Esther Perel Quotes: Wisdom on Love, Relationships and More
The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.
The very ingredients that nurture love ? mutuality, reciprocity, protection, worry, responsibility for the other ? are sometimes the very ingredients that stifle desire.
Many of us, it seems, like the idea of having a bit of freedom, a little bit of extramarital intimacy, without necessarily acting on it.
For [erotica] is not about sex, it’s about desire. Desire to reconnect with parts of ourselves we’ve lost, our longings, our yearnings.
Love is about having; desire is about wanting.
We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.
In desire, we often want what we can’t have.
Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once provided: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling.
When you pick a partner, you pick a story, and often you will be recruited for a play you didn’t audition for.
Commitment is not about loving someone right now, for who they are today. It’s about believing in who they are going to become.
In desire, we want to own our partner. In love, we want to have a partner.
Desire needs a space to thrive. In other words, desire needs mystery.
The very things that spell ‘security’ are often the same as those that spell ‘routine.’ And routine is the enemy of mystery.
The challenge of desire is to maintain it with one person over the long haul.
The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.
Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.
In desire, we want to own each other. In love, we want each other’s best.
When we choose a partner, we choose a story.
Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did.
Love is a verb. It?s not a permanent state of enthusiasm.
Commitment is not a light switch that goes from ‘off’ to ‘on’. When building a life with someone, the level of commitment is fluid.
Most of us get drawn to someone who can bring to the fore something we need to learn, someone who can invite us into the unclaimed and most vulnerable parts of ourselves.
Many of our problems with desire are the result of a digital culture that prioritizes newness and intensity over the steady care and tending that a relationship needs.
The very elements that nurture love; mutuality, reciprocity, protection, worry, responsibility for the other, are often the very elements that stifle desire.
Transgression can heighten erotic charge precisely because it is forbidden, which is why desire often dims when one has been given full permission and license.
Trust is an active engagement with the unknown in others.
We seek love but also novelty; security but also surprise; continuity but also discovery. And we want it all with one person.
The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.
Many of us can do extraordinary things when we’re pushed. The trick is to be able to do them when no one is pushing.
The very components that used to be the mortar that held couples together?home, work, old-time religion?have, in the modern world, changed beyond recognition.
Love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm.
We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
Commitment is not always the key to romantic fulfillment.
Eroticism in the home requires active engagement and willful intent.
Desire is to own the wanting.
Questions draw us together. Answers push us apart.
Sometimes, when we seek the gaze of another, it isn’t our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become.
When we pick a partner, we pick a story, and then we find ourselves in a play we never auditioned for.
Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity.
Today, we live in an era of me that celebrates individual pursuits of personal happiness, self-actualization, and digital fame.
In the throes of commitment, we believe that no one else will do, but such absolutism can set us up for a great deal of pain and disappointment.
Sustaining desire for something we already have is a challenge. But reigniting it is not an impossibility.