Quotes from Esther Perel

While emotional transparency is touted everywhere as the crux of modern intimacy, I am amazed at the paucity of real sexual communication between partners. Part of my work in post-infidelity involves direct coaching as to how, why, where, and when to talk about sex.

A Window into the Human Heart Affairs have a lot to teach us about relationships. They open the door to a deeper examination of values, human nature, and the power of eros.

A couple's emotional life together and their physical life together each have their ebbs and flows, their ups and downs, but these don't always correspond.

Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it.

No history has a more lasting effect on our adult loves than the one we write with our primary caregivers.

Sexual honesty isn't just about divulging the details of your infidelities. It's about communicating with your partner in an open and mature way—revealing core aspects of yourself through your sexuality.

As for the general public, we tend to judge the "other woman" far more harshly than the cheating husband.

These are not simply naive, lonely, desperate women who'll take love in whatever form they can get it. In fact, they are pragmatic about their reasons for choosing to not only live with a secret but be a secret.

And when we haven't been touched in years, we are more vulnerable to the kindness of strangers.

I have met plenty of men who were the lovers of married women (or married men, for that matter). But I have yet to meet a man who was single and gave his love to another man's wife for thirty years, hoping that she would leave and come and make a family with him.

pain gathering up its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night," to borrow the words of Khaled Hosseini.3

To quote Rachel Botsman, "Trust is a confident relationship to the unknown.

At their peak, affairs rarely lack imagination. Nor do they lack desire, abundance of attention, romance, and playfulness. Shared dreams, affection, passion, and endless curiosity—all these are natural ingredients found in the adulterous plot.

Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems

Clearly Andrea prefers to be the adored other woman than the avoided wife. Yes, there are trade-offs, but there are also benefits.

Being a mistress suited Rose—in the words of novelist Susan Cheever, "I had my freedom and I was someone else's fantasy.

Octavio Paz writes, "The moment of merging is a crack in time, a balm against the wounds inflicted by the minutes and hours of time. A moment totally eternal as it is ephemeral." It is a leap into a world beyond.

A term used by Terry Real is quite apt for such affairs: stable ambiguity. These are relationships of undefined status but well-established patterns, hard to break out of but just as hard to depend on. By remaining in a diffuse state, people avoid both loneliness and commitment. This strange mix of comforting consistency and uncertainty is increasingly common to relationships in the age of Tinder, but it's long been characteristic of extramarital liaisons.

Oscar Wilde wrote, "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is getting what one wants, and the other is not getting it." When our desires are unfulfilled, we

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

I do believe that the emphasis on egalitarian and respectful sex—purged of any expressions of power, aggression, and transgression—is antithetical to erotic desire for men and women alike.

I suggest that our ability to tolerate our separateness—and the fundamental insecurity it engenders—is a precondition for maintaining interest and desire in a relationship.

Your lustiness would be an open endorsement for her own ardor.

In the immortal words of Marge Simpson, "Passion is for teenagers and foreigners.