Quotes About Intimacy

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. Mexican essayist Octavio Paz describes eroticism as a thirst for otherness.1 So often, the most intoxicating other that people discover in the affair is not a new partner; it's a new self.

Rather than inhibiting a couple's sexuality, recognizing the third has a tendency to add spice, not least because it reminds us that we do not own our partners. We

Today we have sex because we're in the mood, we feel like it—hopefully, with each other; preferably, at the same time; and ideally, with unflagging passion for decades on end.

Intimacy is "into-me-see." I am going to talk to you, my beloved, and I am going to share with you my most prized possessions, which are no longer my dowry and the fruit of my womb but my hopes, my aspirations, my fears, my longings, my feelings—in other words, my inner life. And you, my beloved, will give me eye contact. No scrolling while I bare my soul. I need to feel your empathy and validation. My significance depends on it.

Swinging is a form of consensual adultery. It also accords equal freedom to both partners.

It's hard to feel attracted to someone who has abandoned her sense of autonomy. Maybe he can love her, but it's clearly much harder for him to desire her. There's no tension.

There is beauty in an image that highlights a connection to oneself, rather than a distance from one's partner.

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

Affairs have a lot to teach us about relationships—what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to.

Deprived of enigma, intimacy becomes cruel when it excludes any possibility of discovery. Where there is nothing left to hide, there is nothing left to seek.

At its best monogamy may be the wish to find someone to die with; at its worst it is a cure for the terrors of aliveness. They are easily confused. —Adam Phillips, Monogamy

Ralph found himself fantasizing every time they made love: his beloved Sharon kept getting replaced by a seventeen-year-old vixen in a darkened movie theater.

Secrets and lies are at the heart of every affair, and they heighten both the excitement of the lovers and the pain of the betrayed.

It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation. —Joseph Conrad, Some Reminiscences

We interpret the lack of sexual interest as proof that women's sexual drive is inherently less strong. Perhaps it would be more accurate to think that it is a drive that needs to be stoked more intensely and more imaginatively—and first and foremost by her, not only by her partner.

The permanence and stability that we seek in our intimate connections can stifle their sexual spark, leading to what Mitchell calls "expressions of exuberant defiance,"3 otherwise known as affairs. Adulterers

Betrayal in the digital age is death by a thousand cuts.

First, the institutionalization of relationships—a passage from freedom and independence to commitment and responsibility. Second, the overfamiliarity that develops when intimacy and closeness replace individuality and mystery. And lastly, the desexualizing nature of certain roles—mother, wife, and house manager all promote the de-eroticization of the self.

Call me an idealist, but I believe that love and desire are not mutually exclusive; they just don't always take place a the same time. In fact, security and passion are two separate fundamental human needs that spring from different motives and tend to pull us in different directions.

In fact, dependence is an essential ingredient of connection. But it's a producer of terrific anxiety, because it implies that the one we love wields power over us. This is the power to love us, but also to abandon us.

When do you feel most drawn to your partner?" One of the most common answers I hear is "When others are attracted to him or to her." The triangular gaze is highly erotic, which is why stories like Kyle and Lucy's are much less unusual than you may expect.

What draws people outside the lines they worked so hard to establish? Why does sexual betrayal hurt so much? Is an affair always selfish and weak, or can it in some cases be understandable, acceptable, even an act of boldness and courage?

In my decades of working with couples, I've observed that those who are most successful in keeping the erotic spark alive are those who are comfortable with the mystery in their midst.

Today in the West most of us are going to have two or three significant long-term relationships or marriages. And some of us are going to do it with the same person. When a couple comes to me in the aftermath of an affair, I often tell them this: Your first marriage is over. Would you like to create a second one together?