Quotes from Esther Perel

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.

Almost everywhere people marry, monogamy is the official norm and infidelity the clandestine one.

We blame our partners for failing to make us whole.

We ground ourselves in familiarity, and perhaps achieve a peaceful domestic arrangement, but in the process we orchestrate boredom. The verve of the relationship collapses under the weight of all that control. Stultified, couples are left wondering, "Whatever happened to fun? What ever happened to excitement, to transcendence, to awe?

Sex without sin is like an egg without salt. —Luis Buñuel

excitement is interwoven with uncertainty, and with our willingness to embrace the unknown rather than to shield ourselves from it. But this very tension leaves us feeling vulnerable. I caution my patients that there is no such thing as "safe sex.

When you love someone, how does it feel? And when you desire someone, how is it different? Does good intimacy always lead to good sex?

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.

Q: Are there any secrets to long-lasting relationships?     A: Infidelity. Not the act itself, but the threat of it. For Proust, an injection of jealousy is the only thing capable of rescuing a relationship ruined by habit. —Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life The bonds of wedlock are so heavy that it takes two to carry them, sometimes three. —Alexandre Dumas

The whole fauna of human fantasies, their marine vegetation, drifts and luxuriates in the dimly lit zones of human activity, as though plaiting thick tresses of darkness. Here, too, appear the lighthouses of the mind, with their outward resemblance to less pure symbols. The gateway to mystery swings open at the touch of human weakness and we have entered the realms of darkness. One false step, one slurred syllable together reveal a man's thoughts. —Louis Aragon

My husband deals with pain; I deal with pleasure. They are intimately acquainted.

When I ask her if her open marriage isn't painful, she answers, "Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's not. But monogamy—which we never negotiated, by the way—was painful, too.

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.

affairs are less about sex than about desire: the desire to feel desired, to feel special, to be seen and connected, to compel attention. All these carry an erotic frisson that makes us feel alive, renewed, recharged. It is more energy than act, more enchantment than intercourse.

By telling them not to touch I was mapping a space that would give her room to go after him. That, in turn, would give him the feeling of being desired.

To the American way of thinking, respect is bound up with honesty, and honesty is essential to personal responsibility. Hiding, dissimulation, and other forms of deception amount to disrespect. You lie only to those beneath you—children, constituents, employees

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. They intersect, they influence each other, but they're also distinct.

Marriage is imperfect. We start with a desire for oneness, and then we discover our differences. Our fears are aroused by the prospect of all the things we're never going to have. We

Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance. Excessive monitoring can set the stage for what Stephen Mitchell calls "acts of exuberant defiance.

Armed with an ideology of love that advocates togetherness, we are awkward about pursuing autonomy. This is especially true of the individuality of our desire. Even couples who grant one another considerable space elsewhere

Introducing uncertainty sometimes requires nothing more than letting go of the illusion of certitude. In this shift of perception, we recognize the inherent mystery of our partner.

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

invite you to think about ways you might introduce risk to safety, mystery to the familiar, and novelty to the enduring.

In uncertainty lies the seed of wanting.