The very ingredients that nurture love - mutuality, reciprocity, protection, worry, responsibility for the other - are sometimes the very ingredients that stifle desire.
Esther PerelRead
Very often we don’t go elsewhere because we are looking for another person. We go elsewhere because we are looking for another self. 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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
People often seek change not just to escape others, but to rediscover themselves.
In this quote, Esther Perel highlights the idea that when individuals seek new experiences or change their surroundings, it is often not just about wanting to leave their current relationships or partners, but rather it is a deeper desire to reconnect with their own identity and essence. The longing to escape might stem from feeling lost or transformed into someone they do not recognize, prompting a quest for self-discovery and authenticity.
Themes
Self-DiscoveryChangeIdentityRelationshipsEscape
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about personal growth and self-awareness.
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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