The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility. It’s remarkable to me how a sudden threat to the status quo (an affair, an infatuation, a prolonged absence, or even a really good fight) can suddenly ignite desire. There’s nothing like the fear of loss to make those old shoes look new again.
One of the messages from the book that Perel articulated nicely was the need to cultivate Other-ness in our partners, because otherwise we may fool ourselves into believing we know completely, where we really just know them as the "you" in "us."
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