Pepper Schwartz

“If you're not having sex, you're not having a marriage, you're having a friendship.”

“Intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is 'you're safe with me'- that's intimacy.”

“A peer marriage is a relationship in which two people have equal status, are equally responsible for emotional, economic, and household duties, and have equal influence in making decisions.”

“Passion is something that can be brought back to a relationship.”

“Friendship is a cornerstone of a good marriage.”

“For the first time in history, we have a compelling moral reason to be sexually matched, and that is that we're going to live together for a very long time.”

“Trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship.”

“The most important thing in a relationship is not what you get but what you give.”

“Kindness is the glue that holds a relationship together.”

“People change over time, and a relationship has to be flexible enough to accommodate those changes.”

“We want a soul mate, somebody who will be our everything. It’s a very high standard.”

“You have to have a sense of humor to be in a relationship. You have to be able to laugh at yourself and at the situation.”

“Money is one of the biggest stressors in a relationship.”