The very ingredients that nurture love - mutuality, reciprocity, protection, worry, responsibility for the other - are sometimes the very ingredients that stifle desire.
Esther PerelRead
Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True love requires both surrendering to one another and maintaining individual independence.
This quote by Esther Perel highlights the dual nature of love, where intimacy and independence coexist. It suggests that a healthy relationship thrives on both partners willing to surrender to each other while also honoring their individual identities and needs, leading to a balanced and fulfilling connection.
Themes
LoveRelationshipsIntimacyIndependenceTogetherness
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during relationship workshops to illustrate the importance of balancing intimacy and independence.
More from Esther Perel
All quotes βLove 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 PerelRead
If you start to feel that you have given up too many parts of yourself to be with your partner, then one day you will end up looking for another person in order to reconnect with those lost parts.
Esther PerelRead
What is the relationship between love and desire? How do they relate, and how do they conflict? ... Therein lies the mystery of eroticism.
Esther PerelRead
Eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other.
Esther PerelRead
Most of us will get turned on at night by the very same things that we will demonstrate against during the day - the erotic mind is not very politically correct.
Esther PerelRead
Similar quotes
Where I come from," said Archie, "a bloke likes to get to know a girl before he marries her." "Where you come from it is customary to boil vegetables until they fall apart. This does not mean," said Samad tersely, "that it is a good idea.
Zadie SmithRead
Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox - affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship.
Peter UstinovRead
If you've got to my age, you've probably had your heart broken many times. So it's not that difficult to unpack a bit of grief from some little corner of your heart and cry over it.
Emma ThompsonRead
Professional marriage counselors agree that the most productive and mature way to deal with marital anger is to stomp dramatically from the room. You want to make your move before the opponent does, because the first person to stomp from the room receives valuable Argument Points that can be redeemed for exciting merchandise at the Marital Prize Redemption Center.
Dave BarryRead
My parents and I entered the U.S. legally, but when it was time for our visa extension, we were turned down. Returning to China meant imprisonment for my father and persecution for my family. We were days from being forced to live here illegally when we were granted political asylum. Other families are not so lucky.
Leana S. WenRead
Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.
J. R. R. TolkienRead