155 Quotes by Esther Perel

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.

We expect one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide, and we live twice as long.

A woman’s sexuality depends on her authenticity and self-nurturance,” she writes. Yet marriage and motherhood demand a level of selflessness that is at odds with the inherent selfishness of desire.

Romantics value intensity over stability. Realists value security over passion. But both are often disappointed, for few people can live happily at either extreme.

Marriage is imperfect. We start with a desire for oneness, and then we discover our differences.

It takes two people to create a pattern, but only one to change it.

Adultery is often the revenge of the deserted possibilities.

Morin’s now-famous “erotic equation” states that “attraction plus obstacles equal excitement.”6 High states of arousal, he explains, flow from the tension between persistent problems and triumphant solutions.

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.