When sex feels like an obligation it’s very efficacious to come fast—it brings a quick end to the discomfort. When lovers engage sexually as free agents, turning surrender into an act of self-assertion, there is no need to get it over with.

To my thinking, being able to play with roles goes some way toward indicating that you’re no longer controlled by them.

I believe that longing, waiting, and yearning are fundamental elements of desire that can be generated with forethought, even in long-term relationships.

Faced with the irrefutable otherness of our partner, we can respond with fear or with curiosity.

Of course, it is as much about listening as it is about telling. The receiver of these revelations must be a loving, accepting, nonjudgmental partner—a “good listener,” empathetic and validating.

He doesn’t know how to experience the open range of lust in the context of emotional care.

Now, however, they both were making strong claims. They made demands on each other that they didn’t want to give up on.

As often happens in a public discussion, the most complex issues tend to polarize in a flash, and nuance is replaced with caricature.

When intimacy collapses into fusion, it is not a lack of closeness but too much closeness that impedes desire.