Who is Esther Perel?
Esther Perel is the New York Times bestselling author, also known as one of today’s most insightful and original voices on modern relationships. She is fluent in nine languages and serves as an organizational consultant for Fortune 500 companies around the world. She has helmed a therapy practice in New York City for more than 35 years.
Since she wrote Mating In Captivity, Perel has come to be recognized as a worldwide authority on sex and infidelity. In recent years, she has specialized in working with couples who’ve experienced unfaithfulness, a subject she explores in her 2017 book, The State of Affairs.
Her quotes on relationships, love, and infidelity have captured the real sense of relationships of today’s era. Below is our collection of Esther Perel inspirational quotes and sayings that will lighten your day.
Esther Perel Quotes on Relationship
“A couple’s emotional life together and their physical life together each have their ebbs and flows, their ups and downs, but these don’t always correspond. They intersect, they influence each other, but they’re also distinct.” – Esther Perel
“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
“Spontaneity is a fabulous idea, but in an ongoing relationship whatever is going to ‘just happen’ already has. Now they have to make it happen.” – Esther Perel
“If you’re too busy for sex, you’re too busy.” – Esther Perel
“When you pick a partner, you pick a story. So what kind of story are you going to write?” – Esther Perel
“When we channel all our intimate needs into one person, we actually stand to make the relationship more vulnerable.” – Esther Perel
“When marriage was an economic arrangement, infidelity threatened our economic security; today marriage is a romantic arrangement and infidelity threatens our emotional security.” – Esther Perel
“Marriage is imperfect. We start with a desire for oneness, and then we discover our differences. Our fears are aroused by the prospect of all the things we’re never going to have.” – Esther Perel
“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.” v
“The smaller we feel in the world, the more we need to shine in the eyes of our partner.” – Esther Perel
“When two become one—connection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with. Thus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy and sex.” – Esther Perel
“When I see my partner on his own or her own, doing something in which they are enveloped, I look at this person and I momentarily get a shift in perception, and I stay open to the mysteries that are living right next to me.” – 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
“When our ability to consider + understand the feelings of others decreases, our relationships suffer.” – Esther Perel
“The idea of finding the one is problematic for relationships.” – Esther Perel
“Some relationships originate in feelings of warmth, tenderness, and nurturance, and the partners choose to remain in these calmer waters. They prefer a love that is built on patience more than on passion. To them, finding serenity in a lasting bond is what counts. There is no one way, and there is no right way.” – Esther Perel
“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.” – Esther Perel
“Is jealousy an expression of love or a sign of insecurity?” – Esther Perel
“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.” – Esther Perel
“When people live in acute stress, either the cracks in their relationship will be amplified or the light that shines through the cracks will be amplified. You get an amplification of the best and of the worst.” – Esther Perel
Esther Perel Quotes on Love
“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
“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.” – Esther Perel
“It isn’t so much that we want to leave the person we are with as we want to leave the person we have become.” – Esther Perel
“Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.” – Esther Perel
“Love is an exercise in selective perception.” – Esther Perel
“When you love someone, how does it feel? And when you desire someone, how is it different? Does good intimacy always lead to good sex?” – Esther Perel
“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.” – Esther Perel
“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.” – Esther Perel
“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.” – Esther Perel
“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.” – Esther Perel
“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
“It’s hard to experience desire when you’re weighted down by concern.” – Esther Perel
“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
“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
“The realization that our loved ones are forever elusive should jolt us out of complacency, in the most positive sense.” – Esther Perel
Esther Perel Quotes on Infidelity
“When the impulse to share becomes obligatory, when personal boundaries are no longer respected, when only the shared space of togetherness is acknowledged and private space is denied, fusion replaces intimacy and possession co-opts love.” – Esther Perel
“An affair simply alerts us to a preexisting condition, either a troubled relationship or a troubled person.” – Esther Perel
“There is more than a hint of arrogance in the assumption that we can make our relationships permanent.” – Esther Perel
“The smaller we feel in the world, the more we need to shine in the eyes of our partner.” – Esther Perel
“Infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy.” – Esther Perel
“In our consumer culture, we always want the next best thing: the latest, the newest, the youngest. Failing that, we at least want more: more intensity, more variety, more stimulation. We seek instant gratification and are increasingly intolerant of any frustration. Nowhere are we encouraged to be satisfied with what we have, to think, ‘this is good. This is enough.’” – Esther Perel
“We narrow down our partner, ignoring or rejecting essential parts when they threaten the established order of our coupledom. We also reduce ourselves, jettisoning large chunks of our personalities in the name of love.” – Esther Perel
“We set out to make love more secure and dependable, but in the process, inevitably we dial down its intensity. On the path of commitment, we happily trade a little passion for a bit more certainty, some excitement for some stability.” – Esther Perel
“When we trade passion for stability, are we not merely swapping one fantasy for another?” – Esther Perel
“Adultery is often the revenge of the deserted possibilities.” – Esther Perel
“No woman should give any man the power to shatter her romantic ideals.”– Esther Perel
“The swiping culture lures us with infinite possibilities, but it also exerts a subtle tyranny. The constant awareness of ready alternatives invites unfavorable comparisons, weakens commitment, and prevents us from enjoying the present moment.” – Esther Perel
“Once divorce carried all the stigma. Now, choosing to stay when you can leave is the new shame.” – Esther Perel
“A couple’s emotional life together and their physical life together each have their ebbs and flows, their ups and downs, but these don’t always correspond. They intersect, they influence each other, but they’re also distinct.” – Esther Perel
“Infidelity hurts. But when we grant it a special status in the hierarchy of marital misdemeanors, we risk allowing it to overshadow the egregious behaviors that may have preceded it or even led to it.”– Esther Perel
Hope that you liked these Esther Perel Quotes. Her quotes are unlocking the reality behind adultery and unfaithfulness.
