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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
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Picked this up because of a recommendation from a friend-Christina Lee. I listened to the audiobook version which is read by the author. I found the topic intriguing and the approach by the author relatable. I believe the author is asking the reader to consider the reasons “affairs” happen from a new perspective. I didn’t agree with everything the author believes considering that much comes from her own therapeutic and clinics practice rather than research. However, it did challenge me to consider within myself the values and beliefs that I hold regarding monogamy. Overall, an interesting topic that will become more relevant in this age of Tinder.
Builders
Explorers
Sufferers
Builders
Explorers
Sufferers
Even though I'm not in a long-term committed relationship or married at this time, I learned a lot about what I've thought about relationships in the past and what I've wanted from them previously. Things have shifted a little for me and I see how we've placed a lot of responsibility on the idea of a partner. What marriage means now compared to what it used to mean and how we've changed it up. I know that I am willing to be a partner who wants to be all things to someone else. And I would like that reciprocity. But I also know that it may be unrealistic to expect this, as well. So being in a relationship with someone else--a committed one--requires being realistic with each other and having realistic expectations of who we are choosing to be in it with. And knowing that we have friends and family members and relationships with them that we can also build and have meaningful relationships with. So we are not needing to get everything from one person all the time. I also appreciated the later discussions in the book about meanings and motives--expansion and self-discovery. Additionally, I am relating to the discussion of what it's like to be "the secret" and how women in that position find themselves sometimes stuck and disempowered, sometimes fulfilled and free. I am realizing how much I desire a sense of certainty and security.
"Contemporary discourse about the topic can be summed up as follows: Infidelity must be a symptom of a relationship gone awry. If you have everything you need at home, there should be no reason to go elsewhere. Men cheat out of boredom and fear of intimacy; women cheat out of loneliness and hunger for intimacy. The faithful partner is the mature, committed, realistic, one; the one who strays is selfish, immature, and lacks control. Affairs are always harmful and can never help a marriage or be accommodated. The only way to restore trust and intimacy is through truth-telling, repentance, and absolution. Last but not least, divorce affords more self-respect than forgiveness." pg. 5
"There are few neutral terms to describe adultery. Moral opprobrium has long been the prime tool for containing our unruly impulses, so much so that we have no words to speak of them without it. The language that is available to us clasps to its bosom the taboo and the stigma that infidelity represents. While the poets speak of lovers and adventurers, most people's preferred vocabulary includes cheaters, liars, traitors, sex addicts, philanderers, nymphos, womanizers, and sluts. The entire lexicon is organized around an axis of wrongdoing that not only reflects our judgment but fosters it. The term 'adultery' itself is derived from the Latin word meaning corruption. Even as I strive to bring a more balanced perspective to this topic, I am aware of the compromised language I will often be using." pg. 6
"Because I believe that some good may come out of the crisis of infidelity, I have often been asked, 'So, would you recommend an affair to a struggling couple?' My response? A lot of people have positive, life-changing experiences that come along with terminal illness. But I would no more recommend having an affair than I would recommend getting cancer." pg. 8
"Affairs are an act of betrayal and they are also an expression of longing and loss." pg. 10
"Affairs have a lot to teach us about relationships. They open the door to a deeper examination of values, human nature, and the power of eros. They force us to grapple with some of the most unsettling questions: What draws people outside the lines they worked so hard to establish? Why does sexual betrayal hurt so much? Is an affair always selfish and weak, or can it in some cases be understandable, acceptable, even an act of boldness and courage? And whether we have known this drama or not, what can we draw from the excitement of infidelity to enliven our relationships?
Must a secret love always be revealed? Does passion have a finite shelf life? And are there fulfillments that a marriage, even a good one, can never provide? How do we negotiate the elusive balance between our emotional needs and our erotic desires? Has monogamy outlived its usefulness? What is fidelity? Can we love more than one person at once?" pg. 13
"Today in the West most of us are going to have two or three significant long-term relationships or marriages. And some of us are going to do it with the same person. When a couple comes to me in the aftermath of an affair, I often tell them this: Your first marriage is over. Would you like to create a second one together?" pg. 17
"Affairs are a pathway to risk, danger, and the defiant energy of transgression. Unsure of the next date, we are ensured the excitement of anticipation. Adulterous love resides in a self-contained universe, secluded from the rest of the world. Affairs blossom in the margins of our lives, and as long as they are not exposed to broad daylight, their spell is preserved." pg. 25
"Desire is rooted in absence and longing." pg. 27
". . .many affairs are less about sex than about desire: the desire to feel desired, to feel special, to be seen and connected, to compel attention. All these carry an erotic frisson that makes us feel alive, renewed, recharged. It is more energy than act, more enchantment than intercourse." pg. 27
"In my decades of working with couples, I've observed that those who are most successful in keeping the erotic spark alive are those who are comfortable with the mystery in their midst. Even if they are monogamous in their actions, they recognize that they do not own each other's sexuality. It is precisely the elusiveness of the other that keeps them coming back to discover more." pg. 29
"Sometimes, however, the term 'emotional affair' is applied to relationships that are genuinely platonic but are perceived to be 'too close.' This is a notion that is deeply entwined in our ideals of modern coupledom. Because for many today, marriage is wedded to the concept of emotional intimacy and naked honesty, when we open our inner life to someone else, it can feel like a betrayal. Our model of romantic love is one in which we expect our partner to be our principal emotional companion--the only one with whom we share our deepest dreams, regrets, and anxieties.
We're on uncharted ground here. Emphasizing the 'emotional' as infidelity never even occurred to earlier generations, whose concept of marriage was not organized around emotional exclusiveness. It is still foreign in many parts of the world. Is it a helpful concept for couples today? Marriages have always been strengthened when partners can vent to others or find multiple outlets for emotional connection. When we channel all our intimate needs into one person, we actually stand to make the relationship more vulnerable." pg. 31
"We fulfilled our conjugal responsibilities in return for a much-needed sense of security and belonging. Love might arise, but it certainly was not essential. In any event, it was too flimsy an emotion to support such a weighty institution [as marriage]. Passion has always burned in the human heart, but it arose independent of the bonds of wedlock. In fact, historian Stephanie Coontz makes the intriguing point that when marriage was primarily an economic alliance, adultery was sometimes the space for love. 'Most societies have had romantic love, this combination of sexual passion, infatuation, and the romanticization of the partner,' she writes. 'But very often, those things were seen as inappropriate when attached to marriage. Because marriage was a political, economic, and mercenary event, many people believed that true, uncontaminated love could only exist without it.'" pg. 38
"It's worth remembering that until recently, marital fidelity and monogamy had nothing to do with love. It was a mainstay of patriarchy, imposed on women, to ensure patrimony and lineage--whose children are mine and who gets the cows (or the goats or the camels) when I die. Pregnancy confirms maternity, but without paternity tests, a father could be tormented for life when his only son and heir was blond and his entire family had not one light hair among them. A bride's virginity and a wife's monogamy were critical for protecting his pride and his bloodline." pg. 38-39
"First we brought love to marriage. Then we brought sex to love. And then we linked marital happiness with sexual satisfaction. Sex for procreation gave way to sex for recreation. While premarital sex became the norm, marital sex underwent its own little revolution, shifting from a woman's matrimonial duty to a joint pathway for pleasure and connection." pg. 41
"The centrality of intimacy in modern marriage is unquestioned. Emotional closeness has shifted from being the by-product of a long-term relationship to being a mandate for one. In the traditional world, intimacy had referred to the companionship and camaraderie born out of sharing the vicissitudes of everyday life--working the land; raising children; weathering loss, sickness, and hardship. Both men and women were more likely to seek friendship and a shoulder to lean on in same-sex relationships. Men bonded over work and beer, women connected through motherhood and borrowing flour." pg. 42
"Intimacy is 'into-me-see.' I am going to talk to you, my beloved, and I am going to share with you my most prized possessions, which are no longer my dowry and the fruit of my womb but my hopes, my aspirations, my fears, my longings, my feelings--in other words, my inner life. And you, my beloved, will give me eye contact. No scrolling while I bare my soul. I need to feel your empathy and validation. My significance depends on it." pg. 43
"Never before have our expectations of marriage taken on such epic proportions. We still want everything the traditional family was meant to provide--security, children, property, and respectability--but now we also want our partner to love us, to desire us to be interested in us. We should be best friends, trusted confidants, and passionate lovers to boot. The human imagination has conjured up a new Olympus: that love will remain unconditional, intimacy enthralling, and sex oh-so-exciting., for the long haul, with one person. And the long haul keeps getting longer." pg. 43
"Not only do we have endless demands, but on top of it all we want to be happy. That was once reserved for the afterlife. We've brought heaven down to earth, within reach of all, and now happiness is no longer just a pursuit, but a mandate. We expect one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide, and we live twice as long. It's a tall order for a party of two." pg. 44
"The men and women I work with invest more in love and happiness than ever before but in a cruel twist of fate, the resulting sense of entitlement is precisely what's behind today's exponential rise of infidelity and divorce. Once we strayed because marriage was not supposed to deliver love and passion. Today we stray because marriage fails to deliver the love, passion, and undivided attention it promised." pg. 45
"The disclosure is a pivotal moment in the story of an affair and of a marriage. The shock of discovery galvanizes the reptilian brain, triggering a primal response: fight, flight, or freeze. Some just stand there, dumbfounded; others can't get away fast enough--hoping to escape the upheaval and regain some sense of control over their lives. When the limbic system has been activated, short-term survival trumps well-thought-out decisions. As hard as it is to do in these moment, I often caution couples to separate their feelings about the affair from their decisions about the relationship. Too often their impulsive responses, while meant to be protective, can destroy years of positive marital capital in an instant. As a therapist, I too must be mindful of my reactions. The drama of infidelity elicits a cornucopia of feelings--sympathy, envy, curiosity, and compassion but also judgment, anger, and disgust. Being emotionally affected is natural, but projections are unhelpful." pg. 57-58
"Infidelity is a direct attack on one of our most important psychic structures: our memory of the past. It not only hijacks a couple's hopes and plans but also draws a question mark over their history. If we can't look back with any certainty and we can't know what will happen tomorrow, where does that leave us? . . .
We are willing to concede that the future is unpredictable, but we expect the past to be dependable. Betrayed by our beloved, we suffer the loss of a coherent narrative--the 'internal structure that helps us predict and regulate future actions and feelings [creating] a stable sense of self,' as psychiatrist Anna Fels defines it. In an article describing the corrosive effects of all kinds of relational betrayals, she reflects, 'perhaps robbing someone of his or her story is the greatest betrayal of all.'
In the obsessive drive to root out every facet of an affair lies the existential need to reweave the very tapestry of one's life. We are meaning-making creatures and we rely on coherence. The interrogations, the flashbacks, the circular ruminations, and the hypervigilance are all manifestations of a scattered life narrative trying to piece itself back together." pg. 64-65
"In the wake of betrayal, we need to find ways to restore our own sense of self-worth--to separate our feelings about ourselves from the way the other person has made us feel. When it seems like your entire being has been hijacked and your self-definition rests in the hands of the person who did this to you, it is important to remember that there are other parts to who you are.
You are not a reject, although part of you has been rejected. You are not a victim, although part of you has been abused. You are also loved, valued, honored, and cherished by others and even by your unfaithful partner, although you may not feel that in this moment." pg. 74
"In my early meetings with infidelity's casualties, I scan the wounds until I locate their specific emotional quality, identifying magnifiers and strategizing for buffers. Where does it hurt the most? What twisted the knife? The slight, the disloyalty, the abandonment, the breach of trust, the lies, the humiliation? Is it loss or rejection? Is it disillusion or shame? Is it relief, resignation, or indignation? What is the particular feeling or constellation of feelings around which you circle?" pg. 78-79
"Besides these activated biological circuits, Morgan was also caught in the psychological circuitry of early childhood losses. She was reliving multiple abandonments, some of which occurred even before she could remember, yet her body 'kept the score,' as psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk puts it. Injured love sits on top of other injured loves. Like a ricochet effect across time, one breach in the present can trigger the resonance of all the breaches of the past." pg. 104
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
"Contemporary discourse about the topic can be summed up as follows: Infidelity must be a symptom of a relationship gone awry. If you have everything you need at home, there should be no reason to go elsewhere. Men cheat out of boredom and fear of intimacy; women cheat out of loneliness and hunger for intimacy. The faithful partner is the mature, committed, realistic, one; the one who strays is selfish, immature, and lacks control. Affairs are always harmful and can never help a marriage or be accommodated. The only way to restore trust and intimacy is through truth-telling, repentance, and absolution. Last but not least, divorce affords more self-respect than forgiveness." pg. 5
"There are few neutral terms to describe adultery. Moral opprobrium has long been the prime tool for containing our unruly impulses, so much so that we have no words to speak of them without it. The language that is available to us clasps to its bosom the taboo and the stigma that infidelity represents. While the poets speak of lovers and adventurers, most people's preferred vocabulary includes cheaters, liars, traitors, sex addicts, philanderers, nymphos, womanizers, and sluts. The entire lexicon is organized around an axis of wrongdoing that not only reflects our judgment but fosters it. The term 'adultery' itself is derived from the Latin word meaning corruption. Even as I strive to bring a more balanced perspective to this topic, I am aware of the compromised language I will often be using." pg. 6
"Because I believe that some good may come out of the crisis of infidelity, I have often been asked, 'So, would you recommend an affair to a struggling couple?' My response? A lot of people have positive, life-changing experiences that come along with terminal illness. But I would no more recommend having an affair than I would recommend getting cancer." pg. 8
"Affairs are an act of betrayal and they are also an expression of longing and loss." pg. 10
"Affairs have a lot to teach us about relationships. They open the door to a deeper examination of values, human nature, and the power of eros. They force us to grapple with some of the most unsettling questions: What draws people outside the lines they worked so hard to establish? Why does sexual betrayal hurt so much? Is an affair always selfish and weak, or can it in some cases be understandable, acceptable, even an act of boldness and courage? And whether we have known this drama or not, what can we draw from the excitement of infidelity to enliven our relationships?
Must a secret love always be revealed? Does passion have a finite shelf life? And are there fulfillments that a marriage, even a good one, can never provide? How do we negotiate the elusive balance between our emotional needs and our erotic desires? Has monogamy outlived its usefulness? What is fidelity? Can we love more than one person at once?" pg. 13
"Today in the West most of us are going to have two or three significant long-term relationships or marriages. And some of us are going to do it with the same person. When a couple comes to me in the aftermath of an affair, I often tell them this: Your first marriage is over. Would you like to create a second one together?" pg. 17
"Affairs are a pathway to risk, danger, and the defiant energy of transgression. Unsure of the next date, we are ensured the excitement of anticipation. Adulterous love resides in a self-contained universe, secluded from the rest of the world. Affairs blossom in the margins of our lives, and as long as they are not exposed to broad daylight, their spell is preserved." pg. 25
"Desire is rooted in absence and longing." pg. 27
". . .many affairs are less about sex than about desire: the desire to feel desired, to feel special, to be seen and connected, to compel attention. All these carry an erotic frisson that makes us feel alive, renewed, recharged. It is more energy than act, more enchantment than intercourse." pg. 27
"In my decades of working with couples, I've observed that those who are most successful in keeping the erotic spark alive are those who are comfortable with the mystery in their midst. Even if they are monogamous in their actions, they recognize that they do not own each other's sexuality. It is precisely the elusiveness of the other that keeps them coming back to discover more." pg. 29
"Sometimes, however, the term 'emotional affair' is applied to relationships that are genuinely platonic but are perceived to be 'too close.' This is a notion that is deeply entwined in our ideals of modern coupledom. Because for many today, marriage is wedded to the concept of emotional intimacy and naked honesty, when we open our inner life to someone else, it can feel like a betrayal. Our model of romantic love is one in which we expect our partner to be our principal emotional companion--the only one with whom we share our deepest dreams, regrets, and anxieties.
We're on uncharted ground here. Emphasizing the 'emotional' as infidelity never even occurred to earlier generations, whose concept of marriage was not organized around emotional exclusiveness. It is still foreign in many parts of the world. Is it a helpful concept for couples today? Marriages have always been strengthened when partners can vent to others or find multiple outlets for emotional connection. When we channel all our intimate needs into one person, we actually stand to make the relationship more vulnerable." pg. 31
"We fulfilled our conjugal responsibilities in return for a much-needed sense of security and belonging. Love might arise, but it certainly was not essential. In any event, it was too flimsy an emotion to support such a weighty institution [as marriage]. Passion has always burned in the human heart, but it arose independent of the bonds of wedlock. In fact, historian Stephanie Coontz makes the intriguing point that when marriage was primarily an economic alliance, adultery was sometimes the space for love. 'Most societies have had romantic love, this combination of sexual passion, infatuation, and the romanticization of the partner,' she writes. 'But very often, those things were seen as inappropriate when attached to marriage. Because marriage was a political, economic, and mercenary event, many people believed that true, uncontaminated love could only exist without it.'" pg. 38
"It's worth remembering that until recently, marital fidelity and monogamy had nothing to do with love. It was a mainstay of patriarchy, imposed on women, to ensure patrimony and lineage--whose children are mine and who gets the cows (or the goats or the camels) when I die. Pregnancy confirms maternity, but without paternity tests, a father could be tormented for life when his only son and heir was blond and his entire family had not one light hair among them. A bride's virginity and a wife's monogamy were critical for protecting his pride and his bloodline." pg. 38-39
"First we brought love to marriage. Then we brought sex to love. And then we linked marital happiness with sexual satisfaction. Sex for procreation gave way to sex for recreation. While premarital sex became the norm, marital sex underwent its own little revolution, shifting from a woman's matrimonial duty to a joint pathway for pleasure and connection." pg. 41
"The centrality of intimacy in modern marriage is unquestioned. Emotional closeness has shifted from being the by-product of a long-term relationship to being a mandate for one. In the traditional world, intimacy had referred to the companionship and camaraderie born out of sharing the vicissitudes of everyday life--working the land; raising children; weathering loss, sickness, and hardship. Both men and women were more likely to seek friendship and a shoulder to lean on in same-sex relationships. Men bonded over work and beer, women connected through motherhood and borrowing flour." pg. 42
"Intimacy is 'into-me-see.' I am going to talk to you, my beloved, and I am going to share with you my most prized possessions, which are no longer my dowry and the fruit of my womb but my hopes, my aspirations, my fears, my longings, my feelings--in other words, my inner life. And you, my beloved, will give me eye contact. No scrolling while I bare my soul. I need to feel your empathy and validation. My significance depends on it." pg. 43
"Never before have our expectations of marriage taken on such epic proportions. We still want everything the traditional family was meant to provide--security, children, property, and respectability--but now we also want our partner to love us, to desire us to be interested in us. We should be best friends, trusted confidants, and passionate lovers to boot. The human imagination has conjured up a new Olympus: that love will remain unconditional, intimacy enthralling, and sex oh-so-exciting., for the long haul, with one person. And the long haul keeps getting longer." pg. 43
"Not only do we have endless demands, but on top of it all we want to be happy. That was once reserved for the afterlife. We've brought heaven down to earth, within reach of all, and now happiness is no longer just a pursuit, but a mandate. We expect one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide, and we live twice as long. It's a tall order for a party of two." pg. 44
"The men and women I work with invest more in love and happiness than ever before but in a cruel twist of fate, the resulting sense of entitlement is precisely what's behind today's exponential rise of infidelity and divorce. Once we strayed because marriage was not supposed to deliver love and passion. Today we stray because marriage fails to deliver the love, passion, and undivided attention it promised." pg. 45
"The disclosure is a pivotal moment in the story of an affair and of a marriage. The shock of discovery galvanizes the reptilian brain, triggering a primal response: fight, flight, or freeze. Some just stand there, dumbfounded; others can't get away fast enough--hoping to escape the upheaval and regain some sense of control over their lives. When the limbic system has been activated, short-term survival trumps well-thought-out decisions. As hard as it is to do in these moment, I often caution couples to separate their feelings about the affair from their decisions about the relationship. Too often their impulsive responses, while meant to be protective, can destroy years of positive marital capital in an instant. As a therapist, I too must be mindful of my reactions. The drama of infidelity elicits a cornucopia of feelings--sympathy, envy, curiosity, and compassion but also judgment, anger, and disgust. Being emotionally affected is natural, but projections are unhelpful." pg. 57-58
"Infidelity is a direct attack on one of our most important psychic structures: our memory of the past. It not only hijacks a couple's hopes and plans but also draws a question mark over their history. If we can't look back with any certainty and we can't know what will happen tomorrow, where does that leave us? . . .
We are willing to concede that the future is unpredictable, but we expect the past to be dependable. Betrayed by our beloved, we suffer the loss of a coherent narrative--the 'internal structure that helps us predict and regulate future actions and feelings [creating] a stable sense of self,' as psychiatrist Anna Fels defines it. In an article describing the corrosive effects of all kinds of relational betrayals, she reflects, 'perhaps robbing someone of his or her story is the greatest betrayal of all.'
In the obsessive drive to root out every facet of an affair lies the existential need to reweave the very tapestry of one's life. We are meaning-making creatures and we rely on coherence. The interrogations, the flashbacks, the circular ruminations, and the hypervigilance are all manifestations of a scattered life narrative trying to piece itself back together." pg. 64-65
"In the wake of betrayal, we need to find ways to restore our own sense of self-worth--to separate our feelings about ourselves from the way the other person has made us feel. When it seems like your entire being has been hijacked and your self-definition rests in the hands of the person who did this to you, it is important to remember that there are other parts to who you are.
You are not a reject, although part of you has been rejected. You are not a victim, although part of you has been abused. You are also loved, valued, honored, and cherished by others and even by your unfaithful partner, although you may not feel that in this moment." pg. 74
"In my early meetings with infidelity's casualties, I scan the wounds until I locate their specific emotional quality, identifying magnifiers and strategizing for buffers. Where does it hurt the most? What twisted the knife? The slight, the disloyalty, the abandonment, the breach of trust, the lies, the humiliation? Is it loss or rejection? Is it disillusion or shame? Is it relief, resignation, or indignation? What is the particular feeling or constellation of feelings around which you circle?" pg. 78-79
"Besides these activated biological circuits, Morgan was also caught in the psychological circuitry of early childhood losses. She was reliving multiple abandonments, some of which occurred even before she could remember, yet her body 'kept the score,' as psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk puts it. Injured love sits on top of other injured loves. Like a ricochet effect across time, one breach in the present can trigger the resonance of all the breaches of the past." pg. 104
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
informative
medium-paced
Extremely insightful, well written, and interesting
Definitely made me think about cheating in a different light. Not in a justification way but in a hmm maybe I understand the different places people are coming from now way. Idk if I agree with everything she said but definitely enlightening to think about. Also polyamory mention!!
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
informative
medium-paced