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Esther Perel

Esther Perel Quotes

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Famous Esther Perel Quotes

“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.”

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Book:The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity
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“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.”

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Book:The State of Affairs Rethinking Infidelity / Mating In Captivity 2 Books
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“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.”

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Author:Esther Perel
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“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.”

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Book:Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic
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“Everyday in my office I meet consumers of the modern ideology of marriage. They bought the product, got it home, and found that it was missing a few pieces. So they come to the repair shop to fix it so it looks like what's on the box. They take their relational aspirations as a given－both what they want and what they deserve to have－and are upset when the romantic ideal doesn't jibe with the unromantic reality. It's no surprise that this utopian vision is gathering a growing army of the disenchanted in its wake.”

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Book:The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity
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“At their peak, affairs rarely lack imagination. Nor do they lack desire, abundance of attention, romance, and playfulness. Shared dreams, affection, passion and endless curiosityーall these are natural ingredients found in the adulterous plot. They are also ingredients of thriving relationships. It is no accident that many of the most erotic couples lift their marital strategies directly from the infidelity playbook.”

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Book:The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity
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“People often ask, Why is infidelity such a big deal today? Why does it hurt so much? How has it become one of the leading causes of divorce? Only by taking a brief trip back in time to look at the changes of love, sex and marriage over the last few centuries can we have an informed conversation about modern infidelity. History and culture have always set the stage for our domestic dramas. In particular, the rise of individualism, the emergence of consumer culture, and the mandate for happiness have transformed matrimony and its adulterous shadow. Affairs are not what they used to be because marriage is not what it used to be.”

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Book:The State of Affairs Rethinking Infidelity / Mating In Captivity 2 Books
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“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”

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Book:The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity
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“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.”

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Book:The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity
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