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

For some people, the experience of sexuality is that they are entirely inside their body, but others feel they have totally transcended the physical boundaries of their body. Transcendence is the ability to no longer feel you are contained within the physical world. For many people, the definition of spiritual is a sense of complete abdication of the self. For some people, it's union with another that transcends the borders between where one stops and where the other person starts and creates a sense of infiniteness and timelessness.

The power of transgression is the archetypal, foundational story of the Bible. We want to break our own codes - sometimes of morality, sometimes of ethics, sometimes of the power structure, sometimes of the institution of marriage - because there is freedom and power in transgression.

The vast majority of unfaithful people are experiencing a conflict between their values and their behavior, and that is the mess of infidelity. It's not an either-or. The idea that you would ask, "How can you say you love your husband and you want to stay married, and you also are having an affair?" Because we are not the same woman, or the same man. Because sexual revolutions don't take place at home. Because for most of us, freedom wasn't something that we experienced in our family, but usually outside of our family.

As a teenager growing up in Europe, I embraced the romantic ideal. For me, I had to give up the ideal that one person would be there for everything. Once you give up that ideal, then you begin to accept the person that you are with - the person who won't be able to give you everything and who won't be able to know exactly what you want and feel without you even needing to say it.

There is no sex without a cue. People who date have their cues at home, before they meet. You think about where to go, what to eat, what to do and say. Sometimes the cue is short - - just before we reach the bar - - but sex is never just spontaneous. Spontaneity is a myth.

The whole notion of one person being enough for everything gets instantly challenged when you start to talk with somebody about wanting more or of wanting something else. They take it personally, feel like a failure or feel that they lack something, so you don't talk about it because you don't want to hurt, offend, or scare the other person. You also don't want to be rejected or have them leave you, whatever the reason.