This is the first time in the history of humankind that the survival of the family depends on the happiness of the couple.

Everything that family life flourishes on, consistency and routine, is often what kills the erotic. Eroticism thrives on this mystery, on the surprise, on the unknown ... Eroticism thrives on everything that family life defends against.

Go out, and here is why: Because if you don't, and you deprive yourself, you begin to ask your children to become your emotional caregivers; you want your children to validate your sacrifice; you want your children to make sure that you're not too alone and too disconnected. And when you recruit your children into that caretaking role, you're creating a legacy of emotional burden that is not going to be too good for them.

When you have kids, it's a revolution in the couple. It completely shifts all the resources, the time, the attention, the intimacy, the money; it all shifts.

Desire is to own the wanting. You can't make people desire. You can make people do things, but you can't make them want it. So, the wanting is entirely yours. And the wanting is not sexual; it's about feeling alive.

If you think all he wants is sex, you're missing it. All he wants is to connect with you to feel less alone ... For men, intimacy, tenderness, connection, touch, affection are only allowed to the license of the sexual language.

Structure creates freedom. Before you have the structure of the kids, the freedom is the lack of structure. One of the most important things to redefine is that, with kids, freedom comes from structure, not from the absence of it.

I have yet to hear a straight woman say 'Nothing turns me on more than to see him turned on,' if she's not into it. If she's not into it, whatever is happening to him will not change her. What turns her on is what happens to her. And for that, it means that she needs to be able to focus on herself—away from the worry and the responsibilities and the caretaking of others.

If you're going to want to give everything to your children, you really want to make sure that one of the things you give them is a relationship between two adults that is alive and thriving.

Let's not talk about sex, but let's talk about that erotic energy—playfulness, imagination, aliveness, curiosity engagement, etc. It is alive and well, but... it all goes to the children with the idea that the adults will kind of survive like a cactus that you don't even need to water and on occasion you look at, and it will give all its energy to the little ones, and slowly, it will begin to gasp.

In a long-term relationship, everything that's going to just happen already has.

I think it's very natural in a family to have a role distribution. You asked me before, what's one of my important core truths? This would be one of them ... There is a frontline parent.

One of the most difficult things in the transition from mother to woman, from caregiver to erotic being, is the ability to switch the focus onto oneself in a healthy narcissism.

I remember saying to my husband, there's a few things we're not going to do. I do not want us to one day wake up and just say there's nothing here.

In every couple, over time, where people say we were able to maintain it, there is always one of them who says the other person just didn't let it go. They made sure that we had a coffee or a breakfast; they made sure we had our date night; they made sure we still physically connected. And even though I didn't feel like it, it's because they didn't let up.

A ritual is a routine that is infused with intentionality and creativity.