The State Of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity Quotes
"We want our chosen one to offer stability, safety, predictability, and dependability—all the anchoring experiences. And we want that very same person to supply awe, mystery, adventure, and risk."
"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."
"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."
"Infidelity says, You’re not so special after all. It shatters the grand ambition of love."
"Monogamy used to mean one person for life. Now monogamy means one person at a time."
"The more sexually active our society has become, the more intractable its attitude toward cheating."
"For modern love’s acolytes, it seems to hurt more than ever."
"The maelstrom of emotions that are unleashed in the wake of an affair is so overwhelming that many contemporary psychologists borrow from the field of trauma to explain the symptoms."
"Treating infidelity has become a specialty among mental health professionals—in part because the experience is so cataclysmic."
"Feelings do not lay themselves out neatly along a flowchart of appropriateness."
"Short-term survival trumps well-thought-out decisions."
"Love that is deprived of its freedom and willing surrender is not love."
"Every couple lives in the shadow of the third."
"Realizing that she had totally disconnected from her friends... she separated the injury from her own essence."
"The green-eyed monster causes much woe, but the absence of this ugly serpent argues the presence of a corpse whose name is Eros."
"Jealousy is an honest feeling because it cannot disguise itself."
"Sometimes, when we seek the gaze of another, it isn’t our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become."
"Affairs offer us a window into those other lives, a peek at the stranger within."
"The affair lives in the shadow of the marriage, but the marriage also lives in the center of the affair."
"Transgression is at the heart of human nature."
"We all have multiple selves, but in our intimate relationships, we tend to reduce our complexity."
"In modern life, there is always a suspicion that one is living a lie or a mistake."
"Affairs are, by definition, precarious, elusive, and ambiguous."
"The most intoxicating other that people discover in the affair is not a new partner; it's a new self."
"The quest for the unexplored self is a powerful theme of the adulterous narrative."
"Our conversations help Priya bring clarity to her confusing picture."
"Being cheated on makes people feel insignificant, but feeling insignificant for years on end may lead people to cheat."
"If the erection isn’t there, it’s a mechanical issue."
"Sexual desire doesn’t always play by the rules of good citizenship."
"The adulterous alarm system can shake up a calcified couple like nothing else."
"When sex is woefully lacking, and not by mutual agreement, it is not monogamy—it’s enforced celibacy."
"Sexual honesty isn’t just about divulging the details of your infidelities. It’s about communicating with your partner in an open and mature way."
"Eroticism is not always politically correct."
"A breach is sometimes the necessary doorway into a new social order."
"The victim of the affair is not always the victim of the marriage."
"Sometimes we need the actual experience of being with another person to taste a sweeter life and have the guts to go after it."
"For Matt, it seems like it’s been forever, although he can’t pinpoint exactly when the sex disappeared."
"Mercedes wanted to want, but she didn’t miss it that much."
"In a classic pursuer-distancer dynamic, each of them would reinforce in the other the very behavior they abhorred."
"By Friday, he would touch her so lightly that if she didn’t respond, he could pretend he’d never asked."
"Deflated, he’d retreat to the other room to relieve himself at the computer."
"Twice annually, the intricate choreography of sexual refusal was interrupted, their anniversary and his birthday."
"Many people have affairs not to exit their marriages, but in order to stay in them."
"He is no longer faithful, but he is as loyal as ever."
"She could go to the love nest, be all sexy, have him think she was wonderful, make a delicious lunch and drink a bottle of wine, and then go home alone."
"She gave him her love for thirty years, and she paid a high price."
"Although it was a decade ago, I’ve never forgotten my first session with Luke and Anais, because very soon I found myself telling them, 'Your marriage is over.'"
"I felt she had conned me into seeing a therapist who wouldn’t even try to keep us together."
"Someone needed to open a door for him that he would not dare enter alone."
"In situations like this, it’s critical that one’s ability to move on is not contingent on the other person feeling the 'appropriate' amount of guilt and regret."
"I used to have this excruciating back pain. It stopped the day Anais moved out."
"She’s been 'a great partner to raise a kid with.'"
"Now I realize that even the best people can’t always get it right and end up acting out."
"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you."
"A marriage is the nexus of an entire life—history, memories, habits, experiences, children, friends, family, celebrations, losses, homes, trips, holidays, treasures, jokes, pictures."
"Rituals facilitate transitions. They also honor what was."
"The purpose of the ceremony I suggested was to not let Clive’s affair eclipse all the positive aspects of their otherwise good marriage."
"Even if it is done with a cooled heart, it can nonetheless provide solace."
"Gradually he was able to simultaneously hold his attachment to Jade and his children and the calling of a new life with Kyra."
"We need to go on with life—hope again, love again, and trust again."