of the bond for exactly the same purpose (“Nothing happened!”). "

― Esther Perel , The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

142 " In our efforts to protect ourselves from intimate betrayal, we demand access, control, transparency. And we run the risk of unknowingly eradicating the very space between us that keeps desire alive. Fire needs air. "

― Esther Perel , The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

143 " Pentru că sunt de părere că o criză de infidelitate poate avea rezultate pozitive, am fost adeseori întrebată: "Deci, în cazul unui cuplu care are probleme, îi recomandați o relație extraconjugală?" Răspunsul meu? În cazul bolilor terminale, mulți oameni au experiențe pozitive, care le schimbă viața. Dar nu recomand o relație extraconjugală, tot așa cum nu "recomand" să ai cancer. ... Când un cuplu vine la mine după ce membrii săi s-au confruntat cu un adulter, le spun adeseori următorul lucru: "Prima voastră căsnicie s-a terminat. N-ați vrea să întemeiați o a doua împreună? "

― Esther Perel , The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

144 " Le spun adeseori pacienților mei că, dacă ar putea să aducă în relațiile lor conjugale măcar o zecime din îndrăzneala, zburdălnicia și verva pe care le aduc în relațiile lor extraconjugale, viața de acasă ar fi complet diferită. Imaginația noastră pare să fie mai bogată în relațiile adulterine decât în cele oficiale. ... Partenerii noștri nu ne aparțin; sunt doar împrumutați, cu opțiunea de a reînnoi contractul... sau nu. Faptul că îi putem pierde nu trebuie să ne diminueze angajamentul; mai degrabă ar trebui să presupună o implicare mai vie, pe care cuplurile cu vechime uneori o pierd. ... Lucrurile cărora trebuie să te opui sunt automulțumirea, curiozitatea tot mai vlăguită, angajamentele lipsite de entuziasm, resemnarea necruțătoare, obiceiurile pietrificate. Moartea conjugală este o criză a imaginației. Rareori, din relațiile extraconjugale lipsește imaginația. "

― Esther Perel , The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

145 " As the adage says: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. "

― Esther Perel , Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

146 " Now that these men and women and the generations who have followed can have as much sex as they want, they seem to have lost their desire for it. "

― Esther Perel , Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

147 " Often, when one partner insists that they don’t yet feel acknowledged, even as the one who hurt them insists they feel terrible, it is because the response is still more shame than guilt, and therefore self-focused. "

― Esther Perel , The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

148 " He invites us to recognize that our values evolve as we mature and “move from an understanding of ethical and moral issues in black and white absolutist terms to comprehending the gray ambiguity of most matters.”6 "

― Esther Perel , The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

149 " When we channel all our intimate needs into one person, we actually stand to make the relationship more vulnerable. "

― Esther Perel , The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

150 " Our partners do not belong to us; they are only on loan, with an option to renew—or not. Knowing that we can lose them does not have to undermine commitment; rather, it mandates an active engagement that long-term couples often lose. The realization that our loved ones are forever elusive should jolt us out of complacency, in the most positive sense. "

― Esther Perel , The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

151 " I don’t buy the idea that there is a one and only. We used to marry till death do us part. Today we marry till love dies. We used to marry and have sex for the first time. Today you marry and you stop having sex with others. You used to have monogamy, one person for life. And today monogamy is one person at a time. And everybody says I’m monogamous in all my relationships. And it supposedly makes sense.
So the norms are changing so fast. There is nothing you can do when you leave a person, than to tell them that you are so sorry that you’re hurting them and you have loved them deeply and thank them for everything they’ve given you. And you wish for them the best.
And yet you’re going to go and it is just raw pain, you can’t circumvent that. Heartbreak is heartbreak. "

― Esther Perel

152 " Domestic Eroticism is wrapped in a veil of appropriateness "

― Esther Perel

153 " Sometimes I learn something about you because you tell me: your history, your family, your life before we met. But just as often my understanding comes from watching you, intuiting, and making associations. You present the facts, I connect the dots, and an image is formed. Your singularities are gradually revealed to me, openly or covertly, intentionally or not. Some places inside of you are easy to reach; others are encrypted and laborious to decode. Over time, I come to know your values, and your fault lines. By witnessing how you move in the world, I come to know how you connect: what excites you, what presses your buttons, and what you’re afraid of. I come to know your dreams and your nightmares. You grow on me. And all this, of course, happens in two directions. "

― Esther Perel

154 " The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships . . . which are basically a reflection of your sense of decency, your ability to think of others, your generosity. "

― Esther Perel

155 " Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance. "

― Esther Perel

156 " ...this is the first time in the history of humankind where we are trying to experience sexuality in the long term, not because we want 14 children, for which we need to have even more because many of them won't make it, and not because it is exclusively a woman's marital duty. This is the first time that we want sex over time about pleasure and connection that is rooted in desire.

So what sustains desire, and why is it so difficult? And at the heart of sustaining desire in a committed relationship, I think is the reconciliation of two fundamental human needs...

So reconciling our need for security and our need for adventure into one relationship, or what we today like to call a passionate marriage, used to be a contradiction in terms. Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide:

Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one.
Give me comfort, give me edge.
Give me novelty, give me familiarity.
Give me predictability, give me surprise.
And we think it's a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that. "

― Esther Perel

157 " We don't like to be intimate alone. Some couples take this one step further, confusing intimacy with control. What passes for care is actually convert surveillance. ..
When the impulse to share becomes obligatory, when personal boundaries are no longer respected, when only the shared space of togetherness is acknowledged and private space is denied, fusion replaces intimacy and possession co-opts love. "

― Esther Perel , Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

158 " Monogamy used to mean one person for life. Now monogamy means one person at a time. "

― Esther Perel , The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

159 " Sometimes, when we seek the gaze of another, it isn’t our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become. We are not looking for another lover so much as another version of ourselves. "

― Esther Perel , The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

160 " because the erotic frisson is such that the kiss that you only imagine giving,can be as powerful and as enchanting as hours of actual lovemaking. As Marcel Proust said, it's our imagination that is responsible for love, not the other person. "

― Esther Perel