The attraction of dating is that you don't take yes for granted - - you're fully engaged, there's seductiveness, tension.

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.

Erotic intelligence stretches far beyond a repertoire of sexual techniques. It is an intelligence that celebrates curiosity and play, the power of the imagination, and our infinite fascination with what is hidden and mysterious.

The kiss that you have never given is just as powerful as hours of actual lovemaking. The erotic isn't just what is happening between people's legs. It is also what's happening in their erotic mind.

Our consumer economy peddles the notions "romantic consumerism" of finding "the one," of being the one. It's the narcissistic enhancement of, "I'm the one you stopped your nomadic life for." It's one thing when you have sex for the first time when you marry, but it's another thing altogether when you stop having sex with others when you marry. So the marital commitment becomes, "I must be really special. With me, you no longer think you can find better next door." Romantic consumerism is thinking you can't find better, younger or newer.

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.

What is the relationship between love and desire? How do they relate, and how do they conflict? ... Therein lies the mystery of eroticism.