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 →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 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
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