When do people come back? Experience vitality? When you embrace the unknown and leave yourself vulnerable to danger. You cannot experience pleasure at the same time as you experience fear

Survival is not living

Trauma occurs when you have the feeling of complete loss of agency. Having agency is extremely important

The disillusionment of love is generally blamed on the other person in a relationship

It’s amazing how we think we chose differently only to find ourselves in our own backyard

What we find attractive initially because it is different ultimately leads to problems because it is different

When someone touches a vulnerability of ours we lash out from a survival instinct usually touching the other ones vulnerability and leading to a vicious cycle

Marriage used to be a purely economic institution, until it was linked with love. Then love got linked with sex and the three are now inextricably tied — that is a lot of pressure. intimacy and happiness also got added to the equation

There is not a one and only, you can love and make a life with many people

Marriage collapses from the sheer weight of the expectations of marriage

Never have we relied on a single person for achieving all the existential goals of our lives. Couples don’t talk to anyone.

The quality of our lives is directly proportional to the quality of our relationships

The best way to learn about something is to study it at its worst: to learn about love study hatred to learn about trust study betrayal

Being chosen as the one and only makes betrayal the shattering of the grand ambition of love

Most infidelity stems for a yearning for vitality — we become constrained by roles that center around responsibility and being conservative

Family life is the antidote to eroticism — force of stability opposing the force of exploration

In marriage people look for someone to give them both stability and vitality even though they directly oppose each other

Marriage is not set up for adventure — love is not the other person it’s about how you experience yourself in the presence of another

“Sometimes we seek the gaze of another it isn’t our partner we are turning away from but rather what we have become — we are not looking for another lover but rather another version of ourselves”

Eroticism is thirst of otherness — another version of ourselves