EPEsther Perel

11 collected words

Esther Perel

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

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 / quote

02Undated

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 / quote

03Undated

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

Esther Perel / quote

04Undated

In my work, I see couples who no longer wait for an invitation into their partner's interiority, but instead demand admittance, as if they are entitled to unrestricted access into the private thoughts of their loved ones

Esther Perel / quote

05Undated

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 serious, more work than play; and that passion is for teenagers and the immature. We must unpack our ambivalence about pleasure, and challenge our pervasive discomfort with sexuality, particularly in the context of family. Complaining of sexual boredom is easy and conventional. Nurturing eroticism in the home is an act of open defience.

Esther Perel / quote

06Undated

When we are children, play comes to us naturally, but our capacity for play collapses as we age. Sex often remains the last arena of play we can permit ourselves, a bridge to our childhood. Long after the mind has been filled with injunctions to be serious, the body remains a free zone, unencumbered by reason and judgment. In lovemaking, we can recapture the utterly uninhibited movement of the child, who has not yet developed self-consciousness before the judging gaze of others.

Esther Perel / quote

07Undated

The body often contains emotional truths that words can too easily gloss over.

Esther Perel / quote

08Undated

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; rather, we are talking about the mechanics of sex. Science has replaced religion as the authority; and science is a more formidable arbiter. Medicine knows how to scare even those who scoff at religion. Compared with a diagnosis, what's a mere sin? We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.

Esther Perel / quote

09Undated

The ability to go anywhere in our imagination is a pure expression of individual freedom. It is a creative force that can help us transcend reality.

Esther Perel / quote

10Undated

We're walking contradictions, seeking safety and predictability on one hand and thriving on diversity on the other.

Esther Perel / quote

11Undated

Modern relationships are cauldrons of contradictory longings: safety and excitement, grounding and transcendence, the comfort of love and the heat of passion We want it all, and we want it with one person. Reconciling the domestic and the erotic is a delicate balancing act that we achieve intermittently at best. It requires knowing your partner while remaining open to the unknown, cultivating intimacy that respects privacy. Separateness and togetherness alternate, or proceed in counterpoint. Desire resists confinement, and commitment mustn't swallow freedom whole.

Esther Perel / quote