Esther Perel Answers Your Relationship Questions

You may decide that this relationship was a beautiful love story, but it will not remain a life story. You don't have to squash the love in order to move on. You may just say 'This love is precious; I will hold it dearly; but it is not going to be my life.'

Much of our early conflicts with our parents are often either because we got too much of something or too little of something; we either got intrusion or abandonment; we got the neglect or we got the suffocation.

When you're in a toxic relationship, parts of you are falling off, and you become a narrow version of yourself. Other people need to bring back a mirror of the multi-faceted you, of the you who once could say no, of the you who used to have such strong opinions about things... the fuller, bigger you.

When you see your friend in a situation to want to blame the third person, they found somebody and that person is not nice to them, is offensive to them, is not respecting them ... The first thing we want to do is pull our friend away from that person. And the more, sometimes, we try to pull them away from that person, the more they actually are going to get glued to that person, or they're going to stop telling us the truth.

I believe that many beautiful relationships can transform into friendships, but not in the moment of separation.