We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.
On some level we trade passion for security, that’s trading one illusion for another. It’s a matter of degree. We can’t live in constant fear, but we can’t live without any. The fear of loss is essential to love.
Today, our sexuality is an open-ended personal project; it is part of who we are, an identity, and no longer merely something we do.
The attraction of dating is that you don’t take yes for granted – – you’re fully engaged, there’s seductiveness, tension.
Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.
The very ingredients that nurture love – mutuality, reciprocity, protection, worry, responsibility for the other – are sometimes the very ingredients that stifle desire.
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.
Are you asking a question because you want to know the answer or are you asking the question because you want your partner to know that you are having this question?
In desire, there must be some small amount of tension. And that tension comes with the unknown, the unpredictable. You can close yourself off at home and say, “Whew, at last I’m in a place where I don’t have to worry,” or you can keep yourself open to the mystery and elusiveness of your partner.
You never know your partner as well as you think.
In dating, if you say no, your lover goes on to the next person. In marriage, if you say no, the person stays.
There’s something very full in knowing that your partner accepts you as is.
When there is nothing left to hide, there is nothing left to seek.
In my community there were two groups of people, There were the ones who did not die and the ones who came back to life.
Romantics value intensity over stability. Realists value security over passion. But both are often disappointed, for few people can live happily at either extreme.
Love is at once an affirmation and a transcendence of who we are.
Women – – and men – – need to understand that a woman’s transition is often much longer. The caretaker must leave the place of orientation to the needs of others to the place where she focuses on herself.
Eroticism thrives in the space between the self and the other.
Everyone should cultivate a secret garden.
Today, monogamy is one person at a time.