Esther Perel argues that romantic relationships and the bonds we form with our parents are the only two that truly mirror each other. Both shape how we experience closeness, trust, loyalty, and commitment. The patterns we learn in childhood get reproduced in adult love.
There's only two relationships that resemble each other. The one you have with your parents or the people who raise you and the one you have with the people you fall in love with. People can sit in my office all the time and say, I have this with no one else. I don't have this with anybody at work. Nobody among my friends ever thinks like that. You're the only one who speaks like this or thinks this about me or with whom I do this. No, you're the only one and now we go back in history. And I'm sorry to be the psychologist, but that's really... It is the place where we often learned about closeness, trust, loyalty, commitment, sharing, taking, receiving, asking, all these essential verbs of relationships.
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