Esther Perel Quotes

26 quotes in 439 categories

• In my community there were two groups of people, There were the ones who did not die and the ones who came back to life.
• Love is a vessel that contains both security and adventure, and commitment offers one of the great luxuries of life: time. Marriage is not the…
• Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery.
• The very ingredients that nurture love - mutuality, reciprocity, protection, worry, responsibility for the other - are sometimes the very ingredients that stifle desire.
• What is the relationship between love and desire? How do they relate, and how do they conflict? ... Therein lies the mystery of eroticism.
• Most of us will get turned on at night by the very same things that we will demonstrate against during the day - the erotic…
• There is no neediness in desire ... there is no caretaking in desire. Caretaking is mightily loving, [but] it's a powerful anti-aphrodisiac.
• Everyone should cultivate a secret garden.
• Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time,…
• Our partner's sexuality does not belong to us. It isn't just for and about us, and we should not assume that it rightfully falls within…
• We are afraid that our adult sexuality will somehow damage our kids, that it’s inappropriate or dangerous. But whom are we protecting? Children who see…
• Eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other.
• Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.
• Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.
• It’s hard to feel attracted to someone who has abandoned her sense of autonomy.
• Today, our sexuality is an open-ended personal project; it is part of who we are, an identity, and no longer merely something we do.
• At the same time, eroticism in the home requires active engagement and willful intent. It is an ongoing resistance to the message that marriage is…
• But when we reduce sex to a function, we also invoke the idea of dysfunction. We are no longer talking about the art of sex;…
• Very often we don’t go elsewhere because we are looking for another person. We go elsewhere because we are looking for another self. It isn’t…
• If you start to feel that you have given up too many parts of yourself to be with your partner, then one day you will…

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