Quotes About Desire

Adultery is often the revenge of the deserted possibilities.

By turning our backs on other loves, we confirm the uniqueness of our "significant other." "I have found The One. I can stop looking." Miraculously, our desire for others is supposed to evaporate, vanquished by the power of this singular attraction.

Sometimes they come sheepishly; sometimes they arrive desperate, dejected, enraged. They don't just miss sex, the act; they miss the feeling of connection, playfulness, and renewal that sex allows them. I invite you to join me in my conversations with these questers as we work toward opening up and coming a step closer to transcendence.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

In uncertainty lies the seed of wanting.

Most of us get turned on at night by the very things that we'll demonstrate against during the day.

The caring, protective elements that foster love often block the unselfconsciousness that fuels erotic pleasure.

If you trade passion for stability, you basically trade one fiction for another. Both are products of our imagination.

Freud described eros as the life instinct, doing battle with thanatos, the death instinct.

At one time you pursued Stephanie with great creativity, but no more. There's an assumption—and you're not alone—that we need only pursue what we don't yet possess. The trick is that in order to keep our partner erotically engaged we have to become more seductive, not less.

It's hard to experience desire when you're weighted down by concern.

When we cordon off our erotic interiors, we are left with sex that is truncated, devoid of vibrancy, and not particularly intimate. What people fail to see is that dull, boring sexual relationships are often a consequence of shutting down the imagination in just this way.

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

Erotic intelligence is about creating distance, then bringing that space to life.

If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected. Love is about having; desire is about wanting. An expression of longing, desire requires ongoing elusiveness. It is less concerned with where it has already been than passionate about where it can still go. But too often, as couples settle into the comforts of love, they cease to fan the flame of desire. They forget that fire needs air.

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is getting what one wants, and the other is not getting it." When