If You Want To Find The Perfect Relationship, WATCH THIS! | Esther Perel

the relationship becomes the holder of all that stress and that is part of the divorce rate at the moment and the weight that has felt on the relationship it's not just people didn't get along is that this video is brought to you by athletic greens and we'll hear more from them in just a moment i think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness please welcome [Music] what is the main thing you would recommend people work on themselves whether in transition of relationships or in a relationship is there one thing that they can always

be working on to improve themselves better for other relationships if their entire story about the relationship that just ended is about what the other person did wrong to them something is missing in the story yeah that doesn't mean that the other person may not have done things that were hurtful to them but add to it who were you in this relationship absolutely what role did you play what did you see that you didn't want to pay attention to what things do you wish you had done differently what pieces do you wish that your partner had

seen and accepted from you differently where did you wish you would have said less and where did you wish you would have said more what do you learn from this relationship and if when you see what you learn it's just that i want to make sure that the next person is right gives me what i need you know or is less of this or more of that you know who do you want to be in the next relationship how are you going to add value a relationship is a story of many people it's not even

a story just of two who was too involved in your relationship who was not involved enough so it's the there's a cast of characters in a relationship and uh and it's all those questions that you want to ask when you are in transition what what i think that's it i mean you can but they are both directions if you find yourself with a spotlight only on the other person and you in a passive receptive stands you're missing a whole pan of the story yeah and you're probably more of the problem than the of the relationship

than them if you're just focusing on them probably a relationship is not about this person and that person the relationship is what happens in between this is my view on relationships it's not an essentialist view this is this personality and that personality it's the dynamic right you can have a dynamic with a certain partner you've had dynamics with certain partners and of course it was just the right fit between the match and the ignition and so you had enough inside of you to react with a certain kind of let's put your jealousy but you may

meet another person who acts differently and you may still have a little bit of that jealousy inside of you but it doesn't get activated because this person is responding very differently to you and when you say where were you they don't say why do you always have to ask me that question they just say i just went to do this it's all good darling i'm right here i've got you back and then you don't go into your chest pain you know pain so this is very important to understand we are not the same person with

with different partners we may have certain things that come out depending on what is being sent over to us so the relationship is a figure eight it's what i do that makes you do something that then makes you react to me a certain way that then draws that out of me that draws that out of you and each one actually creates the other and when you get that view of relationships when you come out you and you're in transition you say to yourself let's say i was with someone who completely disconnected okay they disconnected i

did i push them away are there ways in which i contributed sometimes to the disconnection and that is not self-blame that is understanding the dynamic you can take responsibility about things without blaming yourself and you can hold the other person accountable without blaming them it's it's not a blame dance but it is an understanding of what did i do that made you do what you then did to me then then they met that's the relationship yeah and if someone's like you know what i listen to you esther they really want to have an amazing relationship

they want to have a rich life knowing it's not going to be perfect but they want to create beauty and adventure and play and go through life through the the sadness and the adversities and all the things that happen in life and they're thinking themselves how much should i pour into myself for my dreams my health my friends and family how much should i pour into the other person into their life that i'm creating partnership with and how much should i pour into the relationship itself what would you say to that but you asked me

it's different questions right how what keeper what keeps a relationship alive is one question how much do you invest in a relationship is a different question um so i'm going to go to the one about what keeps it alive because um it's part of and i'm suddenly watching the box and thinking this it is what i'm most interested in because i work on i work on eroticism what keeps us alive what keeps us hopeful what keeps us engaged with possibility not physically alive but connected a lot connected to life life force life energy why because

because i think everybody understands relationships that are not dead versus relationships that are alive teams that are not that companies versus companies that are alive what is flourishing versus surviving and because it is part of my personal history and i come from a background of survivors of parents who are in concentration camps and i wanted to understand how do people stay alive when they spend five years in a concentration camp so that's why i got interested in eroticism sexuality is a piece of this but sexuality is not eroticism you can have sex every day and

feel nothing eroticism is the poetry that accompanies it it's the meaning we give to it yes right it's the story that's attached so eroticism in a relationship is the quality of imagination curiosity playfulness mystery risk taking novelty that people bring to their relationship those are the things that i think bring life to a relationship so in the research of eli finkel it means doing new things together taking risks beyond your threshold out of your comfort zone because if you do pleasant things that are familiar it's cozy it's friendship it's love but it's not exciting it's

not erratic it's not necessarily desire it's calibrating your expectations so that you have and that means diversifying your intimate connections or your deep connections doesn't it you know i for me intimacy doesn't mean sexual either it just means people that are important to you that accompany you through the life stages and to the big events in life these tweetings expectations calibrating expectations diversifying your connect social connections and taking risks and doing new things is the research of eli finkel for driving relationships but then in that piece i think play is essential playfulness it's huge and

it is actually the quality of of emotions that is the least talked about how often are you playing in your relationship all the time we have humor is essential it's an essential solve and bomb in my relationship i can in the middle of an argument and then i start to laugh and then i just get perspective and we just kind of ground ourselves back again um it's it's flirting it's teasing it's making fun of it's uh it's it's that whole realm of um we're not really serious and we don't take ourselves that serious and what

happens when relationships are taking themselves very serious and they're not playing look i had a teacher who once said to me if a couple comes to you for therapy and there is absolutely zero humor left it is diagnostic really now is it true you know nobody has proven that scientifically but what you know is that humor and if you listen to my podcast if you listen to the sessions on where should we begin or on how is work you'll see in the middle of talking about trauma painful event major fights strife i laugh with them

i manage to see if they can see themselves if they have a bit of distance of perspective if they understand sometimes the absurdity of the things that we get into the things over which we fight the way we do it and even if it's just a glimmer a smile on the side on the corner i know they know that i know that we know and it creates that complicity and it invites a new possibility some people may be resisting the humor they're like they want to hold on to this seriousness yes if you want to

hold on to righteousness to i am right to victimization to i have the view that is the right only view that matters and only my perception and my experience is the truth then you are in a polarized system that is rigid and unyielding humor and play is possibility possibility invites change change invites healing yes i want to ask you a few more questions then i want us to play your game for a little bit um over the last two years was there anything that came up for you and personally in your own inner world that

you noticed oh there's something like we talked about it created a lot of pressure for people if there were things that that came out was there anything for you that you were like huh there's something i i still need to work on myself or need to continue the healing journey of that came out in the last couple years with being at home and you know not doing things the way they used to be i will answer this in two ways the way that i experienced the the pandemic so in the first in the beginning right

after i left you i went back to new york and i went in lockdown and basically it was in the you know we suddenly kind of i got gripped with a bit of a panic and primarily because i thought i can't catch this thing right because if i catch it i am now suddenly considered elderly i'm past 60. 35. yeah yeah for the pandemic it changed it suddenly shifted overnight i became elderly and that meant i wasn't sure if we entered the hospital me or jack that we will pass the triage interesting he's older than

me and i got really really scared i had a lot of post-traumatic stress symptoms that are very much connected to the holocaust and to my family experience that sense that overnight this whole life i have built could just disappear like this and it was irrational i was terrified that jack would die to the point you wanted to know about humor in my relationship so we are in the middle of construction at the time and then workers and at their point he comes to me and he says i asked the workers to create to dig a

hole in the garden i said oh yeah why he said so that when i die you can just roll me right in oh my god wow talk about humor and i but i cracked up because it he showed me girl you gripped in fear and i just started to laugh and i just realized no no no he's not that because i was ready to stop construction i said we're not making this no one can come here within a thousand yards of us no no it's more like we will not survive no way i was i

really when it's post-traumatic it's it's trauma is the worst right so i really was very very very scared and his humor defused it for me and just brought me back and said we're continuing to build we're gonna live we're gonna survive don't worry girl it's like so this was one and it slowly you know i entered into the into the the long term of the pandemic and it dissolved and that's when i understood this came out of that i missed my friends i missed my dinner parties i missed intimacy and i created a host of

different group experiences pods i had a movie club and zoom on three countries oh that's cool i have a book club i had a yoga group that met four times a week still till now that is over two continents wow that's cool and i had a hiking group i had a swimming group in the summer and then one day i said i need to play and i need to continue to have conversations where i learned something new i was so freaking tired of talking about the pandemic sure sure and i said i'm going to create

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athleticgreens.com sog to take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance not having any idea of what this thing was going to become and what it represented i just thought i want to do something creative and i'm going to i want people to be able to talk about something that isn't just like you know when you live six months like this in lockdown you begin to have the same conversation yeah of course so i just thought how am i going to make couples and have fun get get get energized you know

be curious about each other talk about something else and i thought we need to play because play is a container play gives you the possibility to take risks to talk about things that you would otherwise not talk about because it's under the guise of play play allows you to ask questions that you would otherwise not ask certainly not to your partner because we get more shy with the people that we live with than with strangers interesting yeah you know you're more daring to ask sometimes questions to than the person you live with for decades on

end i just so play became very very central when when you play you still you still are able to lift yourself from the ground and it means you can enter the world of imagination and where the rules are different and every child at this moment you know around the ukrainian crisis you can see when kids are still able to play it is the moments when they are not in hyper vigilance so it is an essential survival yes yes underrated and from that place came that's correct where should we be it's one of the key things

it's one of the key things in relationship and in life that's what i'm hearing it's ascension it's essential now here's another side question before we get into this place problem-solving place creativity play is uh risk taking play is um spontaneity it's always it's the other side of fear well you can't when you're playing and as an athlete when i'm playing i'm not thinking about other things yeah if you're playing you get in this zone your flow yeah and you can't put your attention somewhere else when you do that's when you mess up the game right

you're not in your best flow state when you're thinking about something else so so play allows you to get out of that which i think is really powerful and my my friend matt he's like i'm just i'm always playing when you play do you play for fun or do you play for win win yes no i play for both yeah i used to only play to win yeah now i play for fun but i also want to you know it's like me and my girlfriend we play cards a lot we have a game that we

started playing over the holidays called nerds it's kind of like speed solitaire right where you both play and there's like some shared space in the middle where you play as well and i mean we play for fun but i'm also i want to win so it's like i'm competitive but it's okay i can just play and have fun too and you can appreciate a good game absolutely love it yeah absolutely yeah because it makes me want to go again let's play again you do so i love playing yeah um but i used to be only

i have to play to win and it was like an obsession and now that shifted too i'm still a very competitive human but i can play them so i used to play without having to create a situation where there is a winner and a loser so that i could have fun that's great and then i just it was the same idea here that's why there is no winner it's a storytelling game so there is no winner so that you don't have to compete so that you can have fun that's correct some people are like i

want to get into this in a second but there's one thing i want to ask you about this last couple years if someone's listening or watching and they're thinking to themselves here's esther pearl she is one of the top people in the world on healing and therapy and connection and she's been studying this and created best-selling books and podcasts and games and this is your life's mission and yet she has you know post-traumatic stress or things that come up for her still and she's the expert in this is there anything that you feel like you

still need work healing in order to let certain things go or are these things always going to be with us at certain times different stresses or pains or wounds or ptsd from the past of our individual lives look the notion that when you heal it something utterly disappears is one component of healing but the other part is that you need a bigger trigger to reactivate an old wound but there is a whole new range right where the wound can live without being activated but you've healed a certain amount of triggers but there might be a

bigger so you know you right you come back from the from from iraq from afghanistan from you know all the wars that people have fought here um and you or or you are a refugee from syria or from afghanistan i mean all sides you may not at every siren jump anymore but if suddenly if there's a bomb yes you will jump gotcha so the the the range and the response you know to the danger shifts that's the piece around healing i think for me it was a real surprise this fear that i got to experience

i didn't remember that i it had been a long time since because you're constantly doing the work you're constantly in there i thought i have kind of created a life where i have a sense of ownership i have a sense of control i have a sin but i always live with dread you do i do still today that my whole life live with dread like that every minute something could happen the sky could fall and the whole thing could disappear because that is the the core story of my family and um but i don't have

the dread all the time but when it grips in the past it would grip without anything happening it just was like happening to me because i had a day where i just didn't know what i was going to do with my life so it disappeared i could talk about it but i wouldn't necessarily feel it it's physical it's visceral it's like you describe the chest for me it's the gut it says right but when the pandemic arrives it's a trigger that is strong enough to bring back that sense of dread and at that time i

wasn't aware of my dread i was feeling my dread that's very different that's what i mean by the external versus the internal now what people struggle with people have struggled with prolonged uncertainty here are the five things of the pandemic that have affected relationships the most yeah one is a prolonged sense of uncertainty it's not just that you're not sure when this is gonna end but you're not sure about you're not being sure okay this thing keeps coming and going all the time one minute you say it's gone the next minute you realize oh it's

not gone at all okay that then it's the notion of what we experienced was a collapse of all the boundaries here i am i'm at home i'm on my chair at my kitchen table and i am a therapist and a supervisor and a podcaster and a mother and a friend and a wife and and and i haven't left the chair and i'm still just in sweatpants with the you know and i'm like where is work where is life where is morning where is night where it's just like all the roles have collapsed and we are

not made like this we are physical people and we are spatially oriented and we change location for our activities we change clothes for our activities and they help us enter the role now i'm going to work now i'm going to play sports now i'm going to the club now i'm going out now i'm going to visit my mother and i looked i feel different i look different i wear different i have rituals i have things a different bag a different racket none of this you know what it means when your entire arsenal of rituals that

give meaning and frame your parts dissolves you get exhausted so that was the collapse of boundaries then there was the sense of ambiguous loss you know we lost spontaneity we lost plans we lost the the weddings the graduations the parties the promotions everything sports games everything yeah it's not lo there is the loss of death but there is that other loss the buildings that are standing but they're empty they're physically present but emotionally vacated we have the grandparents and the parents that are physically gone but emotionally present we call that ambiguous loss when you are

either physically present and psychologically gone or psychologically present and physically gone yes that ambiguous loss became a part of what then adam grant began to describe in the languishing languishing is you're not depressed you're just like lifeless flat listeners nothing is really giving you the sense of meaning and purpose and joy that you generally want that has happened in your relationship and what happens when you are in a period of liminality like this where the big dilemmas are not getting answered is that all the unknowns are filtering onto your relationships and the relationship becomes the

holder of all that stress and that is part of the divorce rate at the moment and the weight that has felt on the relationship it's not just people didn't get along is that people needed in the relationships to deal from the political polarization to the racial reckoning to the economic insecurity to the ambiguous loss to the prolonged uncertainty all of that fell on relationships this is the story of the last two years that people know they feel it but they don't necessarily articulate it hard to make a relationship last if you don't have the tools

and you're not willing to work through it how do you stay grounded when the ground itself is moving it's quicksand it's the great adaptation of this moment and so relationships began to see the cracks inside their relationship and people also began to see the light that shines through the cracks both ends yes well play is key in a relationship and i'm glad that i'm playful and uh i'm down for this game where should we begin i'm going to hook you to this game so that you and martha tell stories to each other like never before

this is a game that that came to you you know this is one of the things that came to you during the pandemic because you wanted to have creativity you wanted to play connection all these different things so you created this game where should we begin a game of stories by esther perel and there's no winner there's no losers so it's not the type of game i you know i'm used to playing yes exactly so we we have we both have a set of cards uh do i pick any or should i give you one

from mine i'm going to have you pick from should i go first or you go first yeah you go first you're sure yeah let's go the safest one yeah okay so then i pick and do i get to say if i want to answer it or not or no you have to answer i have to answer it okay a rule i secretly love to break a rule um when are you rude breaking i feel like i'm always breaking the scene but it's a story okay tell a story i actually think stories real relationships are stories

stories are bridges to uh to each other stories bind us so here's a rule i like to break consistently yes in since we're going on the story of play in some ways i feel like i've emotionally and physically matured and grown up in other ways i feel like i've kept this childlike curiosity inside of me it's one of the reasons why i love to interview people and do the podcast uh it's one of the reasons i try to make people feel uncomfortable when i meet them for the first time by asking them questions that maybe

they wouldn't have uh you know answered with a stranger so one of the things i'd like to break is in my relationship is trying to bring play to every moment even when it's stressful to be goofy i love to be goofy love to be silly and tease and i think there's a difference between teasing and bullying i don't want to be a bully it's a world apart yeah exactly i don't want to be a bully but i love to be playful and teased and just throw a little what about this you know a little comment

here martha she says that she thinks i was like you know a mexican in another life because i have she says i have the humor not of a white person from america but of a mexican because i'm teasing and playful and i have a sarcasm that she says is similar to the way that she grew up so i think uh for me i don't take anything too seriously and especially in the relationship which why i love that you said play is one of the keys to success and which is why if someone is not reciprocal

then it becomes challenging if they're not wanting to play it's like throwing a ball that drops the floor yeah you're playing ping-pong and it just with yourself yeah yes so that is the rule i love to to secretly break is just being being a child having childlike energy but having maturity at the same time nice yes okay so then what i finished the card and now it's your turn right now we're doing it like this but you know sometimes i put two two cards and then i get to pick for the other person or people

themselves then we have little orange tokens in which when you play with the group we can put pressure on the card and then we have the group says we want you to talk about this so it becomes very to make some kind of like have someone do it yes so there's all kinds of variations but it's i kind of want to do a sex one with you but i think we took all those cards out but here i'll let you just choose one you asked for us to take them out so i was going to

go i should have oh god the most humiliated i've ever felt oh god you're the most embarrassing no i can tell you immediately the thing it's it's it's i'm like 10 11. so okay it goes back a long time i i i stole a candy oh that's it well you don't want to be caught you got caught i got caught by who of the your parents by the way person that was waiting in line they saw you they saw me and said to the person she stole this no way what did you have to do

i gave it back and she said you have to pay for it i said i don't want it she said you have to pay for it i said i don't have the money she said you leave me something and then you come back with the money wow so you have to pay for it even though you didn't take it well i didn't have the money so i went home i got the money because i had to leave my my school oh my gosh oh you're gonna leave like some collateral so like your id or your

phone at the time yes yes i have to leave collateral and bring money back that's so embarrassing it's humiliating it's like you know yeah because if you're gonna take something you're not supposed to take the whole point of it it's not like it's not to and i probably love this because i bet other people have conversations when you answer and then it triggers something in someone else um yes i i stole for a couple years from i don't know 10 11 somewhere around there 11 12. yeah what was candy candy all the time right candy

and i thought i was so smooth i never got caught from a store but one time i went to my this was the most humiliating probably and embarrassing and probably most shameful thing you know as a kid growing up i my dad brought me and a friend of mine after basketball practice to go to one of his clients he sold life insurance and we had to drive out of a 45 to an hour away to a farm he was like a client of his at a farm in ohio and we go there and my dad's

like okay you got you kids like hang out on the farm or whatever in the house and walk around i gotta talk to mr so and so for an hour to go over stuff so we're walking around nosy little kids you know 12 years old go down in the basement and i'm like opening up drawers i'm doing stuff i shouldn't do i see a wallet i take out the wallet i open it up there's a 20 bill and a five dollar bill and we're looking at each other like should we do this and like he

will never know i take the five my friend takes the 20. i get woken up that night at i don't know 4 a.m in the morning and my dad is hovering over me at this time my dad's pretty intimidating still and he's hovering over me did you steal from so-and-so money and i go no right away i'm like am i dreaming am i awake i'm like no i'm defending myself right lied right to my dad and he goes mr so-and-so um was going to buy food for like his cows right or for his like animals

on the farm and he doesn't have the money to go buy the food like it's gone i go i don't know i don't know what happened you know i just lied but i was also like waking up i was like disoriented and then he calls my friend's parents and he admits to it and it was the most humiliating embarrassing shameful thing because i had to drive back alone my friend didn't have to go but i drove back for the hour with my parents in the front seat me in the backseat just so ashamed and i

had to go face this guy and say i'm sorry with like the most you know he was so frustrated and angry and upset and i never stole again after that so i don't know did you steal after that moment no you know i my my moment is i taking the thing and somebody goes like this no they did that yes no way i still have the books oh my gosh and it's like you freeze oh the shame the the appreciation i'll never forget this guy's face like i was 12 years old right okay oops okay

if i could whisper something in the ear of my younger self i would say man i'd probably say something very loving part of me want to be playful but i'd probably say something loving because that's what i needed to hear i'd probably say that you are loved you matter and it's all be okay that's what i would say because i think that's what i needed to hear the most and it's funny because i've said this so many times on my show so my audience is going to get tired of me saying this i'm going to

show you this over a year ago i put a photo of my younger self on my screen saver right i've talked about this so many times now and so for the last year since my my therapist clara had me do work on my inner child on healing the relationship that i had with myself back then and really having intimate conversations exercises with the five six seven year old that that was sexually abused i've talked about that with you before which i never really fully healed you know that whole conversation with and it's been a beautiful

journey to have intimacy connection you know and bridge the gap from five six seven to now and be able to have a conversation between that space and time and really bring the two together you know my inner child into me so what would this one say to you what would he say to me oh my gosh um that's a good actually that's really good i mean i bring him back yeah yeah what does he say to you oh my gosh he probably says let me see i'm getting my heart here he says thank you thank

you for being willing to be courageous in all these scary emotions all the scary emotions that i'm feeling right now the things that i'm uncertain about the things that i'm afraid of thank you for having the courage to dive in and be uh you know put all your emotions on the table address the messiness handle it all and supporting me and finding peace and healing that i've always wanted that's what it that's what i would say yeah so yeah i know it's it's crazy it's crazy oh okay okay i'm going to the next one this

is what i do i laugh when things get deep too i like i get deeper then i'm like okay you laugh where your tears are streaming of course of course okay this is you oops i would sell everything to be able to it's interesting i don't have a dream you know i live a lot of my dreams at this moment so i don't feel like i i would sell but i think if i was to i would sell everything to remain healthy yeah or i would set everything for my kids or my partner to be

healthy and if i needed to like i would go everywhere in the world just to make sure that if there's something that can keep them it's not just a life it's healthy yeah because i don't want them just suffering and alive yeah yeah yeah i think that at this point that's the only is that is that the biggest fear for you um yes but you see when i say i live with dreads when you jumped like really because it's not the you know i live with the fear of loss it's not it's not dread just

bad things happening it what's underneath is the fact that my parents had lost everybody and so their entire families they were the only two that came out and i rem i i'm this is part of my dna and so the fear of loss of traumatic loss and the grief that's what i fear so health or selling everything or you know imagining myself you know cruising the world to find the best doctor that could have solutions yes with something is part of preventing that loss you know have you had major losses no except actually i on

a personal level have not but i often you know if if if one of them drives i often at night they're worried you know i i just i've never said don't go but i just like the little call when they arrive you're like my mom too i i can easily imagine accidents i can easily imagine yes i am a catastrophizer in that sense you know um but i so what does therapy do it it allows you to just in the mind it's like no it is you're fine you go out it calms you and but

i still like the call of course there's the assurance so it the fear is loss and the dread is the manifestation of that fear so i would tell everything actually i don't know what it's like i could put it like that i would sell everything to be able to live without dread oh that would probably be the what would it take from you i don't know it's a process i you know i look at people who don't have those fears and i i think they are free of this it's like what does life look like

without worry peaceful you know you know they have other things it's an amazing thing when i see people who don't have you know that is not their thing yeah i don't have their things you don't have jealousy or insecurity i don't have that do you work with a therapist yourself i have i don't do i don't work with the therapist at this moment but i have over the many years of my life yes do you think it's important for therapists to have therapists absolutely absolutely you you first of all if you don't then you you

will be triggered by things that people bring into your office and you will be projecting things on them that don't belong to them we call that counter transference so you know there is what people put on you but there is what you put on them because you have something unresolved there is what you can't work with because of what is happening inside of you wow so it's going to be cleansing yourself constantly probably interesting what do you think you said you haven't had a therapist in a while or worked with one in a while where

do you think what would what would i go to for today yeah what would you what would be available for you today if you were just yeah i would go to a coach because i need practical help it's less internal at this moment yes um it's more i i it's more practical things i i told you back from i don't i i i talk i am a person who likes to receive help so i don't uh just haven't found the right coach i wrote a whole piece recently about asking for help in the blog and

because i realized that it's very easy for me to ask for help actually when we met early early on i asked for help absolutely and i just thought like i've never done this marketing stuff like i know nothing about marketing you're like the genius marketer i'm a therapist who suddenly finds it and i just thought i know people and they can help me and i don't feel ex like i have no problem saying i know nothing about this but i because i know i trust what i do know a lot about and this is new

for me so i don't experience it as belittling or admitting or vulnerable or i think it's an amazing thing to ask for help i loved and by the way i did ask on social i asked people you know how do you feel about asking for help and like 70 something percent of people said i don't do it i don't like it that doesn't make me feel good etc and then i said that how do you feel when other people ask you for help and the same 70 said i love it and i'm thinking you know

what it's like when other people ask you don't think they're stupid they don't know they're vulnerable they're they're you know you think you want to help you want to help well why don't you think that when you ask for help other people enjoy that too so i'm big into the asking for help these days and therapy is a piece of that at this moment therapy is not the thing i need but that doesn't mean that you know jack thinks i should meditate actually maybe need a meditation culture so i do i do but in movement

i get calm when you walk here i don't sit that does not work for me what's the one thing that triggers you the most that you would like to evolve beyond what's the thing that irritates you or triggers you or bureaucrats rigidity rigidity uh which is the opposite of playfulness yeah not flexibility right arbitrariness rules for the sake of rules yeah bureaucracy um you know in the big sense of the world and bureaucrats as a whole you know [Music] that you know things that you know rigidity which means that you write you don't listen to

others um you you make your point i mean conversations that are not conversations people that yell at each other for the sake of yelling at each other cancel culture from all sides um yes i mean my work is about helping people have the difficult conversations that they need to have want to have don't know how to have as long as i they want to i can do something right if they think they know it all and if they think they know you even better than you know yourself and that they have no curiosity i find

that challenging yeah i love curiosity i hate what's the opposite of curiosity fixed yeah yeah certainty but certainty is the enemy of change right right i want to go one more question i'm respectful of time i think we've got about 10 more minutes yeah before before i ask the i think it's mine i'm going to pick before i ask because i want to pick it but but you just brought something up to me that i had a conversation with another therapist um dr romney um and she speaks all about narcissism yes she was the keynote

speaker at a conference that i went to this year too and this this video got so much attention that i did with her this interview and we don't to go into it for too long but you were just mentioning how people have like that don't want to do the work right you mentioned like they're fixed they're shouting for shouting they're not willing to look at themselves and she was mentioning how it's really hard to diagnose a narcissist because they have to be willing to come to therapy and most of them will never do it unless

they're forced to in your practice do you interact with a lot of narcissists and she also mentions how it's almost impossible i don't want to say exactly what she said but i think she said it's almost impossible for a narcissist to change and evolve unless they do therapy every day type of you know mentality where they really are practicing this thing on a consistent basis and i'm sure there's a spectrum of narcissistic personality traits and a range of how strong someone is in that what's your thoughts on narcissism in general and can people change or

evolve out of it i can answer it clinically and culturally i mean maybe we should start by talking about the like christopher lash talked about we do live in a narcissistic culture selfie culture the likes in a culture of narcissism once you are continuously evaluating yourself proving yourself performing demonstrating yourself you know posting about yourself engaging in fake news about yourself you are in a narcissistic culture that you know criteria diagnosis accompany the culture of the day in the 19th century we talked about hysteria we do not talk much about hysteria today because we realized

that the majority of these hysteric women supposedly hysteric women were actually women who had experienced sexual abuse they were not hysterical they were traumatized yes narcissism is the word that we come back with on the 21st century stress and anxiety and depression was the 20th century so every century and every culture has its expressions true mental illness or mental manifestations okay eating disorders exist in some cultures and not in others you you know a diagnosis a personality disorder doesn't just exist like that without a background so that means that it's easy to make these issues

very personal but they are also societal that said i have sat with people who have a whole range of narcissistic tendencies to get to saying somebody is a narcissist somebody is depressed somebody's you know i think that there are there's more to us than just that right but you see a lot of people with narcissistic tendencies and you see a lot of people who are not just this exhibiting it with manifest narcissism but there's a whole other form of narcissism that is called covert narcissism which we talk about much less because we not name it

in those ways what is the difference that is a long conversation here that is really a long conversation in the short form what is the you know power can come from above and power can come from underneath you can have power through victimization you can make people feel guilty all the time you can be passive aggressive you can make people continuously feel that they are responsible for your life that if they don't do what you want that you may kill yourself there's loads of ways to make other people submit themselves to you and that would

be considered that is those are expressions of more covert covert it's not like this domineering but it's control people from the top and you can control people from underneath yes you know it's a it i think that there is a certain profile at this point of when we say narcissist everybody has five or six associations that are quite similar and i this is really a whole other conversation but um what i will say is that um yes i have sat with people who have very little regard people who bring everything on to themselves people who

see everything as a reflection of themselves people who are charming charming when they need to seduce you and then once they you they think they have you they turn and they have they go into the next people who they need to charm but those that they have already recruited are disregarded and discarded so those got the most out of them already yeah you know people who can lie pathologically to you people who have very little empathy for what is happening so there is a cluster of things but i think for me i tend to look

at behaviors and i tend to look at interactions because i'm a relational therapist and i'm a systems oriented therapist and so i let's spend my time labeling a personality i that i think it's useful on occasion but it is not my primary vocabulary [Music] but she's very very eloquent about it yes yes we'll have to have you back on to do a whole two-hour conversation on that another time it's really i i do not want to talk about complex topics in a short part because it doesn't do them justice and i don't like to and

reinforce notions that have not been examined absolutely but that are easy to grab on we'll have you back on for that i'll do one final card and then i think i've got to make sure i'm respecting him the time that you're gonna touch on me yep what is that okay i'm my own worst enemy when it's interesting i you know what i'm going to give you a different one yes okay i want to give you this okay because because of what happened just a few minutes before the last time i cried was i mean yesterday

you know in terms of my father just died two months ago and so i've been crying a lot you know every couple of days i hear a song that really connects me to a memory to him and to the whole it was a sad experience because he happened into a car accident 17 years ago had a severe brain trauma was in a coma for three months then he woke up in a different country in new zealand at the time i was in college then he came back it was like my dad was physically here but

emotionally mentally and spiritually not ambiguous loss yes this is it i never was able to fully grieve that's ambiguous my father he was physically here but you're not the same person and every interaction i had with him was reminding me of the loss was i'm grateful he's here and it's great to experience some time with him but every time i go and say hello he says louis right what didn't you did she used to play where'd you what sport did you play growing up where did you go to school again so he could have a

conversation with you and speak conversationally but it was the same story over and over again i'm needing to remind my father 17 years 17 years of the memory loss that he had show him photos of him with me taking photos of me playing sports the second half of my life with him was beautiful he showed up he transformed he overcame a lot of the the anger and resentment he had um and i had two different lives with him when i was 13 before i had a some love some scary with him then after 13 it

was like this incredible friendship so it's like i lost my dad but he was physically here and every year there was some type of health scare he had a couple strokes a heart attack he had multiple surgeries from the accident just the complications from the accident and so every year i didn't know if he was going to survive or not and i was it was always when is it gonna happen this year okay he's in the hospital now is he gonna make it do i need to be there in this 17-year cycle of learning to

accept something and doing my best to be okay with it and and accepting and loving where it's at you know so for me it was 17 years of of i wouldn't say numbing but it was acceptance and just like managing it the best i could and then when he passed in february a couple months ago it was i mean just full circle kind of like going back 17 years ago and reliving that and then reliving my whole childhood and allowing myself to be to have a full range of emotions and i think it's beautiful because

do you feel like this time actually you can fully grieve i feel like i can't because it's see this is ambiguous loss what you just described can't grieve can't mourn because he's there but he's not there yeah this one gives it now you can experience the full range absolutely i didn't feel like i could and i feel like i have a more spiritual connection to him now than in the last 17 years you know every night i'm connecting with him in my own way in my little meditation room and you know throughout every the days

there are things that come up where i feel the spiritual presence and it's it's a beautiful it's sad it's beautiful it's emotional it's a wide range of emotions and you know there's a lot of sadness i have because i wish it wasn't that way but i also release i have some relief and i'm also doing doing my best to create meaning from the whole thing so that it's not just this thing i'm frustrated with constantly but like you know what i probably wouldn't be doing this without that pain and sadness and loss i want to

be a curious hungry i wouldn't have been as resourceful if i had him there so yeah i mean i've been crying a lot i've been crying a lot and it's been beautiful to have a safe environment in my relationship with someone who allows that because i think that's hard for some people to allow that especially for men to be able to express their full range of emotions and for that their partner to feel safe with that too so i feel very grateful um [Music] it's not it's not hasn't been fun but it's also been uh

allowing me to have like peace amazing thing that if you ask people when's the last time you laughed nobody has to justify laughing but crying but crying people have to justify it they have to interestingly ask that it is the absolute natural emotion to feel in sadness in grief and loss what man woman date them whoever i had a woman on two days ago who who hasn't cried in years and i had a man on yesterday who hasn't cried in i think 10 or 12 years and it's interesting it's like there's something there i think

to be able to have the full range i'm not saying you need to cry all day long or something but allowing yourselves to feel but um that's probably for a whole nother conversation i mean i would say that it's hard for people to really fully say yes if you can't fully say no and it is hard for people to fully laugh if you can't also cry it's if something is funny you automatically do this if something is sad the fact that you stay like that effectless or that you repress it or that you hold it

in or that you don't even notice it or that the thing is coming down your face and you don't even realize i've had people tear in my office while they say i never cry what is that what does that mean when someone is isn't able to fully laugh or fully cry what would it be like if a person comes into this world and doesn't scream i mean if a baby doesn't scream when they come out you think they're death at birth what is it like when people make love and make no noise when it's impossible

i mean you're a sports person you know that if you lift something you make noise here yeah the voice is it's just what does it mean when this whole thing is closed off there's something inside that's missing or dead or trapped or trapped yeah or was shoved down or can't come out or but for sure it is a blockage yeah we've got another we've got another session we're gonna have to do because i'm i'm feeling i'm feeling the time and i want to be respectful of what you have next after this but i can talk

to you for hours um this game is a lot of fun where should we begin a game of stories by esther perel so make sure you guys get this get a few for your friends wedding season graduation schools parties births all these things are happening now so uh this is a way for you to connect i think this is brilliant because i don't think most people have these type of intimate conversations this is something intimate as you want by the way you can stay perfectly light and you can just do sexual fun talk and you

can go deeper and all these different things indeed so get the game it's going to be powerful for you and i think the world is craving connection and conversations in this way um you know what i was thinking if people want to have an opportunity to have a conversation like we have we're casting for housework yes for the work related podcast so their live where can they go to to do that it's theirpurrell.com podcast okay there's a casting on there is the casting on there what do they get if they're selected a three hour session

with me record it anonymously so they don't say their names or yeah no all identifiable features are removed so that it becomes a conversation for all of us and it's sacred yeah still yeah they get a free session yeah wow that's you're in high demand you're like waiting this is like three years so that's a big deal so if they go to esther prowl.com podcast they can apply for that to see if they can uh get a session if you want to work on a relationship issue that pretends to work and the fascinating thing is

that it seems that people have a harder time talking about their romantic relationship than about work why is that that's for when i come back so many topics for the next conversation excited we've got this we've got narcissism we've got the trapped emotions all these things um they can go to game.estherperel.com to get this game where should we begin i recommend you guys getting it um esther perel everywhere on social media where are you spending the most time these days on social media where should they is it instagram or instagram okay cool so we'll go

there and also your two podcasts um make sure you guys subscribe they're both both on spotify right now should we begin yes where should we begin is life changing if you want to master your relationships you're going to hear so many crazy fascinating stories about maybe you should say it's life couples territory life's couples therapy it's it's fascinating you've done how many seasons now two three no six six i've only heard the first two so i need to get caught up okay so six episodes six seasons of that and then you've got housework which is

all about work dynamics you got some fascinating stories there so i'm very excited about those make sure you guys subscribe get the book uh two books you have amazing and giving captivity it's the state of affairs yes get those books we'll link all that stuff up as well two final questions for you that i've asked you before as your fourth time on but i want to see if it's changed after the pandemic uh um imagine it's your last day on earth many years away but you get to live as long as you want to live

and you've gotten you've gotten rid of dread in your life right so you've got no more dread but for whatever reason it's the last day for you many years away and you've got to take everything with you that you've created or we don't have access to the games the books the podcasts anymore for whatever reason but you get to leave behind three lessons to the world three truths that you would share and this is all we would have what would those three lessons be for you the quality of your relationships is determined or i would

believe that the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your lives when people tell me you've changed my life when people stop me on the street to talk about the podcast all over the world and but what they say is you changed my life you accompanied me through my relationship my divorce my affair my i just feel like i have a reason to be here it's a it's a tremendous affirmation it's a it's what i've done for others what it means for them to have been in conversation with me and this is true for

my friends and this is true for my patients or for the people who listen so what i take with me is the people who would tell me what my presence has meant in their life and the third one is um i live with three men my husband and my two sons and um i really if i go i want them to take all the love the joy the fun the laughter that we have experienced together and go and experience it with other women they happen to be into women so they should all go to other

women right that you know that that i will continue to live in them through the relationships that they will have with others wow that's beautiful i would acknowledge you esther for the way you continually show up in this world because i think i've known you for like six seven eight years and the conversations we have here and off of the podcast are always so inspiring to me and also to so many people that watch and listen and you're amazing at what you do and you help so many people so i really acknowledge you for consistently

living a life of service to help people on the thing that is the most important which is the quality of their relationships the relationships with others and work intimacy and with themselves so i really appreciate you and acknowledge you for giving us the wisdom and advice we need to help mend these relationships um my final question is what's your definition of greatness i would love to hear what a thousand people must have defined this for you and i'm curious what i answered on other times i think that i like the sentence from my friend terry

real who you should have on the podcast um and who will talk to you about narcissism and grandiosity in people okay on the other side of granger says you know it would be a great conversation to have with you about grandiosity but um greatness is when you can see yourself as a flawed individual and still hold yourself in high regard i don't think you've shared that before if you know that you are imperfect you are actually not that great you're great but not the greatest and you can still hold yourself in high regarding then i

think you are great pastor thank you so much appreciate you appreciate you if you enjoyed that interview then i know you'll love what we have coming up right now i'm going to ask you a question that may be hard to answer maybe it's easy but you've had you've seen a lot of intimate relationships work and fail over 35 plus years right yeah what's the percentage of people in your mind who are in intimate long-term relationships are actually happy most of the time so i have two ways of answering yes the first one is cultural your

definition of happy and thriving and fulfilled is probably very different than many other cultures where being healthy having enough to eat having children having grandchildren having good jobs being respected in the community he's happy and thriving he's happy and thriving it's not about you and i are talking on the couch and i'm pouring my hearts at you and you are telling me i'm the best thing that's ever happened to you in your life and all of that okay so that's one version is you have got to look at the word happiness and thriving really in

a cross-cultural context because a lot of us by the way who have the new definition have parents who think about marriage and what is a happy marriage with the with the other definition and i'm wondering you know that maybe we are so unhappy because we want so many other things that are maybe not part of marriage um we have such high speculation we have super high expectations i want we want everything we want a partner to be an entire community my best friend my trusted confidant my passionate lover my intellectual equal my co-parent and on

top of it i want with you to deal with all the physicists of the everyday life and all of what we need to get to all of that and then we should also be passionate great lovers fantastic travelers exactly you know and very few people dancing every week yeah so eli finkel has the best answer for you on that okay he's a researcher on marriage and basically what he says is that the good relationships of today are better than the relationships of history but they're very few because the good what you call that happiness is

the top of the olympus it's climbing the mountain and at the top of the mountain the view is fantastic but the air is also thinner and not everybody can climb the mountain the people who get to the top their top is probably better than the tops of the past now what is the top it used to be that marriage was for survival then it became a romantic enterprise and it became what i call the service economy from the production economy to the service economy you want children but no longer just eight so you only want

two so sexuality becomes for pleasure and connection so it becomes a service economy it's no longer a production and then from there you go into identity which is what i want to become the best version of myself and you're going to help me do so that's the identity story of marriage and that goes up the maslow ladder now if i ask the question differently i wrote i actually wanted to write that very article about 10 15 years ago i set out to write in peace what are creative couples and do you know because creative was

the word i was interested in not so much happy passionate but creative meaning not stable not solid but what is this thing creativity the spark and i went and i asked almost 100 people do you know couples that inspire you do you know couples that you think have that spark still and the frightening thing was that a majority of people could sometimes come up with one maybe two and that was it you know they knew people who were very good at renovations and people who were great parents together and people who were great business partners

together but that whole that you talked about there were very few and i thought that is so sad because here we are we want something i mean if i say good business partners or business leaders you would give me 10 people who you think inspire you to run a company or authors or musicians or we all have a long list who can say what's your favorite musician i mean most of us have more than one when it comes to intimate relationships people have very few models now maybe it is because what they want is so

high that there is very few models actually and that's probably the challenge of intimate relationships today so how do we how do we find how do we create that in an intimate partner or is it setting a lower expectation for what we want so that we don't it's both i think sometimes if you lower your expectations you're much better off no doubt calibrate so back to eli finkle's research calibrating expectations is probably one of the most the three main things for what he calls successful relationships and calibrating doesn't mean you lower your expectations necessarily but

you also diversify them you don't ask one person to give you what the whole village should actually give you right okay that was the first thing what's the second you said there's three so one is the calibration of the expectation two is the diversification and three which is the one that very much speaks to me is um doing new things with your partner that if you do the things that you enjoy that's really nice that's comfortable that's cozy that solidifies the friendship but if you want to create intensity it it it demands risk taking doing

new things outside of your comfort zone a little bit more on the edge how often should we be doing new things with our intimate partner i think as often i mean look the answer to this is very simple often enough but not too often that you become chaotic and you dysregulate right now you're asking me a systemic question this is true for an individual a relationship or a company if you don't change or grow you fossilize and you die if you change too much too fast there's no stability you go chaotic and you dysregulate so

how often it depends on where you are at in your life are you the two of you do you have kids do you have little ones do you have aging parents are you taking care of somebody what else is going on here we'll tell you if this is a period where you need more stability or if this is a period where it's time to go and be curious and explore and discover and go into the world and launch right if you're a young 30 something female i get this all the time from a lot of

women who reach out to me who are ending relationships that were really stressful for them or they've been single for years and they're trying to figure out how to find the right person or how do they create the right relationship for them that's going to be a a long-term partner if you're a female in your young 30s what should they be thinking about like should they be focusing first on themself growing themselves or what are the things they should be looking for in the right partner i just wrote my current blog which is a little

bit of a critique of this taking care of yourself first okay yeah yeah so um because you learn to love yourself in the context of your relationships with others you know with this idea that you go first to work on yourself here and then you prepare this little nice little package and you bring it to relationships that's that is completely off actually it's it's it's interactive you do do you need a good amount of self-awareness but you also need to be in relationships because it's people who help you become more aware practicing it practicing it

but other people let you see who you are it's by being with others that you get to know who you are not just by sitting there alone and say who am i who am i right but this is a relational perspective on life and i will stand by that read the newsletter i really poured myself into that one because i'm tired a little bit of this no what i will say to you i'm tired of the go fix yourself first and then go be in a relationship relationships help you to become who you are that's

what happens between children and their caregivers the next thing is intense instead of constantly thinking who's the right person i'm going to find why don't you ask yourself who do you want to be who should the other one be no maybe it's on occasion ask who will i be as a partner who have i been till now in my relationships how have i shown up what is it that i do not just you know finding the right person that's no what does it mean to find the right person and there i will say the simplest

way of looking at it is this there are many people you will love and they are not necessarily the same people that you will make a life with are you looking for a love story or are you looking for a life story that's good you understand yeah there are many people have had love stories it's a whole different story i never thought for a minute i would live with these people take something else to have a partner in life with whom you're going to go through the pains the sufferings the challenges the you know the

all of that so you have a life partner and still have a love story of course of course you want the life partner to be a love story too but the love stories per se are not life stories it's different ingredients it's different values there's some things that you don't need in order to have a beautiful love story with someone it lives in its encapsulated version on its own you're not thinking can i do this with you can i get old with you can i take you to my parents can you know do we share

similar it's about values life not just about feelings so when you're looking for the right person it's not just what attracts you it's who can you build a life with how many values in common do you need to have with your partner life partner because the important ones it's not how many but there are a few of them that are really that are really important which ones would you say make or break based on your experience i think i'm not going to see them in order of importance but one of them that really matters is

your relationship to others if you are a person that values relationships that sees the presence of others in your life as central and you are with somebody who does not want community or does not know how i mean i'm talking not about what they would like to learn through you but their value is you do things alone you live alone you rely on yourself you you know you don't bring people over to the house i have a couple i just spoke with yesterday you know and he loves to have people over and she just nobody

should come over to the house her space the whole thing and i'm thinking wow this is a tough one it's not just about the how it's his whole life is about being with people and her whole life is about not being with people necessarily that's not how she experiences it now the question is is she drawn to more of what he has to offer and is he drawn to more of what she if these are totally more yeah then then okay different values come together and they they mix and match but if you have these

two separations like that so that's one one of the beautiful questions i ask in how is work is um were you raised for autonomy or were you raised for loyalty were you raised for self-reliance or were you raised for interdependence which one would you say for me was that self-reliance meaning what you have nobody will ever help you as well as you can help yourself you only have yourself to count on don't trust people you're on your own buddy or raised for interdependence loyalty you're never alone there's people around you you owe others others are

there for you relationships is what makes you i think i was both based on like circumstances correct the circumstances made you reliable because you were alone with mom but the messaging was you have me yeah yeah of course okay so i think both i think that question is a fundamentally interesting question okay that people can ask themselves when they partner in business and in love raised for self-reliance or loyalty yeah okay interdependence are you part do you see yourself as connected to others and it's your connections that give you a sense of anchoring meaning relevance

importance it all of that or do you see yourself as fundamentally on your own i think travel curiosity you often will have a complementarity between one person who is curious and eager to discover and goes on you know and then another person your question about to be alone or doesn't want to travel once doesn't want but it's also likes comfort likes repetition likes the familiar um i think the religious values if you have a person who you know those those matter a great deal um children do you want family or do you not want family

if you you know if you want a family then make sure that you find someone who wants a family what do you what are you doing what are you gonna do try to convince some you know now i don't think you have to have the same values on everything i think you have to have a similar outlook on life which is a vision like exactly the same as when you a vision do you you know do you want to own a home do you think that economic achievement is important do you want to live in

an extended family you think that living intergenerationally really is important and you have somebody else who says you know i don't want your parents over you know do you [Music] do you want to live in more than one place you know i think these are essential you know money feelings or emotions religious beliefs attitude toward life it's not a specific value about something it's a value is a cluster of things it's a cluster of importance of systems of meanings that's a value it's and you may not find someone with everything that's the same but someone

with a similar mindset as we're saying i met a husband of mine with whom i am for more than three decades who had never left the us when i met him really i never knew such a person existed coming from europe that was unheard of for us no i lived in the states he was american i came from europe in europe you travel everywhere all the time even if you have nothing you work one month you get the money and then you go to the next country which is two hours away and so i traveled

outside he had never been outside of the us yeah he will always tell me been to the virgin islands but you know for the right and i thought oh my god how does one you know who is such a person but i knew it was because of the circumstances of his life and that if he could he would and he was intensely curious if you just said oh he's never traveled then you misinterpret you don't want to just look at the manifest thing of you know you want to say and behind this is there someone

who would actually like that who just hasn't had the opportunity and he's curious and just says let's go so don't get fooled just by what you see find out what is the belief behind it the aspiration the longing the interest and then you get a sense of what is the value do you think it's i want to go back to expectation do you feel like we should lower or should diversify expectations or what did you say the word was calibrated calibrate expectations or should we be finding someone that can reach that expectation that we want

no i think it's you think it's just impossible i think you you need to calibrate calibrate always calibrate you calibrate you constantly will be disappointed do you know a single relationship where you haven't been disappointed yeah okay i mean disappointment is which can lead to suffering is part of a relationship the minute you have a relationship you have an expectation that expectation means that you want something love closeness intimacy partnership you know business affiliation you name it it creates dependence the moment you have an attachment you have dependence that dependence means that you have power

or i have power if i expect something from you i confer power on you you have power over me i have power over you by definition there will be moments when that power doesn't go in the direction that i want and i'll be disappointed i'll be disappointed is there a single child that didn't have a disappointment from their parents it doesn't exist this this idyllic thing you're talking about it doesn't exist the next thing is what do you do with that disappointment hey can i come tell you i'm really disappointed you let me down i

thought we were in this together i trusted you and you say i see your point or do you say what the hell are you talking about you're just inventing this you're delusional none of the you know and everything in between that's how you do a relationship it's really based on the repair it's not based on the it's how we heal the disappointment yes so you repair all these breaches moment by moment you come back you know and the repair is not i am so sorry you prepare me sometimes be hey do you want a glass

of water or hey did you see this article in the newspaper john gottman is this very interesting thing about that he says the repair is not that you come and you do a me a culpa is that you do what he calls bids for connection you show the other that they still matter i brought a newspaper in at the time when we still had newspapers that was one of these examples you know i brought the paper in like i think of you i'm pissed at you you just annoyed me we just had a spat but

i but you still don't care about you i still care you're still in my life yeah i respect you so it's how we repair disappointment on a daily or weekly or monthly basis minutes sometimes is the success of the relationship and that means also how you come and you say you take responsibility yes i think i actually think that taking responsibility is the ultimate freedom really i've i messed up i shouldn't have done this you know can i do that you know it really is being accountable what's the biggest lesson you've learned from researching and

doing this work on this topic the last few years biggest thing you've learned about yourself or about humanity in general yeah there are two themes i think that uh that's standard actually three things probably that stand out um one that i too for a long time thought affairs only happen in troubled relationships if you have everything you want there should be no reason to go looking elsewhere but then i began to hear more and more people come into my office and say i love my partner i'm having an affair you know in the same way

that when i wrote mating in captivity people would say i love my partner i we have no sex and i was like you know i thought if you love your desire and now i thought if you love you're faithful so this idea that not all affairs are symptoms of relationships gone awry that people in happy relationships also stray and it isn't because of their partner or because of something in the relationship that there's another theme here that affairs and this led me to the second thing which is that you always have to look at infidelity

from a dual perspective at the heart of affairs is betrayal and hurt but there is also longing longing for an emotional connection longing for intensity longing for a different sexuality longing to reconnect with lost parts of ourselves longing to suddenly feel alive because people have allowed themselves to feel dead on the inside that what it did to you and what it meant to me that you have to be able to figure out both is a much more useful way to help people yeah how do we you know all those things you're talking about longing for

a desire of someone else or a different experience or something from the past or all those things you're talking about how do we get those things in our partner if we're feeling those things that they're missing even if we love our partner yeah you know someone comes to you it's like i love my partner but i feel like i'm missing these other things how do we not miss those things or create those in our relationships do you know how many times i say to people tell me something the person that is here in this other

relationship is that the one who comes home i mean the one that your partner boyfriend girlfriend husband is dealing with is not nearly as charming and as attentive you know when you prepare your suitcase and you fly and you choose your carefully chosen clothes and you prepare yourself and you know you don't bring work with you when you go to you know but when you go home you're on your phone the whole time you bring the leftovers you're not nearly that attentive you're way less charming your humor is gone you know and and then you

tell me that your your wife is boring or your husband is boring and you who are you here versus who are you there not who are they who are you so that's the first thing it's like what happened to you that you let this thing seep out of you and what makes it difficult for you to bring this back into your own relationship why is it why is that reasons why people why people neglect themselves in some way right why is it that there you can be such a free woman and here is this boyfriend

of yours who think you hate sex you have no interest you are utterly you know frozen and this one is like it's the same woman what happened you know and on top that's the bigger lie the bigger lie is not only that you're having a lover the bigger lies that your husband your boyfriend has no idea what's the truth about you why and then different stories sometimes it's stories from childhood you know i have no idea how to bring that part of me in the context of family because family was the place where sexuality was

the most dangerous so i have never known how to experience pleasure at home home was a place where i made sure to be safe pleasure i took somewhere else then you start to see the way that people have carved out and compartmentalized themselves and the reasons behind it now is real therapy work that's a difference you know that's when you start to really try to understand why why why can't you integrate the different parts of you is it kind of like the idea of always dating in your relationship it's like always trying to be your

charming self and not forgetting it how you got into the relationship don't like forget that is that kind of the concept i don't know if it's always dating but but for sure the couples that are erotic couples are couples who maintain a level of attention on each other they they they don't take each other for granted yeah they they flirt they are physical they they continue to play with each other desire they create desire i mean you it doesn't just stay i mean it is an amazing thing to see how attentive people are to their

creative projects to their artwork to their businesses to and how often rather neglectful even a date night it's nice but what do you bring to the date night i mean she's going through the motions or is it created do something you know look we know that if you do familiar activities with your partner it's very nice and it creates a real sense of comfort to go back and to repeat things that you enjoy but we know that if you want to bring excitement into a relationship you need new experiences you need to have this relationship

be one in which you take yourself out of your comfort zone in which you discover something in which you explore traveling but it does have to be just traveling by going abroad it's traveling it's taking yourself to new places to new experiences with each other to new thresholds all the research backs that up it also breeds testosterone for that matter novelty creates testosterone that's the work of helen fischer and if you think if you look at it metaphorically or biologically it makes all sense in the world growth involves exploration involves curiosity involves discovery we know

it and it advanced risk taking we know it in business and it is no different in the relationship in the business of intimacy if you want to call it like that wow do you do any of these things of course yeah we do it yeah for sure and if we're not my girlfriend always remind me like let's go try something new you know if it's been like a week or two where we've kind of been doing the same thing just like going to the movie or to the same place to each she's like let's go

try something new and i'm like yeah we need to so she's actually good at that because sometimes i can just be focused on my vision and my work and just like not stop and it's comfortable to just do the same thing and not have to think about creating something new so um but i could see a difference in that creativity and that uniqueness when we go do something different as opposed to the same thing i can feel the desire and the curiosity testosterone thank you i mean the the the difference one person says it's so

nice i mean i wouldn't have thought about it i love it when you take me you remind me and then i don't mind doing it if i feel appreciated for it right because then okay it became my role for some reason i have more availability in my headspace to think about those things and as long as i know that you really appreciate it that you value this that you're coming along not just to do me a favor right then i'll come up with more and more ideas and i will keep this going for years for

years you know and we study erotic couples i mean there is it's not an unknown we know that there are people who maintain a certain spark and it has nothing to do with how often they make love but they are engaged with each other they enjoy each other's company after decades they still find each other interesting they're not bored what else should we know about this what else should we know about i wanted to say one other thing that i had discovered that to me was really important because it is not getting enough uh attention

attention these days everything these days is about you make it or you break it you end it's not good you leave you can do better you leave you're not happy or you could be happier you leave and i think that the people who actually want to stay after an infidelity in their relationship are often judged and looked down upon what's wrong with you you let him walk all over you you let her boss you around you know um yeah that's scary too it's kind of like your friends are constantly pressuring you you can do better

you don't even tell them yeah the majority of people i meet won't tell their friends who feel guilty or they feel like a week or whatever yeah yes yes you dump the dog on the curb right you know forget everything that happened that's right the five years of the relationship just that's right three five or 25 right out and i think sometimes out is what needs to happen but sometimes this happens in a good relationship and it happened and it and and we need to know what to do when it happens but just to judge

people and shame them for staying isn't fair that's not good it's not right i don't and i think it really is not giving relationships the credit they deserve because they're not perfect yeah because they're not perfect and you know what sometimes what comes afterwards is going to be even better than what was before the wake-up call it's a wake-up call like when you have an illness it gives you a new perspective on life do i recommend you to get sick no but do i accept that sometimes out of that crisis you will actually re-prioritize your

life and live with a different level of honesty and authenticity the same happens in a relationship you've seen this with couples you've worked with and again and again again and again but you have to believe in the strength of people to actually take this learn from it resuscitate and revitalize yeah so if you are the friend of someone who went through infidelity whereas a girlfriend or boyfriend cheated on them and you're hearing this as the friend how do you create a space for your friend who went through this to make sure that you're i don't

know either giving tough love of like okay let's make sure this doesn't happen over and over or what's the structure they can give if they can't hire you or a therapist no i think it's a great question because so many of us have been that friend and you know the first thing i say to the friend is try as best as you can not to insert yourself in the story it's not about you and what happened to you and what your mother did to your father or your father did to your mother and therefore what

your girlfriend needs to do try to create a space it's exactly that now if you have a girlfriend and every time this is not three times in a row she finds herself with a guy who treats her like you really do want to tell her this is not okay and you want to help her pull out but if you are with a girlfriend or a friend male friend and they have been together for 12 years and you know that these people have really been good together and they've built a lot of things together tell her

figure it out i'm i'm here for you i have no idea what's the right thing for you you know i'm here to hold you when you doubt yourself i'm here to remind you that you are more than just the person that just has been shafted and betrayed i'm here to give you back your sense of value when you think that you have been completely devalued and pushed aside i'm here to tell you that you're beautiful when you think that you probably are not beautiful enough anymore i'm here you know i'm gonna hold the other view

of you that you don't have in this moment because you're so low that's my role as a friend not to tell you do this or do that and judge you i mean the amount of people i've seen who say my best friend doesn't talk to me anymore oh my god because i've decided to stay with you know and why not because i think he's such a great man or such a great woman we have four children my mother is dying i you know i haven't worked in 20 years i need you know or i have

a business together i mean there are other considerations here and i am not ready to work out on all of this even if it's not for the quality of my relationship but it's because my relationship is the nexus on which so many other parts of my life depend upon and i'm not willing to let all of that go at this point who are we to say who are we to say so it's a very delicate thing when to live when to stay when to try again when to give up when to accept finally that this

is never going to change when to know you know and i think it's different when you're with a chronic philanderer or and when you were the person who you know for years before the none of this happened and this happened you know what was going on and what is the shared responsibility for the deterioration of the relationship as well what is there things that we colla colluded on together but as a friend you really want to be there to give people back their sense of self-worth at a moment when they feel like it's been sucked

out of them more than to tell them leave get out of here put the clothes on the street yeah you know take him out kick her out you know how the because the the fear of staying the shame of sting is even worse on men oh my gosh oh really oh yes so when men get because we understand that women are used to women historically i used to be cheated on so you know therefore they need to go now because they finally have the choice to do and the possibility to go but the guy who

stays what kind of a man are you weak he instantly gets emasculated he's weak he lets her walk all over him you know he has no balls i mean his entire masculinity is instantly put on the line and even more so when you go to latin cultures and more traditional cultures there it's like you you're you know horns don't exist on a woman huh right so how would a how would a a guy friend support the guy who got cheated on who you know don't start trashing the partner right away that's the first thing on

either side it's so because if i start trashing your girlfriend look at her what the you know that what are you gonna do you're gonna defend her you're going to end up defending her because you know it's not that bad it's not yeah instead of you being angry at her i am now showing like as if it happened to me you know i'm even more angry than you so now you're caught in a triangle you know i just need to say look man this is horrible this is this sucks you know um what happened there

you know and do you think you've been good to her do you think that she had reasons to before you start cursing her maybe we check a little bit on here for the moment too you know you know what it looks like she's not really into you i mean she or she has issues or or maybe she doesn't love you anymore but you know she you've made it impossible for her to go because you have this business together and you basically told her that she won't get a penny when she goes you know if you

love someone set them free if they love you they'll come back and then a few years later i was noticing a pattern in my patients over and over again they kept it's like they were all talking about the same relationship i thought this is interesting nobody ever taught these people about narcissism this is clearly what was happening in their relationships and i'm not kidding you once they got educated on these patterns they were making changes like this some were getting divorced some were splitting up