“There is no sex without a cue. People who date have their cues at home, before they meet. You think about where to go, what to eat, what to do and say. Sometimes the cue is short - - just before we reach the bar - - but sex is never just spontaneous. Spontaneity is a myth.” PeopleThinkingSometimesHomeSexMythBarsSpontaneousSpontaneity Author:Esther Perel
“In committed sex, in marriage, people don't feel the need to seduce or to build anticipation - - that's an effort they think they no longer need to do now that they have conquered their partner. If they're in the mood, their partner should be too.” PeopleIfsThinkingNeedsFeelsShouldSexEffortCommittedPartnersMoodAnticipationSeducing Author:Esther Perel
“People cheat on each other in a hundred different ways: indifference, emotional neglect, contempt, lack of respect, years of refusal of intimacy. Cheating doesn't begin to describe the ways that people let each other down.” PeopleWayYearsDifferentEmotionalHundredIntimacyIndifferenceDifferent WaysCheatingNeglectContemptCheatRefusalLack Of Respect Author:Esther Perel
“Affairs can be powerful detonators. They can invigorate a marriage that's flat, jolt people out of years of complacency. Fear of loss rekindles desire, makes people have conversations they haven't had in years, takes them out of their contrived illusion of safety.” PeopleYearsDesireLossPowerfulHavensConversationIllusionSafetyAffairFlatsComplacency Author:Esther Perel
“I want to engage people in an honest, enlightened, and provocative conversation about the nature of erotic desire and the intricacies of intimacy and sexuality. The object of my game is to bring nonjudgmental, multicultural understanding to the challenges and choices of modern relationships.” PeopleWantDesireChoicesGamesUnderstandingChallengesModernHonestObjectsConversationSexualityIntimacyEnlightenedEroticProvocativeMulticulturalIntricacy Author:Esther Perel
“I have more than thirty thousand hours of family and relationship counseling experience under my belt. Over the years, I have seen changes in relationship trends walk through my therapy office doors. My richest gifts are translating the complexities of love and desire in modern relationships into something simple and accessible. I can offer informed advice that makes people feel comfortable, knowledgeable, and confident.” PeopleFeelsYearsI CanDesireHoursSimpleWalksDoorsModernAdviceOffersThousandOfficeComfortableTherapyThirtyComplexityTrendsTranslateBeltsKnowledgeableCounseling Author:Esther Perel
“Success, to me, is helping one person or many people counter the isolation and pseudoconnectivity of our lives by boosting their ability to connect to themselves and to others.” PeoplePersonsHelpingAbilityOur LivesIsolationLive By Author:Esther Perel
“For me, the constitutive element of an affair is the secrecy. It is the secrecy that leads to the lying, to the deception, to the duplicity. It is the structure of an affair - not the sexual or emotional behavior or what people actually are doing.” PeopleLyingEmotionalBehaviorAffairDeceptionSecrecy Author:Esther Perel
“For some people, a one-night stand doesn't make any difference in a seven-year love affair. I don't believe the degree of betrayal is always commensurate with the egregiousness of the behavior. They are two separate things.” PeopleBelieveBehaviorAffairBetrayalLove Affair Author:Esther Perel
“I believe that the vast majority of people that are unfaithful are monogamous in their beliefs. The ones who are not monogamous in their beliefs either live in poly relationships or consensual non-monogamous relationships, or they have divorced. If it's very bad, then people don't stay married these days in the West. They can be married and have their family, but they want something else - they want something that they don't have in their lives, or simply to be someone that isn't who they are in the context of their marriage.” PeopleBelieveBeliefI BelieveMarriedDivorcedBeing MarriedUnfaithful Author:Esther Perel
“The vast majority of unfaithful people are experiencing a conflict between their values and their behavior, and that is the mess of infidelity. It's not an either-or. The idea that you would ask, "How can you say you love your husband and you want to stay married, and you also are having an affair?" Because we are not the same woman, or the same man. Because sexual revolutions don't take place at home. Because for most of us, freedom wasn't something that we experienced in our family, but usually outside of our family.” PeopleMenHomeValuesLove YouRevolutionHusbandConflictBehaviorMarriedAffairMessOur FamilyInfidelityUnfaithful Author:Esther Perel
“If a woman isn't feeling sexual with herself, she won't respond to advances from any partner, male or female. When this woman goes dancing, she's finding a connection with her own erotic self. It might be about being on a dance floor, feeling free, not having to feel at all responsible for anybody else's well-being. For other people, it might be about going on a hike for four days by herself and reconnecting with nature and strength and endurance and beauty.” PeopleFeelingsFemaleResponsibleDancingEnduranceDance Floor Author:Esther Perel
“Many couples have never had a conversation about sexuality and sexual boundaries. The presence or lack of sex, the quality of it, the satisfaction and dissatisfaction, the unmet needs. An affair upsets the status quo by not only bringing the subject of sexuality to the forefront but every other aspect of their relationship as well. An affair yields conversation that should have happened in the beginning, but that people were afraid to have because, well, what would that mean about their relationship?” PeopleMeanQualityCoupleAffairSexualityBoundariesUpsetStatus QuoDissatisfaction Author:Esther Perel
“People grow up learning to be silent about their sexuality, so where are they going to learn to talk about it when they are in a relationship? Shame, guilt, ignorance, reservation, prudishness, all kinds of different cultural systems and social stereotypes shroud sexuality in secrecy and in silence. And there's the romantic notion. "If I say in the beginning, that I am missing something, you are instantly going to think that means you are not enough."” PeopleThinkingKindMeanDifferentEnoughSilenceGrowing UpMissingIgnoranceShameGuiltSilentSexualityAll KindsStereotypeSecrecy Author:Esther Perel
“Even a good marriage leaves people with longings for certain things their marriage will never be. So, do they accept that, make compromises, and say, "You can't have everything in life," which is what we always did? Or do they say, "I deserve more. I want to experience that thing and, you know, I have fifty more years to live than I used to." It's not necessarily that we have more desires today, but we do feel more entitled to pursue them. We live in this "right to happiness" culture, and yes, we do live half a century longer than we used to.” PeopleTodayDesireCultureAcceptingDeserveLongingCompromiseGood Marriage Author:Esther Perel
“Secrecy fuels erotic intensity because it makes you feel like you're doing something that is entirely yours. It gives you the sense of autonomy, the sense of freedom, and the sense of sovereignty. And then you add to that the sexual energy. In many affairs, people will tell you they slept with the person three or four times, but the story went on for months. That's an important thing because many people who have affairs often have very good sexual relationships at home. It's not necessarily a compensation story. But affairs offer a different sexuality with a different context.” PeopleGivingImportantDifferentHomeEnergyLike YouVery GoodAffairSexualitySovereigntyAutonomySecrecyCompensation Author:Esther Perel
“I say no to a double standard that men can roam and women must stay put at home. I say no to the fact that men are allowed to claim their sexuality and women just have to pretend that it doesn't matter to them. It's resisting poor relational arrangements. An affair is a way of saying, "No. I'm not playing by the rules." And sometimes betrayal is part of that because you deceive somebody else but you feel like you are, for the first time, being honest with yourself. Sometimes when people have affairs, they feel like they have been lying to themselves for years.” PeopleMenSometimesHomeLyingPoorHonestLike YouFirst TimeAffairBetrayalSexualityBeing HonestDeceivingDouble StandardHonest With YourselfBe Honest With Yourself Author:Esther Perel
“The one word I hear when people have affairs is that they feel alive. They don't talk about the fact they're having sex. They feel like they are engaged with their life. They describe an experience that beats back the deadness inside, which isn't the fault of the marriage or the partner. It's often the deadness that they have allowed to creep in for years on their own. But by definition, it's a transgressive act. And transgression is a breaking of the rules. And it gives you a sense of ownership and freedom. And ownership and freedom gives you a feeling of aliveness. It's a chain.” PeopleGivingFeelingsAffairOwnership Author:Esther Perel
“For some people, the experience of sexuality is that they are entirely inside their body, but others feel they have totally transcended the physical boundaries of their body. Transcendence is the ability to no longer feel you are contained within the physical world. For many people, the definition of spiritual is a sense of complete abdication of the self. For some people, it's union with another that transcends the borders between where one stops and where the other person starts and creates a sense of infiniteness and timelessness.” PeopleWorldSpiritualAbilitySexualityBoundariesTimelessness Author:Esther Perel
“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.” PeopleTwoDiesCommunityGroupsGrieving Author:Esther Perel
“Romantics value intensity over stability. Realists value security over passion. But both are often disappointed, for few people can live happily at either extreme.” PeopleValuesPassionSecurityExtremesDisappointedStabilityIntensityRealist Book:Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence Source: Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence
