Secrecy fuels erotic intensity because it makes you feel like you're doing something that is entirely yours. It gives you the sense of autonomy, the sense of freedom, and the sense of sovereignty. And then you add to that the sexual energy. In many affairs, people will tell you they slept with the person three or four times, but the story went on for months. That's an important thing because many people who have affairs often have very good sexual relationships at home. It's not necessarily a compensation story. But affairs offer a different sexuality with a different context.
Esther PerelI believe that the vast majority of people that are unfaithful are monogamous in their beliefs. The ones who are not monogamous in their beliefs either live in poly relationships or consensual non-monogamous relationships, or they have divorced. If it's very bad, then people don't stay married these days in the West. They can be married and have their family, but they want something else - they want something that they don't have in their lives, or simply to be someone that isn't who they are in the context of their marriage.
Esther PerelI do consider even going to prostitutes, or seeing a hooker or an escort, as having an emotional component, even if it's not an emotion necessarily in the relationship. Even if you are paying in order to absolve yourself of any emotional involvement. That's the paradox.
Esther PerelI think love is often a bit selfish, even before we had consumerism. That's not new. A consumer society gives you the illusion of having massive amounts of choice and saddles you with the freedom of being able to dabble in that choice. And at the same time, you are left with the tyranny of self-doubt and uncertainty about whether you made the right choice.
Esther PerelThe one word I hear when people have affairs is that they feel alive. They don't talk about the fact they're having sex. They feel like they are engaged with their life. They describe an experience that beats back the deadness inside, which isn't the fault of the marriage or the partner. It's often the deadness that they have allowed to creep in for years on their own. But by definition, it's a transgressive act. And transgression is a breaking of the rules. And it gives you a sense of ownership and freedom. And ownership and freedom gives you a feeling of aliveness. It's a chain.
Esther PerelIf a woman isn't feeling sexual with herself, she won't respond to advances from any partner, male or female. When this woman goes dancing, she's finding a connection with her own erotic self. It might be about being on a dance floor, feeling free, not having to feel at all responsible for anybody else's well-being. For other people, it might be about going on a hike for four days by herself and reconnecting with nature and strength and endurance and beauty.
Esther PerelPeople grow up learning to be silent about their sexuality, so where are they going to learn to talk about it when they are in a relationship? Shame, guilt, ignorance, reservation, prudishness, all kinds of different cultural systems and social stereotypes shroud sexuality in secrecy and in silence. And there's the romantic notion. "If I say in the beginning, that I am missing something, you are instantly going to think that means you are not enough."
Esther Perel