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Esther Perel

Esther Perel Quotes

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Famous Esther Perel Quotes

“I don’t buy the idea that there is a one and only. We used to marry till death do us part. Today we marry till love dies. We used to marry and have sex for the first time. Today you marry and you stop having sex with others. You used to have monogamy, one person for life. And today monogamy is one person at a time. And everybody says I’m monogamous in all my relationships. And it supposedly makes sense. So the norms are changing so fast. There is nothing you can do when you leave a person, than to tell them that you are so sorry that you’re hurting them and you have loved them deeply and thank them for everything they’ve given you. And you wish for them the best. And yet you’re going to go and it is just raw pain, you can’t circumvent that. Heartbreak is heartbreak.”

“Le spun adeseori pacienților mei că, dacă ar putea să aducă în relațiile lor conjugale măcar o zecime din îndrăzneala, zburdălnicia și verva pe care le aduc în relațiile lor extraconjugale, viața de acasă ar fi complet diferită. Imaginația noastră pare să fie mai bogată în relațiile adulterine decât în cele oficiale. ... Partenerii noștri nu ne aparțin; sunt doar împrumutați, cu opțiunea de a reînnoi contractul... sau nu. Faptul că îi putem pierde nu trebuie să ne diminueze angajamentul; mai degrabă ar trebui să presupună o implicare mai vie, pe care cuplurile cu vechime uneori o pierd. ... Lucrurile cărora trebuie să te opui sunt automulțumirea, curiozitatea tot mai vlăguită, angajamentele lipsite de entuziasm, resemnarea necruțătoare, obiceiurile pietrificate. Moartea conjugală este o criză a imaginației. Rareori, din relațiile extraconjugale lipsește imaginația.”

“Infidelity happens in good marriages, in bad marriages, and even when adultery is punishable by death. It happens in open relationships where extramarital sex is carefully negotiated beforehand. And the freedom to leave or divorce has not made cheating obsolete.”

“Sometimes I learn something about you because you tell me: your history, your family, your life before we met. But just as often my understanding comes from watching you, intuiting, and making associations. You present the facts, I connect the dots, and an image is formed. Your singularities are gradually revealed to me, openly or covertly, intentionally or not. Some places inside of you are easy to reach; others are encrypted and laborious to decode. Over time, I come to know your values, and your fault lines. By witnessing how you move in the world, I come to know how you connect: what excites you, what presses your buttons, and what you’re afraid of. I come to know your dreams and your nightmares. You grow on me. And all this, of course, happens in two directions.”

“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.”

“Pentru că sunt de părere că o criză de infidelitate poate avea rezultate pozitive, am fost adeseori întrebată: "Deci, în cazul unui cuplu care are probleme, îi recomandați o relație extraconjugală?" Răspunsul meu? În cazul bolilor terminale, mulți oameni au experiențe pozitive, care le schimbă viața. Dar nu recomand o relație extraconjugală, tot așa cum nu "recomand" să ai cancer. ... Când un cuplu vine la mine după ce membrii săi s-au confruntat cu un adulter, le spun adeseori următorul lucru: "Prima voastră căsnicie s-a terminat. N-ați vrea să întemeiați o a doua împreună?”

“infidelity is a direct attack on one of our most important psychic structures, our memory of the past. it not only hijacks a couple’s hopes and plans, but also draws a question mark over their history. if we can’t look back with any certainty and we can’t know what will happen tomorrow, where does that leave us? (…) betrayed by our beloved, we suffer the loss of a coherent narrative”

“romantic consumerism. ‘my needs aren’t being met,’ ‘this marriage is not working for me anymore,’ ’it’s not the deal i signed up for’ - these are laments i hear regularly in my sessions. as psychologist and author Bill Doherty observes, these kinds of statements apply the values of consumerism - ‘personal gain, low cost, entitlement, and hedging one’s bets - to our romantic connections’. (…) in our consumer society, novelty is key.”