Esther Perel > Quotes

“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, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“For [erotically intelligent couples], 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 end of romance, it is the beginning. They know that they have years in which to deepen their connection, to experiment, to regress, and even to fail. They see their relationship as something alive and ongoing, not a fait accompli. It’s a story that they are writing together, one with many chapters, and neither partner knows how it will end. There’s always a place they haven’t gone yet, always something about the other still to be discovered.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it. 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.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility. It’s remarkable to me how a sudden threat to the status quo (an affair, an infatuation, a prolonged absence, or even a really good fight) can suddenly ignite desire. There’s nothing like the fear of loss to make those old shoes look new again.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

“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 end of romance, it is the beginning.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“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 our jurisdiction.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships . . . which are basically a reflection of your sense of decency, your ability to think of others, your generosity.”
― Esther Perel

“Beginnings are always ripe with possibilities, for they hold the promise of completion. Through love we imagine a new way of being. You see me as I’ve never seen myself. You airbrush my imperfections, and I like what you see. With you, and through you, I will become that which I long to be. I will become whole. Being chosen by the one you chose is one of the glories of falling in love. It generates a feeling of intense personal importance. I matter. You confirm my significance.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Everyone should cultivate a secret garden.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“It’s hard to feel attracted to someone who has abandoned her sense of autonomy.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

“We expect one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide, and we live twice as long.”
― Esther Perel, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

“Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.”
― Esther Perel

“It's hard to experience desire when you're weighted down by concern.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Our partners do not belong to us; they are only on loan, with an option to renew—or not. Knowing that we can lose them does not have to undermine commitment; rather, it mandates an active engagement that long-term couples often lose. The realization that our loved ones are forever elusive should jolt us out of complacency, in the most positive sense.”
― Esther Perel, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

“We're walking contradictions, seeking safety and predictability on one hand and thriving on diversity on the other.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“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 their primary caregivers at ease expressing their affection (discreetly, within appropriate boundaries) are more likely to embrace sexuality with the healthy combination of respect, responsibility, and curiosity it deserves. By censoring our sexuality, curbing our desires, or renouncing them altogether, we hand our inhibitions intact to the next generation.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Proust, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Sex, Lies and Domestic Bliss

“Eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“The shift from shame to guilt is crucial. Shame is a state of of self-absorption, while guilt is an emphatic, relational response, inspired by the hurt you have caused another.”
― Esther Perel, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

“Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“...this is the first time in the history of humankind where we are trying to experience sexuality in the long term, not because we want 14 children, for which we need to have even more because many of them won't make it, and not because it is exclusively a woman's marital duty. This is the first time that we want sex over time about pleasure and connection that is rooted in desire.

So what sustains desire, and why is it so difficult? And at the heart of sustaining desire in a committed relationship, I think is the reconciliation of two fundamental human needs...

So reconciling our need for security and our need for adventure into one relationship, or what we today like to call a passionate marriage, used to be a contradiction in terms. Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide:

Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one.
Give me comfort, give me edge.
Give me novelty, give me familiarity.
Give me predictability, give me surprise.
And we think it's a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that.”
― Esther Perel

“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.”
― Esther Perel, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

“We no longer plow the land together; today we talk. We have come to glorify verbal communication. I speak; therefore I am. We naively believe that the essence of who we are is most accurately conveyed through words.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

“The more we trust, the farther we are able to venture.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

“Monogamy used to mean one person for life. Now monogamy means one person at a time.”
― Esther Perel, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

“Love is an exercise in selective perception”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“Monogamy, it follows, is the sacred cow of the romantic ideal, for it is the marker of our specialness: I have been chosen and others renounced. When you turn your back on other loves, you confirm my uniqueness; when your hand or mind wanders, my importance is shattered. Conversely, if I no longer feel special, my own hands and mind tingle with curiosity. The disillusioned are prone to roam. Might someone else restore my significance”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“And what is true for human beings is true for every living thing: all organisms require alternating periods of growth and equilibrium. Any person or system exposed to ceaseless novelty and change risks falling into chaos; but one that is too rigid or static ceases to grow and eventually dies. This never-ending dance between change and stability is like the anchor and the waves. Adult relationships mirror these dynamics all too well. We seek a steady, reliable anchor in our partner. Yet at the same time we expect love to offer a transcendent experience that will allow us to soar beyond our ordinary lives. The challenge for modern couples lies in reconciling the need for what’s safe and predictable with the wish to pursue what’s exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

“Like dreams and works of art, fantasies are far more than what they appear to be on the surface. They’re complex psychic creations whose symbolic content mustn’t be translated into literal intent. “Think poetry, not prose,”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence