This is why 90% of relationships don't last | Esther Perel

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HBZt3H8VXo

What we often think is that once we commit our mind, and the long series of songs and poetry and proverbs that have fed a kind of romantic possessiveness have often led us astray. The verb for "love" is "to have". The verb for "desire" is "to want". And "to want" requires us sometimes to have a little bit of a psychological distance. A sense of otherness. A bridge to cross. Something or someone to visit on the other side. So that in between "me" and "you" lies this tension called "erotic love". And I began to think about this dialectic, this tension, between closeness and space, in terms of love and desire. And the question that I would ask, is, "I am most drawn to my partner when...". Not sexually attracted only, just most drawn to. The first one you're gonna hear is that "I am most drawn to my partner when...He or she radiates". Radiates. That's probably the best word for it.

There's another word for "confidence" but it's confidence with rumination. Because I am looking at this person who is already generally so familiar and is momentarily, once again, somewhat unknown, somewhat mysterious, somewhat elusive, and in this space between Me and Her lies this erotic love. It's a space in which what is generally so known becomes momentarily, once again, somewhat unknown, so that I can explore. And first and foremost, be curious. The essential experience that comes from desire is curiosity.

The second one is "When we've been apart". What happens is that we get to connect with the other dimension of desire which is that is also rooted in longing and in absence. There is something about not having that allows us to want more. Not just because we want what we can't have but because when we don't have it right in front of us, it allows us to engage our imagination about not only what it is but what it means to us or what this person means to us; represents for us; and who we are in their presence.

"When I'm surprised." Because I can be surprised. Because I am drawn to my partner because he is vulnerable and it's not typically what I see or I'm surprised because I see you do something that you don't usually do, or I'm surprised because you come to me with a different tone that you usually do but surprise breeds novelty, change, difference. That too is a ferment of the desire. And when I see my partner in the eyes of the others, when other people are taken by his or her intelligence, their words, their charm, their wit, their humor, their looks; Basically when I experience in the moment that my partner doesn't just exist in my own gaze but also exists in the gaze of others, and they don't belong to you. I don't own them. "Can we want what we already have?" is the best answer. If we accept that we never had the person who is next us; they never belonged to us. They are to be free to go. Of course we can control them, we can lock them up. We can create a system of surveillance but that's not intimacy or closeness.