But when we reduce sex to a function, we also invoke the idea of dysfunction. We are no … - Esther Perel

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I do know without fear of contradiction what the definition of life is and it is 12 words long. 'Life is defined by how much you improve the lives of others. '

Esther Perel

But when we reduce sex to a function, we also invoke the idea of dysfunction. We are no longer talking about the art of sex; rather, we are talking about the mechanics of sex. Science has replaced religion as the authority; and science is a more formidable arbiter. Medicine knows how to scare even those who scoff at religion. Compared with a diagnosis, what's a mere sin? We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.

Art, Diagnosis, Old, Religion, Religious, Sex

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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.

Elsewhere, Leave, Looking, Person, Self, Want

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.

Given, Lost, One Day, Order, Partner

People cheat on each other in a hundred different ways: indifference, emotional neglect, contempt, lack of respect, years of refusal of intimacy. Cheating doesn't begin to describe the ways that people let each other down.

Cheating, Different, Emotional, Let, Neglect, Years

At this point, we are living one of the greatest experiments in humankind - to create something that has, throughout history, been considered a contradiction in terms - a passionate marriage. Passion has always existed, but it took place somewhere else. Everything that we wanted from a traditional marriage - companionship, family, children, economic support, a best friend, a passionate lover, a trusted confidante, an intellectual equal - we are asking from one person what an entire village once provided. And couples are crumbling under the weight of so much expectation.

Children, Confidante, Couple, Expectation, Passion, Point

We know desire is rooted in absence and yearning. What you don't have is often ten times richer than what you actually experience. An affair is a perfect erotic plot because it fits the erotic equation of psychotherapist Jack Morin: "Attraction plus obstacle equals excitement. ".

Desire, Morin, Obstacles, Perfect, Plot, Ten