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658 reviews for:
The State Of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity - a book for anyone who has ever loved
Esther Perel
4.26 AVERAGE
658 reviews for:
The State Of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity - a book for anyone who has ever loved
Esther Perel
4.26 AVERAGE
If you've been cheated on, read this book! If you've cheated on someone, read this book! If you've thought about cheating, read this book! If you judge people who cheat on their partners, read this book! If you're a therapist and want to develop compassion for someone who is part of an affair, read this book! Esther Perel will help you understand why people cheat, what the affair means, and how repair can happen in a relationship where infidelity has occurred. Would highly recommend reading this if you live in a culture where monogamy is the default setting for relationships.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
for people who have or are willing to pull their head out of the sand and consider romantic relationships in a reasoned light.
No matter what your thoughts or experiences are regarding infidelity, every adult human should read this book.
I love Esther Perel m, who I first heard through her TED talks. She, and her body of research, is fascinating, and illuminates the nature of humans and human relationships. A must-read.
I love Esther Perel m, who I first heard through her TED talks. She, and her body of research, is fascinating, and illuminates the nature of humans and human relationships. A must-read.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This book was really eye-opening and challenged my black and white opinions of infidelity. I was forced to realise that my knee-jerk reaction to cheating being "ditch their ass" was immature and nowhere near as simple.
I learned not only about the complexities of infidelity but also about relationship counselling which was interesting in and of itself.
I appreciated that Esther Perel did not just focus on straight, white, western couples; that her clientele was very diverse. She focused on couples of different sexualities, different cultures, monogamous and non-monogamous relationships. I think the only downside is that Perel focuses mainly on marriages as opposed to long-term relationships.
I think this book has the potential to help those who have been cheated on, those who have been the cheater, people who are worried about their significant other cheating and people whose significant other is paranoid about them cheating.
I learned not only about the complexities of infidelity but also about relationship counselling which was interesting in and of itself.
I appreciated that Esther Perel did not just focus on straight, white, western couples; that her clientele was very diverse. She focused on couples of different sexualities, different cultures, monogamous and non-monogamous relationships. I think the only downside is that Perel focuses mainly on marriages as opposed to long-term relationships.
I think this book has the potential to help those who have been cheated on, those who have been the cheater, people who are worried about their significant other cheating and people whose significant other is paranoid about them cheating.
medium-paced
As a therapist and someone who has been in relationships, this book challenged me in many ways and made me re-think some of my assumptions.
challenging
informative
medium-paced
I found this interesting/challenging especially as I thought about which stories I had the strongest reactions to, and which I found more "forgivable".
State of Affairs – Esther Perel
Wow, this is one of the most true and insightful books on long term relationships I have ever read. It brought so much to the table that I have observed but not understood, in terms of, in particular, for me, male sexual psychology. Anyone who has ever been affected in any way by infidelity has an enormous amount to gain by reading this perceptive book.
It was long ago and far away that I was impacted by infidelity, but this book renders the meaning from that experience clearly and wisely, and has so much to offer in terms of moving on and sustaining long term relationships, affected or not by an affair.
It is fundamentally about the pressures of captive love and of society’s expectations upon people in a loving relationship, and the way that media and porn and success and children impact upon us. The whys and the hows. It leaves the reader far more able to understand the pressures under which we place ourselves and each other, and the emotions which drive our often unconscious reactions to these pressures.
It’s the sort of book I’d love to give to my daughters, but they would be mortally offended, and think it unnecessary because they haven’t been affected by infidelity. Ah, but it has so much to offer even them, because it gives a measure of what we are up against, and the various ways we react to our own psychology, and that of our parents.
No matter if we are high achievers, or under confident, male or female, differently sexual or gendered, see ourselves as sexual beings or not; these factors will affect the way we view intimacy, and our partners. And it is for this reason that the questions I see readers ask about whether Esther covers a gamut of permutations of types of relationships are beside the point – she covers so well the psychological traps and pressures, self image and stereotypes and their consequences which will be relevant to any type of relationship, couple or plural, of any type.
Often, the unacknowledged feelings lie in wait for us and affect us only minorly, but we can be so freed by an understanding of them.
203:Men are much more likely to soothe their inner rumblings by turning to less emotionally complicated forms of sex, including solitary pleasures and paid ones. In fact, I can imagine that the level of disassociation that they bring to their sexual fixes is a direct response to all these uncomfortable emotional pulls. I would suggest that precisely because male sexuality is so relational, many guys seek sexual spaces that are the exact opposite where they don’t have to confront the litany of fears, anxieties and insecurities that would make the biggest stallion limp… I don’t think it’s an accident that I’ve observed an increase in emotionally disengaged acts of infidelity in tandem with the rise of the emotionally engaged man…the tightrope of modern masculinity.
These quotes might make it sound like Perel is excusing men for their infidelities, but this would be a misrepresentation. She lets no one off lightly, and certainly sees this as a problem that needs addressing.
Society’s stereotypes, for men encouraging exploitation and emotional disengagement and for women sex and love in combination, affect all of us, no matter where we place ourselves on the spectrum. Yet these are two difficult things to sit on the same side of the scale.
Perel illustrates her points with lots of fascinating and intimate case studies of endless variety and deep and original insight. In one of them, for example she describes a reversed stereotypical relationship where for years (successful and sexy) Danielle and (SNAG and househusband) Jonah wished for more erotic zest, but they both colluded in creating its vacancy. Danielle had a real stake in keeping Jonah in a caretaking role and assuming he was incapable of roaming. By desexualizing him, she made him safe. Now this all sounds like something we might know already, but Perel adds the insight that Jonah’s problem was not that he couldn’t sexualise his wife to himself, but that he became unable to sexualise himself.. this simple role reversal gave me an insight I might never have otherwise come to, about what part our choices play, and how they impact on each other and ourselves. But the examples are so plentiful..
In the final section, of the book, Perel points a way forward, towards resilience, where there may seem to be none.
She is such a sensitive teaser out of meaning from listening to all those intimate conversations, is so good at nuance and holding so many fine gradations of uncertainty and understanding that she really brings a great deal of significance to her observations.
Of couples who manage to make it through an affair, into a rekindling of their own fires of passion, she notes: 295: the uncovering of his affair threw them into turmoil, but I remember noting during our sessions that they had an uncanny ability to express and accept a wide range of feelings without demanding premature ‘closure’. Their tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty opened up a space for exploration, in which they could more deeply reconnect.
Leaving behind the constant need to take the moral high ground, or to be the wounded one ‘in the right’, can bring to the conversation an ability to ‘distinguish wrong from hurtful’, and a way forward, into a joint owning of the experience, a rewriting of the script of hurt from victim and perpetrator to a joint understanding. As Perel says, what started outside the relationship is now housed within, and becomes a way marker in the long journey of relationship, rather than a deal breaker.
Hard as we might try to affair proof our relationships, and much that our instincts push us in that direction, the restrictions of rules that we feel inclined to put in place to safeguard us are as likely to offer a signpost to excitement for the transgressor, or to trap us in fatal mundanity as they are to preserve us. No matter how open the relationship; going outside its boundaries will be a temptation for some of us, or some part of ourselves. Any certainty that we feel we have is a construction made of wilful blindness. The conflation of trust and safety is a potent but corrosive drug.
We need to remember that we are the lucky recipients, not the singular font, of our partners desires, and to fail to hold this in our minds is to slip into complacency and grantedness, which is why the shock of an affair can become an injection of tonic into a relationship, if handled right, in the long term.
For me, this wise woman holds the key, truly, to relationship recovery and self understanding; she can hold out the alternatives and talk about the consequences so that you can make immeasurably better understandings for your own situation.
True to her promise, and broadening her audience beyond those who have directly experienced infidelity, Perel offers advice on ways for existing long term relationships to learn from experiences of infidelity that need not be their own.
To finish with her words: Our partners do not belong to us; they are only on loan, with an option to renew – or not. Knowing that we can lose them does not have to undermine commitment; rather, it mandates an active engagement that long-term couples often lose. The realisation that our loved ones are forever elusive should jolt us out of complacency, in the most positive sense(301).
Wow, this is one of the most true and insightful books on long term relationships I have ever read. It brought so much to the table that I have observed but not understood, in terms of, in particular, for me, male sexual psychology. Anyone who has ever been affected in any way by infidelity has an enormous amount to gain by reading this perceptive book.
It was long ago and far away that I was impacted by infidelity, but this book renders the meaning from that experience clearly and wisely, and has so much to offer in terms of moving on and sustaining long term relationships, affected or not by an affair.
It is fundamentally about the pressures of captive love and of society’s expectations upon people in a loving relationship, and the way that media and porn and success and children impact upon us. The whys and the hows. It leaves the reader far more able to understand the pressures under which we place ourselves and each other, and the emotions which drive our often unconscious reactions to these pressures.
It’s the sort of book I’d love to give to my daughters, but they would be mortally offended, and think it unnecessary because they haven’t been affected by infidelity. Ah, but it has so much to offer even them, because it gives a measure of what we are up against, and the various ways we react to our own psychology, and that of our parents.
No matter if we are high achievers, or under confident, male or female, differently sexual or gendered, see ourselves as sexual beings or not; these factors will affect the way we view intimacy, and our partners. And it is for this reason that the questions I see readers ask about whether Esther covers a gamut of permutations of types of relationships are beside the point – she covers so well the psychological traps and pressures, self image and stereotypes and their consequences which will be relevant to any type of relationship, couple or plural, of any type.
Often, the unacknowledged feelings lie in wait for us and affect us only minorly, but we can be so freed by an understanding of them.
203:Men are much more likely to soothe their inner rumblings by turning to less emotionally complicated forms of sex, including solitary pleasures and paid ones. In fact, I can imagine that the level of disassociation that they bring to their sexual fixes is a direct response to all these uncomfortable emotional pulls. I would suggest that precisely because male sexuality is so relational, many guys seek sexual spaces that are the exact opposite where they don’t have to confront the litany of fears, anxieties and insecurities that would make the biggest stallion limp… I don’t think it’s an accident that I’ve observed an increase in emotionally disengaged acts of infidelity in tandem with the rise of the emotionally engaged man…the tightrope of modern masculinity.
These quotes might make it sound like Perel is excusing men for their infidelities, but this would be a misrepresentation. She lets no one off lightly, and certainly sees this as a problem that needs addressing.
Society’s stereotypes, for men encouraging exploitation and emotional disengagement and for women sex and love in combination, affect all of us, no matter where we place ourselves on the spectrum. Yet these are two difficult things to sit on the same side of the scale.
Perel illustrates her points with lots of fascinating and intimate case studies of endless variety and deep and original insight. In one of them, for example she describes a reversed stereotypical relationship where for years (successful and sexy) Danielle and (SNAG and househusband) Jonah wished for more erotic zest, but they both colluded in creating its vacancy. Danielle had a real stake in keeping Jonah in a caretaking role and assuming he was incapable of roaming. By desexualizing him, she made him safe. Now this all sounds like something we might know already, but Perel adds the insight that Jonah’s problem was not that he couldn’t sexualise his wife to himself, but that he became unable to sexualise himself.. this simple role reversal gave me an insight I might never have otherwise come to, about what part our choices play, and how they impact on each other and ourselves. But the examples are so plentiful..
In the final section, of the book, Perel points a way forward, towards resilience, where there may seem to be none.
She is such a sensitive teaser out of meaning from listening to all those intimate conversations, is so good at nuance and holding so many fine gradations of uncertainty and understanding that she really brings a great deal of significance to her observations.
Of couples who manage to make it through an affair, into a rekindling of their own fires of passion, she notes: 295: the uncovering of his affair threw them into turmoil, but I remember noting during our sessions that they had an uncanny ability to express and accept a wide range of feelings without demanding premature ‘closure’. Their tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty opened up a space for exploration, in which they could more deeply reconnect.
Leaving behind the constant need to take the moral high ground, or to be the wounded one ‘in the right’, can bring to the conversation an ability to ‘distinguish wrong from hurtful’, and a way forward, into a joint owning of the experience, a rewriting of the script of hurt from victim and perpetrator to a joint understanding. As Perel says, what started outside the relationship is now housed within, and becomes a way marker in the long journey of relationship, rather than a deal breaker.
Hard as we might try to affair proof our relationships, and much that our instincts push us in that direction, the restrictions of rules that we feel inclined to put in place to safeguard us are as likely to offer a signpost to excitement for the transgressor, or to trap us in fatal mundanity as they are to preserve us. No matter how open the relationship; going outside its boundaries will be a temptation for some of us, or some part of ourselves. Any certainty that we feel we have is a construction made of wilful blindness. The conflation of trust and safety is a potent but corrosive drug.
We need to remember that we are the lucky recipients, not the singular font, of our partners desires, and to fail to hold this in our minds is to slip into complacency and grantedness, which is why the shock of an affair can become an injection of tonic into a relationship, if handled right, in the long term.
For me, this wise woman holds the key, truly, to relationship recovery and self understanding; she can hold out the alternatives and talk about the consequences so that you can make immeasurably better understandings for your own situation.
True to her promise, and broadening her audience beyond those who have directly experienced infidelity, Perel offers advice on ways for existing long term relationships to learn from experiences of infidelity that need not be their own.
To finish with her words: Our partners do not belong to us; they are only on loan, with an option to renew – or not. Knowing that we can lose them does not have to undermine commitment; rather, it mandates an active engagement that long-term couples often lose. The realisation that our loved ones are forever elusive should jolt us out of complacency, in the most positive sense(301).
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
Really needed to read this