The 6 RED FLAGS You Need To Avoid In A Relationship! (WATCH OUT FOR THIS!) | Esther Perel

if you want to really take on the big myths it's the notion that we are looking for the one and only we have never expected so much of our romantic relationships as we do today with you and me together we are going to create best friends romantic partners seriously one person for everything one person instead of a whole village so that's the first myth and 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 really yeah

please welcome powers do you feel like i think the stats before two years ago was 50 of marriages fail do you feel like the percentage has gone up since the last two years or is it still kind of the same some people have figured it out other people haven't and people are you know somewhere in between so i'm not a statistician and in fact it is lesser than four than 50 and it depends by social class okay uh more educated people marry later and divorce less um it's actually education and social class has something to

do as well with um duration of of marriages but i think what i would say as a start is that disasters are relationship accelerators and that means that what we've experienced in these last two years i was here march 11. that's crazy and i went in lockdown march 14. and so i that's why i will always remember when i that the date of our last conversation but what happens in a period of disaster like this and prolonged disaster right with prolonged uncertainty is that you have a sense that especially in the beginning we really had

a clear sense of mortality things suddenly felt much more fragile and when life is short when you have that acute awareness of life is short then you'd say either what am i waiting for let's move in let's get married let's have babies let's let's go let's do because i don't know what happens tomorrow or we say i've waited long enough i'm not taking this anymore you know i'm going to wait this out a little bit but as soon as i can i'm out of here because when when you have a sense of mortality and when

you have acceleration you basically have a reorganization of your priorities what matters to me most what can't i live without and what won't i tolerate living with anymore that is what is what has happened and so typically research has always says said that in pandemics in disasters in large psychosocial events like that there is more breakups and more babies but we are just coming out of it so the babies are about to be born and the breakups are now just proliferating but we don't know i think the exact statistic yet interesting i think before you

mention that something like 50 of marriages end the divorce and then you know 70 of the next marriages and in divorce second marriages have a higher rate of divorce than first marriage why is that i think that there's a lot of ways to explain it but in in first of all often children are older second there is a sense that um i waited too long in the first one to make this decision and i no longer want to feel afterwards where i say i should have done this much sooner there is less of a sacredness

to the experience and you feel like i i was the first time you feel like you know depending on if you come from divorce of your or your belief systems or your values about the the stability of relationships it means so much to break those vows sometimes and then the second time you've already done it i've done this i don't need to tolerate this for 10 more years like i did the first time there is a less of a sense of of shattering of all the grand ambitions of love and of marriage that you had

engaged with wow that's interesting you've already done that experience once of dissolving this entire complex relational system that is emotional psychological economic inter-familial and you did it and so it doesn't it feels slightly less impossible ominous it's not as scary the second it's not that scary you've done it before you know the pain it's you can handle it again third marriages is less it's less yes less divorces less divorces why is that i guess people have a sense that they finally have done either their personal work they've grown up they've matured they've taken responsibility they've

got they've gotten the sense as the constant factor in all their relationship is them you know so finally maybe they took a good look at themselves and hopefully this time they it's not that they found a better person it's that i think they have become a better partner it's i was talking to you about this before we got on the interview about how my entire life i've been the uh the the centerpiece of of relationships not working out i've been the core i've been the person who's been involved in the relationship and therefore i've chosen

and and stayed in relationships that didn't line up with what i wanted um in my most current relationship uh with martha when we started dating i was telling you this when we started dating i said it'd be really cool to enter a new relationship with emotional accountability with therapy with support from an outspotting perspective we both are working on ourselves and we're getting clear if we're in alignment with our values and our vision and our lifestyle for what we want to create where we're not just connected sexually or chemically which is what i chose a

lot in the past and stayed for but more based on a different foundation and it's been a beautiful experience for both of us to witness emotional accountability and therapy together when things are great not when things are you know bad and you have to like repair something but to try to build agreements as we build our relationship and i'm such a fan of it and i've been telling all my friends about this who are getting relationships like you know find something find a book you can work on together or a therapist or something you work

on together have you ever worked with couples who got into a relationship early when there wasn't issues and they started working with many really many many many many so the traditional you know idea of premarital counseling is one thing but there's also you know people want to talk about conscious uncoupling but they could also talk about conscious coupling right it's like in the beginning you're not in your early 20s you're in your late 30s you've had your experiences you have a sense of what are the vulnerabilities that you bring to the relationships you have a

sense of what makes it hard to live with you you know as well and um and you say i actually want us to go when we are still when we still have a lot of what is called positive sentiment override what does that mean it means that you get the benefit of the doubt that you're still in in multiple appreciation that you see the bright side of things that you see the cup half full that you're not yet building resentment and deprivation and you know the things that sometimes accompany relationships on the bitter side of

of them and i think that i like it when people come early i think it's fantastic one of the big changes for me as a couples therapist over decades was that indeed we learned that people come to therapy when there are problems therapy is a problem written narrative if everything's fine why don't you go to therapy and if you already need to go in the beginning there must be something really wrong because who goes and that is so old for me that has been scrapped you know you go because you have a sense that you

want to prepare yourself you want to bring your strengths and your challenges from the beginning into the relationship and and prepare it and i think it is a fantastic idea it doesn't mean that you already have problems it means that you say i want to do a preventive approach i want to preempt i want to be mature about it and um and it's interesting because you talk about the distinction between chemicals and values right like and you just posted the clip of a conversation that we had back then exactly two years ago where i talked

about the difference between a love story and a life story yes it's a bit that it's the you get you don't need too much consonants and of values to love somebody what is the difference between love and life story the experience of a love story the word story is important right so the story of love is a story that can i can fall in love with all kinds of people with whom i would never live a life with that we come from completely different worlds we have different aspirations different values but in the midst of

that something very precious unfolds between us in a very small container that is deeply intimate and often deeply erotic it doesn't need how do we negotiate children in laws economics careers the political environment around us all of that we don't have to talk about any of this in that beautiful container of intimacy and erotic intimacy lives a love story a life story is a negotiation with the whole world a life story first of all goes to a developmental arc i may meet you in my 20s and now here i am in my 40s 56 so

it's a developmental arc it exists over time it needs to include change it needs to include the addition and subtraction of new people the death of people and the birth of people sometimes it needs to include how we negotiate with all our friends a love story can live alone in a little room without seeing anybody you know because it feeds on itself very very beautifully but a life story must include other people a social circle a community you know activities passions hobbies careers there's a lot of other things and those demand a consonants of values

of aspirations of ambitions the ability to not just foster the togetherness but also to develop the differentiation it's us and it's you and me it's the the it's the together and the separate yeah and so the love story when people develop what they can say that doesn't mean by the way i'm sorry you're good because i know what people saw that but the life story involves love the fear is that when i've distinguished this way people is there no love in the life so of course there is love in the life story but all i'm

saying is you can love a lot more people and they're not necessarily the same people as the ones with whom you will have a livestream and do most people who develop a love story with someone else and not also see if this could be a life story is that where you see it suffers or struggles if they're only thinking of the love story but not all the other factors of life no i think that if you meet someone like you i used you know i could go on a trip and have a beautiful story with

someone a nice adventure that person belongs on the trip right it doesn't need to come back from the trip with you and sometimes they come back on the trip and it takes another week or two of a lot of you know texts and and calls and this and then slowly you reintegrate your life and they become a part of a memory of a beautiful trip they're a short story right they're a love story and a short story you know once you say i think i may want to live with this person and we want to

build with this person it's a different architecture and i need different materials for that architecture and part of the materials is love and feelings but part of it is culture and and aspirations and values and beliefs all of that now starts to become important too and sometimes when people fall in love or when people have incredible sexual connection they think that that also means that they can build a life together and sometimes that's the case and other times it's not it is not a guarantee a powerful erotic connection doesn't necessarily mean that you can also

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do is visit athleticgreens.com s-o-g again that is athleticgreens.com sog to take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance you know i feel like a lot of people that i've known in the past have entered a relationship through a sexual connection a sexual chemistry erotic experiences fun times things like that and then they start dating and then they start entering a relationship based on that foundation as opposed to based on what do you see for your life you know what are the values the background the culture of the religion the money

all these different things do you want kids do you not want kids and i feel like that ends up being a struggle for a lot of people myself included in my past until i started i tried something differently you first had the sex and then you met the person exactly yeah and created this a story about who the person would be right without actually communicating in a and giving space and time to experience who the person was right and same for them with me why do you think most people start things that way you know

in general as opposed to hey let's give it time let's ask deeper more intimate questions like you have in your game let's get to know each other why do you think that is first of all that only began to happen with the democratization of contraception this is before the 68 this was not possible so it's not it's very recent right you know that we start making love first and then we find out each other's names is that is that true all over the world or is that more in the u.s or is that true wherever

people can experience you know premarital sex basically um in the past you first had to marry in order to be able to have sex when i say in the past it's in the past here and that's when i was a teenager and um and in much of the world it still is the case so we are part of a very sexualized society in which sexual freedom and sexual expression has become a part of our values right sexuality used to be a part of our biology and now it's a part of our condition now it's a

part of our identity and so we have changed the meaning of sex in the in the culture at large and then we have changed it in our relationships and so we start from a place of attraction you know am i drawn to you and i attracted to him i you know it's the first thing i think when i swipe what do i do i look at you know where do i get a little frison you know who who catches my attention and it's purely physical you know so it is a it is a recent development

it's for most of the people here this is not their grandparents story so this is still in the family it's not like you have to go in the history books sure how do you feel like people could set up for a healthier relationship as opposed to what would you recommend or suggesting for people in order to have a healthier foundation seeing that it seems so sexualized now everything seems so like physical swiping looking at someone's sexual identity attraction as opposed to i guess true intimacy and connection how would you set up a relationship now there's

so many um different pieces to this i think the first things look i i am right about sexuality i'm not going to minimize it but i do understand that you know it's a very important it's a beautiful thing to have a powerful erotic connection with someone but don't confuse the metaphors you can have a beautiful erotic connection with someone and that does not necessarily translate into a life experience right a life story a life story that's said um the next thing that changed culturally if you want to really take on the big myths it's the

notion that we are looking for the one and only the one and only um my my soul mate it's my everything yes my everything your soulmate used to be god not a person you know the one and only was the divine and with this one and only today i want to experience wholeness and ecstasy and meaning and transcendence and i'm going to wait 10 more years we are waiting 10 years longer to settle with someone to make a commitment to someone for those of us who choose a someone and if i'm going to wait longer

and if i'm looking around and if i'm choosing among a thousand people at my fingertips you bet that the one who's going to capture my attention is going to make me delete my apps better be the one and only so in a period of proliferation of choices we at the same time have an ascension of expectations about a romantic relationship that is unprecedented we have never expected so much of our romantic relationships as we do today in the west it seems like a lot of pressure it's an enormous amount of pressure we crumble under the

weight of these expectations because a community cannot become a tribe of two this is a party of two and with you and me together we are going to create best friends romantic partners lovers confidants parents intellectual eager business partners business partners career coaches i mean you name it and i'm like seriously one person for everything one person instead of a whole village so that's the first myth and the notion of unconditional love that accompanies this is that when i have that one and only i have what you call clarity but translated into certainty peace and

freedom you know or safety which is the other side of the same thing so that's that to me is if you want to set yourself up really the idea that you're going to find one person for everything is a myth keep a community around you absolutely keep a set of deep friendships really deep friendships deep intimacies with part with friends with mentors with family members with colleagues you know yeah so that's the first thing for me in having good relationships is is um diversify issues no no for some people it will include that for the

vast majority it won't but the notion that there isn't a one person for everything and that that doesn't mean that there is a problem in your relationship when that happens the second thing is stop constantly looking at people as a product where you evaluate them and you evaluate yourself you know in our market economy everything has become a product we include it and so love seems to have become the moment that the evaluation of the product stops you have finally been approved when you have been chosen and when you choose this is if i lose

a sociologist who writes about this very beautifully it's like love finally becomes the moment the moment you can experience peace you're no longer looking selling yourself proving yourself trying to capture somebody's attention it's exhausting and once you are in that mentality you also are continuously looking for the best product you never say you know how can i meet a person who people don't often talk about how can i be a person who that's so true okay so it's what you're looking for in the market economy of romantic love rather than who are you how do

you show up what do you bring what responsibility do you take how generous are you etc absolutely second thing for what i think sets you up for a better relationship and the third thing is understand some of the things that are really important to you and don't get involved with someone on the hope that some things will change do things ever change with a partner that you want to change yes things do change a lot i mean lots many different things can occur in a relationship but it's different from i'm coming in here right to

to turn things around you know because so much of us wants the experience of acceptance so absolutely with acceptance i would say this another thing to prepare yourself you can love a person wholly w-h-o-l-l why without having to love all of them what do you mean by that it means that the notion of unconditional love is a myth adult love lives in the realm of ambivalence which means that relational ambivalence is part and parcel of all our relationships we have it with our parents our siblings our friends which means that we continuously have to integrate

contradictory feelings and thoughts between love and hate between excitement and fear between envy and contempt between boredom and aliveness it's you continuously negotiate these contradictions that ambivalence and living with that ambivalence is actually a sign of maturity rather than continuously then evaluating see in the beginning you evaluate is this the right one is this the one and only is this the then it becomes shall i stay or shall i go how do i know i have found the one is the pre-marital or the pre-commitment relationship and then afterwards it becomes is it good enough we

continuously continue with the evaluations right is it good enough or how happy am i am i happy enough so that's the unconditional love no we live with ambivalence in our relationship there are periods where we think what would life be like elsewhere and then we come back and then we say i can't imagine it without it this is what i've chosen i'm good here but it's a conversation the idea that you will be accepted unconditionally is a dream we have for our parents when we have babies it's not part of adult love right so his

unconditional love is not something that we can expect unconditional love is a myth so the one and only is a myth you asked me how do we set ourselves up for the best for relationships up front there is no one and only there is one person that you choose at a certain moment in time and with that person you try to create the most beautiful relationship you can but you could have done it with others timing is involved lots of things are involved so there is no one and there's no soul mate soulmate is god

you can think that you have a soulmate connection with someone that you have a deep deep meeting of the minds of the souls of the heart of the bodies but it's a metaphor it's not a person it's the quality of an experience that feels like soul mate that's number two number three there is no unconditional love we live with ambivalence in our deepest love relationships there are things we like and things we don't and things they like about us and things they don't and moments they can't ex they can't be without us in moments where

they wish on occasion they could be away from us and that's normal number four the happiness man did continuously evaluating how happy i am you know how if you continuously pursue happiness you're miserable a lot of the time what should we pursue instead we pursue integrity depth joy aliveness connection growth those things that ultimately make us say i feel good i'm i'm happy about this but i don't pursue happiness happiness is the con the consequence of a lot of things you put in you pursue caring for someone having their back feeling they have your back

wanting the best for them what the poly people call compersion you know those things you can pursue conversion what's computer comparison is feeling joy for the happiness of the other person this is polyamory relationships it's a concept another sexual part but i think the word is bigger than just you know contained within the poli community and culture it is the notion that you want good for the other person even when it doesn't have to do with you right you're proud of them you admire them you you enjoy their their growth their successes you know what

about when um someone says you know i'm with this person they make me happy what does that happen when you're looking for someone to make you happy in the relationship well the day they don't you will say they make me unhappy or they don't make me happy but it's they they do to me i'm the recipient of what they do they have the power they can give they can withhold i depend i crave i long i yearn i respond to them and what should we be thinking of instead of this person makes me happy how

should we how should we approach that we give each other a good foundation from which we can each launch into our respective worlds oh that's cool a home is a foundation with wings or i like to think a good relationship is a foundation with wings so you feel the stability that you need the security the safety the predictability as much as you can as much as our life allows us and at the same time you have the wings to go and explore discover be curious be in the world sometimes together and sometimes apart do you

think happens when people are in a relationship and let's say they're together for a year a couple years and they decide okay we want to get married but maybe one or two each of the individuals don't accept something fully about the other person maybe there's like three things that they really don't like or don't accept or wish they changed what yeah i mean i'm just trying to think of something where you're like i love so much we have this great connection we have so much fun and we're growing and building a relationship but behind their

back you're telling your girlfriend or your guy friends i wish they'd change this this or this i don't like this thing i don't like this thing that's ambivalence what does that mean meaning that you have to be able to live with the contradictory thoughts and feelings of what you like and what you don't like what makes you want to be here and what makes you not want to be here whenever it's when we don't accept that though and we and we like you know hopefully they'll change out of this or grow out of this thing

that i don't like about them what happens when we're in that space means that when you get married you're not just making a deal with your partner you're making a secret deal with yourself that this is going to change and then when it doesn't you get very upset or pissed because you deal with yourself which you never said out loud it's the private bargain you do it yourself and all of us when we pick someone make private bargains with ourselves too and it's often that bargain that is broken more than the one because the partner

never promised you that this would change exactly and so it just creates more resentment when we want something to change we don't expectations are resentment in the make the more expectations you have the more things you can be disappointed of afterwards especially when they're not articulated i think what you need to know is what are some of the things if you are with someone who if you if you go back to the erotic connection if you're with someone with whom you have a very difficult erotic connection and you know that this is something that really

is important to you being seen being touched being held being kissed being stroked being made love to is really a language that is very important to you and you don't want to live without it then listen to yourself if it's not an important part for you because that is not the way you express yourself most then then you know that this is not the center part the center piece of your relationship you have other things that you share if you know that you don't want children or the reverse that the other person doesn't want children

don't go in there hoping that they're going to change your mind their mind because that is not fair to you nor to them if you are with someone who says i do not want to marry and you do or if you are with someone who says i see love plural i do not see myself just with one partner and this is so clear to you that that's not okay or that you want it differently listen to yourself those are values that involve life decisions that you don't sit there waiting till they're going to catch up

with you and what happens when our when two people's values are not in alignment can they still have a beautiful life story or do you feel like there's always going to be some type of no unnecessary i think it depends on the degree to which people can live with what we call a differ a sense of differentiation meaning if i am okay wanting to go to church and that's not part of what you do we come from the same faith or we come from different religions and one of us wants to adhere to their tradition

and wants to participate in the practices of their religion and is okay doing it without the other it doesn't feel that that needs to be shared there's an experience every time they sit in church i wish you were sitting next to me why do i have to come here alone all the time you know i i that so it's accepting someone's choices it's like it's it's it's accepting that your choice if you practice it you can accept to do it without your partner it's you accepting it's you accepting it of course the other person but

the other person can often tell you you go if you like to be there i don't want to go there on sunday morning other things to do with your time sure okay religion is a major one on that travel is another one on that children work etc it's difficult to say to someone i'll have a child alone you don't have to participate but it is easier to say i will continue to practice my religion because it is central to me you don't have to be a part of that we have other things that we will

share but you need to know to do that and feel okay about it if all the time now that doesn't mean that on occasion you don't miss and you wish your partner that's a great sermon i so wish you had been there to hear it great but if it's chronic and you just feel this whole all the time and and you know from the beginning that it is a unifier for you and your partner is and your partner doesn't show curiosity because you can come from something else and say i'm interested in this let me

let me see what this show is if you want to go back to live in your home country and your partner has zero intention of living where they are listen to them don't hope if they tell you yes i would like that at some point then listen carefully if they're saying this to pacify you if they're saying this to make sure that you don't leave them or if they truly intend to do this at some time and don't hope something's going to change don't hope they're going to do something later after you get married or

you know whatever start from the place that it's not going to happen see how it is can you accept that can you accept that then if things change all the better but don't start with the hope that it will be different right and how does jealousy play in relationships i used to be extremely jealous and insecure i remember that and then something switched to me i don't know five years ago six years ago maybe somewhere around that time where i was like you know what this does not support me or my relationship at all this

this jealous nature or this that you know even when you were jealous oh yeah i knew but i couldn't i couldn't let it go right so it's not what you said to yourself that changed what something changed yeah i don't know exactly what it was but i remember just being like i'm tired of this i'm tired of feeling this way so what did you change not what did you say to yourself i think i changed fully accepting the person's decisions and lifestyle and what they were doing and trusting that everything was going to be okay

and not needing to be jealous i think i was just afraid like are they talking to some guy or something you know is there something behind my back that they're doing i don't know it was a worry of like an anxiousness right so and then i was just like wait wait yes part of what accompanies jealousy you know jealousy starts at one and a half year old okay it's not an early emotion interesting it needs a sense of self first it needs the beginning of self-awareness as a baby to be able to experience jealousy it's

not like fear and joy and disgust and sadness so where does it come from where it comes from and how evolutionary psychology has all kinds of explanations for jealousy but where it comes from interpersonally is that it requires having a sense of who you are before you begin to experience how you respond to what other people are doing i want that too i don't you know i don't want to lose something what changed for you is that you became more confident yeah you felt less that your sense of self-worth is in the hands of the

other person and that and they turned away from you that means that you are not enough or that you're going to lose them or that they're going to leave you that's what changed and then i'd be like hurt or empty or sad or in pain because of their actions and i think that's 100 i think i didn't feel like i was good enough or something where i was just like you know what it's all gonna be okay you know if they do something or but this it's all gonna be okay followed in different sense of

yourself absolutely where you were less in a panic less in the grip of they're gonna abandon me and i'm not good enough and from that place you began to say it's okay nothing bad is gonna happen to me that's how we diminish jealousy it's not how we react to what the other person does it's how we feel about ourselves that changes how we react about what the other person does absolutely and it's been an incredible freedom freedom and gift that i that i received and or gave myself but it took me you know 30 something

years to learn it and you know it feels incredible it feels incredible but for years i struggled with it and i think a lot of people in general at least guy friends that i knew growing up struggled with it as well where they didn't feel comfortable or maybe their female partner didn't feel comfortable with them doing certain things without them there or whatever and now i'm just like at peace and whatever my partner wants to do i'm like live your life have you ever had a conversation about jealousy with your girlfriend i've talked about it

where i'm like i'm highly cultural interesting yeah i mean i've talked about it with her i'm like i'm so glad i'm not jealous right but americans yes think that being jealous diminishes them they pride themselves when they say i'm not jealous really yes it's a kind of a thing like it's not a nice thing to feel other cultures cultures it's intrinsic to love it's how you love if you're not jealous you don't love the person enough yes that's a distortion in the other direction but it's very cultural jealousy jealousy if you track the magazines in

america is a subject that disappears for decades sometimes and then suddenly re-emerges but it is often seen as a negative emotion it isn't seen as an emotion that is simply part and parcel of the experience of love is jealousy then a healthy emotion in a life story it sometimes can be a perfectly healthy emotion and sometimes it can be very very challenging and sometimes it can become pathological it covers a whole range where does jealousy where is jealousy a good thing when when someone has jealousy when is jealousy a good thing whenever you experienced jealousy

and you didn't feel like it was debilitating and crippling you i mean debilitating i mean yeah i don't know i think there might be i don't i mean it was always debilitating for me i think before i learned to process it and and let it go because i realized it wasn't supporting my thoughts and my my emotions and i was saying or doing things that wasn't the highest level of love i would say or like the most conscious way to communicate you know when those scenarios would happen so i just realized it wasn't supporting me

and i didn't feel good when i had that emotion or those jealous thoughts in a relationship but if you were part of a culture that told you that jealousy is not something you want to get rid of but it actually signals certain things to you and it communicates certain aspects of love you would have had a different experience maybe yeah you know now when is it positive probably the easiest example for me is if i ask people all over the world by the way when do you find yourself most drawn to your partner not sexually

attracted just drawn to when other people are interested in that more that's one of them that is one of the main forms when other people are flirting or giving them attention yes when i see them with other people when i see other people captivated by them when i see the magnetism that they have over other people when i see how others are drawn to them when they don't belong to me now if you are jealous in a feeling that is really crippling and painful then you do not enjoy that you feel uncertain you feel insecure

you feel scared you feel like they could leave you you realize that maybe you know they're not attached to you but if you are more grounded and if you feel more secure in your connection to your partner and to yourself then when you see that experience you have a tingling of jealousy but it is a jealousy that actually increases your appreciation for your personality interesting yeah so that's an example of when do people experience jealousy in a way that actually is fueling healthy jealousy right okay i don't know but i don't know healthy and unhealthy

because i don't think this is a puritanical definition of health it's just it this is the issue is that is it problematic or is it additive that makes sense it's more than is it healthy or unhealthy i think healthy and unhealthy doesn't help us in this moment is it hurting you or the relationship or is it supporting the relationship yes do you think it's four ways yes what's the other three now so let me ask you when do you find yourself most drawn what would you say to martha i find myself drawn to her i

mean from for me i feel drawn when she loves and accepts me for who i am when she's affectionate when she um is a pre you know sharing appreciation with me and gratitude with me when she's joyful and her most expressed self like just pure energy and love and fun and play i have a lot of appreciation and admiration for her when she is living her dreams also like she's doing what she wants to do fully and i'm like that's inspiring you know it draws me to her what else i think the fact that she

is so in integrity with her word draws me to her because i feel more and more connected and grateful and appreciative and safe in the environment so um i mean sexually so many different ways but you you know when i say the first four it's just simply because i've gone around the world asking this question and i just began to see themes right the first one is when i see my partner in their element yeah doing their thing competent radiant in their element it could be on stage at work on a horse on a slope

you know but it is basically when they are self-sufficient and when they are radiant and they're in their element and they're passionate about something and they are alive and all of those things also mean that i am not needing to be burdened by a certain form of emotional caretaking they don't need it yeah that's it and when they don't need you you can want them yes if they're always needing you how does that affect the relationship so let's wait a second so they don't need you in that moment and that not needing you clears the

pathway for desire it allows you to want because if you were needed and you need to take care of them then you are loving but you're not necessarily desiring got it and what happens over time when people say this and the admiration is extremely important here because i think it's much bigger than respect admiration involves a certain idealization and it means that there is a sense of otherness she's different she's other she's her own thing and in this space between her and you between me and the other lies the erotic elon when people ask about

sustaining desire in the long haul this is the place in their element in their own way yes not reliant on each other to be that's love love and desire they relate and they also conflict and herein lies the mystery of eroticism so that's number one in her element when she's joyful when she makes me laugh when she those two it's like there's a sense of aliveness of vibrancy of vitality of energy that is erotic that is erotic that's the number two okay you know and usually it means when when there is an element of surprise

um yeah she's very adventurous because it's unsolicited but you know sometimes people say when my partner is vulnerable and i say that is because it's not usually the case right it's a surprise it's surprised if they were always vulnerable it would not be on the list of when am i most drawn to my partner it's because it's different it's the side of them i don't get to see so often it's the side of me that they don't get to see that often so when they accept me fully and i can open up in a different

way because it's different it's unusual it's out of the ordinary that's number two number three is when i see my partner through the eyes of the others that's the jealousy piece that you do when you see it so when you see others admiring or respecting or attracted to sexually or any of those things what does it mean it means my partner doesn't belong to me means that other people can look at them too can fantasize about them too you know i always say your partner doesn't belong to you they're just on loan with an option

to renew right every day right yeah exactly interesting and the fourth one is when we are apart or when we reunite so that desire is also rooted in absence and in longing and not just in being there how important is creating space in a relationship whether you're dating or in a marriage and creating day apart days apart weeks apart and has it ever become too long apart for a relationship to stay growing if it's months apart or something so the first question is how important is distance in a relationship i will also add something that

i learned from the poet david white this week when we had a conversation together and he talked about the importance of silence in a relationship not always having to speak or yes or the importance of being able to be with yourself while being in the presence of the other what would that look like like reading a book and the person's in the room could be that it could be that you go away for a few weeks because you want to go do a meditation retreat or a project that you're interested in or you know it's

the notion that it or the fact that you keep certain things to yourself but that you stay in dialogue with yourself and a dialogue that isn't always shared with your partner when you mean silent with yourself you mean like not speaking at all for part of this time what do you just mean you're taking it literally yeah yeah it's it's literally but it's also the metaphor of it so i'll explain the context our conversation was called because that's your question about how important is distance i would say distance is very important in a relationship but

the way i define it is this every relationship straddles freedom and commitment togetherness and separateness connection and independence every relationship in every relationship there is often one person who is more inclined to the connection and one person who is more inclined for the separateness one person more afraid of losing the other and one person more afraid of losing themselves one person more in touch with the fear of abandonment one person more in touch with the fear of suffocation we all have both but we organize our relationship in which one of us will take on the

role of this duality and it might evolve seasonally too completely so we need connection and we need distance we need the things that are joined and together and we need the things that are separate the separateness doesn't mean that there is deadness in the relationship so when you ask how long can we be a part it depends what you do with the space in between if you keep the space in between alive we are away we have been together five six years and you have to go do a project and you're gone for three months

but during those three months you have a whole letter writing experience where you are communicating in a very different way than the usual everyday communication every two days or so at night you sit down and you write a letter not just what you've done the catch-up of the day but then you create an aliveness to that space in between that can be even richer that when we are living together and we're standing in the kitchen every morning that's interesting that's powerful yeah what would you say was the the biggest challenge that you faced internally throughout

relationships that you had to face yourself oh i think you know i met my husband jack when i was 22. you're what 35 now yes i like it um and uh actually 35 years together 35 years together married married now we're together even more than that wow it's powerful you know but i i probably swallowed the romantic ideal quite a bit as a young girl too are you gonna meet the right man with this man if you meet the right person you will never feel alone again you will never feel lonely you will never be

sad you will seriously you know whatever you feel you will feel again until some of it you may feel until you drop dead but but you will if it changes it's not because the magical potion of the other person is going to suddenly sprinkle its dust over you so that was getting rid of some of the myths how long did it take for you internally to to let that go or evolve or heal those myths ah yeah i would say the first decade you know it slowly over time you begin to you know um you

begin to realize that i think you know he was i looked up to him i still look up to him he's a very smart guy and i really wouldn't let any idea leave the house before it was vetted and approved by him interesting is this smart is this good can i publish this getting approval getting approval you know from the mentor interesting that was the first 10 years yeah no maybe a little bit less than ten but uh certainly five years okay 75 years i really needed him to to uh validate check everything i would

write and to validate and say it's it it's good because he had the phd i don't you know the whole and then finally i was told one day you know i have my own things to write i'm not going to be your process and i was just like oh i'm going to who's going to help me who's going to help me you know and beginning to write without depending on him that much was a major transition meeting in captivity was written completely on my own without his approval of every chapter i had an editor that

i hired who was phenomenal but it was no longer it was not an emotional dependency it was a professional relationship so that was a major transition i think also understanding the difference between equality and equity what is the difference it's not 50 50. the relationship is not no no relationship no it's 100 100. you know and and complementarity there are certain things that i will never do that i rely on him and certain things that he will never do and he relies on me and they balance each other out and there's a fundamental sense of

fairness complementarity you know i if i want to go do something it's just go do enjoy be the best success complete generosity and that generosity towards distance or freedom or individuality this is a very important thing so here's a question for you and for your for your listeners as well ask yourself you can do it in relation to work you can do it in relation to love to me that was a very important question i understood early on that i needed freedom no i believe differently i could tolerate the lack of security better than i

could tolerate the lack of freedom you needed freedom i needed more than insecurity so i understood early on that i'm going to be self-employed meaning i can tolerate not knowing when the next check is going to come from but i prefer that than somebody telling me when i can take a vacation that was back in the 80s right yes yes this is my 20s early 20s i just but then i applied it to relationships it's interesting i knew that i i need to be with someone to whom i can say go do your thing and

someone who says to me go do your thing more than someone who does this back then that wasn't really you know thought of that much was it that wasn't really as acceptable or maybe uh i don't know people didn't really think that way or did they look maybe the u.s is different no but you also need it you know the same way that i said to sexuality changes in a relationship when you have contraception well freedom changes in a relationship when you have economic independence for women interesting otherwise you know if the woman cannot conceive

of her life separately from her partner then what happens in that at that time primarily male partner but i would say all partner then you cannot talk about freedom because that means you can't leave it means that you continuously depend on the person and the law supported that it's a legal issue it's not just a psychological issue economic independence is an economic dependence on the part of women and mothers was legal right it wasn't just a statement of her ambitions interesting do you think more people are able and wanting to get divorces now because both

parties have economic independence and you don't need to stay because someone can is providing or paying certain bills that you can provide for yourself and either party so divorce went up in the united states when women entered the workforce in a way that they could support themselves economically was was that because they were more independent financially or because they were off doing other things another there were maybe distractions because of economic independence which would allow them it's a few different things legally it's alimony so that children continue to be cared for right and she's not

entirely responsible for them or she doesn't lose them and they go with the father so now we're in the reverse side and on you know what detention is on the other side but it's a few pieces it's having it's being destitute it's losing your children it's not having anybody to care for you and it's not being protected by the law those four things need to combine with having an economic independence that then allow you to not be destitute be able to take care of your children not rely on your partner in case they don't support

you it's or can't support you etc yeah so that is the history of divorce you can't separate the history of divorce from the economic changes and the legal changes around family policy how long do you think people should date before they get married to really know like if they're giving themselves the best chance for not divorce let's say depends how how they date if they're dating is a you know service level exactly parading of the best things of me then um it doesn't matter how long it doesn't change you know but i would say that

the dating the most important pieces of dating i think the dating is is really bizarre at this moment because most people because you did and you know and you date alone you see the person alone and when in fact you learn so much more from seeing people in social situations i mean with their friends or family when you date bring your person on date two to people you know what i did i had a dinner at my house and uh it was a bunch of single people and then one of them at one point said

i actually need to you know they were talking about relationships and long term and how do you know all these questions that you're asking me and uh and at one point one of them said well i actually need to go because i have a blind date so i said where are you going exactly what are you going to do sit in a noisy bar where you can't hear each other bring them over you'll know so much more and anyway she was really bold she did it the guy came too so everybody doing their part and

there's about 12 of us there and uh and and and he shows up and we just tell him we're in the middle of this conversation crazy and and then i you know but the point was you you know how much we learned about this guy oh she learned about him but we all did too learn a lot a lot who he was in the family where he's from and he's thinking about couples and really i mean seriously he and he was adventurous he was willing to come and be a part of this experiment the whole

thing and i actually ran into this woman a few years later no they didn't date but she never forgot it and neither did he and neither did i right you know bring people you meet in your circle first of all your friends see things that you don't see and they often don't want to tell you and they see it and they know you second of all you'll see how a person interacts with with the social circle rather than you know in this kind of dissociated space so the i think that this notion of we sit

alone we sit alone he said and only later do we begin to introduce each other months later right let me introduce them now to the family let me introduce them after six months sometimes and then like huh i don't like this this and this but now you're already developing something i just make boys you know i said did your friends meet her who knows her no one you know i mean you make sure they why expose them to people quickly yes and you don't have to go and get them checked it's not that you can

go and to you know go to a concert share some activity together but you will learn about we learned about people not in a vacuum we learn about people in social situations you learn about people in how they treat the cab driver the waiter the dry cleaner everything the person on the street the homeless person the policeman everybody just watch people in action see how they relate to others while they're trying to be super nice to you and that is a more precise piece of information than how long should we do it yes that's that's

powerful if you got value from that then go ahead and stick around for more coming up right now 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 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 we're dancing every week yeah so eli finkel has a best answer for you on that 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 asked 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 the 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 talk 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 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 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 disregulate 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 do they 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 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 intent 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 for 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 now 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 can 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 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 say 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 i think that question is a fundamentally interesting question okay that people can ask themselves when they partner in business and in love raise 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 it 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 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 what are you going to 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 u.s 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 yeah and so i traveled outside he had never been outside of the u.s yeah he will always tell me he'd been to the virgin islands but you know for the res 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 uh let me 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 it's 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 it's how 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 acculpa is that you do what he calls bids for connection you show the other that they still matter i brought the newspaper in at the time when we still had newspapers there was one of his 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 the 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 are the core uh reasons or the core things you see over and over that uh either end or make a relationship challenging to be in the longer you're in what are the what are the ones that what are the challenges that come up over and over that you see so there's always three questions right what's a driving relationship a thriving one yeah what can go wrong and how do you fix it okay so you started with the middle question what goes wrong i think

there's a number of things in a relationship that that that become just the kind of cornerstones of the demise okay and i'm not going to lease them in order but they all are part of each other um indifference and contempt and neglect and violence are probably the four most important okay i'm not talking about big violence microaggressions are plenty indifference when you start to feel like the other person fundamentally is not really caring about you anymore or you don't care about them what they feel what they think who they are what they're about they just

don't care you've lost interest but it's more than losing of interest it's also when you are doing different you degrade the other person they're less important to you they don't matter and ultimately what we feel in relationships is that we matter that is the essential reason for connecting to people is that we are creatures of meaning right i matter to you i'm someone you care about me you want my you want my well-being you're proud of me you you want good for me you're benevolent all of that when you are indifferent the whole thing goes

and then you start to this that coldness that creeps in that sense of estrangement that complete disconnect that the second one is neglect neglect when people just basically take each other for granted you know i they take more care of their car than of their partner their dog or their dog anybody anything their yard anything anything gets attendants business their business for sure their business for sure you know everything gets priority everything gets reviewed evaluated attended to 360s you name it you know new input my god it's like people have this idea that they put

it all in when they were dating and then once they sealed the knot it's like as if they tied the knot it's like now they don't have to do squat anymore and they go into this kind of complete sense of complacency and laziness it's an amazing thing they think this thing is just going to live on its own right like a cactus right violence violence the abuse the level of of disrespect i mean most people talk nicer to anybody else than their partner when a relationship is great because you can't get away with it because

you can't get away with it because if you talk like this at work you're gone because if you talk like this with the police you're gone because if you talk like this on the street you're being punched but with your partner you have that sense that they're gonna be there anyway they're just gonna take it because it's family and family is this kind of this thing that doesn't dissolve so easily so you can just lash out at them and talk to them with a tone and a dismissal that is phenomenal so that kind of violence

i'm not talking physical violence and all the other big big things you're talking about aggression or resentment or all of that yeah all of that you know passive aggressiveness all those things yeah all of that and then and then um contempt i think is the top one the contempt is the killer of them all because in in the contempt there is a real there's the degradation of the race is that that complete this you're nothing you're nothing i can kill you with that one guess that one eyebrow that goes up you know stuff do you

who do you think you are what are and that's it you you're done you're done so how do we even get to this place of these these places after having been so in love and so romantic right is desire uh reflect that or if we're not desiring the person anymore then we start to feel one of those categories or does that not play into uh look the truth is this 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 we learned that at home we also learned jealousy and possessiveness vengeance you name them the beauty and the not beauty yeah we saw it all as children right we saw the fights we saw the love we saw the you know we saw the coldness the lack of intimacy the intimacy yes yes and we bring that with us and we often promise ourselves i'll never be this one i'll never be this way i'll never talk like this i'll you know and we find ourselves often much closer to the apple and then

presenting ourselves to the tree we resent ourselves we're like how do we do that well why don't we get to this place and then we feel ashamed about it and since we don't like to feel ashamed about it we hide it and one of the way we hide it is we blame the partner that's just one of the ways we are very resourceful in not owning our right exactly exactly wow okay and where does sex play in all this and desire so i mean the one of the fascinating things for me in looking at sexuality

is that it's probably one of the dimensions of relationship that has changed the most in a very very short amount of time for most of history and in still the majority of the world sex is for procreation sex is a marital duty on the part of the woman nobody cares particularly if she likes it and how she feels and if she wants it and and men have the privilege to go and find sex elsewhere in a very short amount of time we're talking 60 years we have contraception which is the liberation of women for the

first time to free sex from reproduction from mortality from death in pregnancy and in childbirth sorry all of that and for the first time sexuality moves from just biology and a condition to a part of our identity and a lifestyle in 60 years in 60 years the women's movement which goes after the abuses of power the gay movement which introduces the concept of identity to sexuality the fact that sex is for connection and pleasure the fact that for the first time we have sex before marriage and many times a lot we used to marry and

have sex for the first time now we marry and we stop having sex with others okay monogamy used to be one person for life now monogamy is one person at a time and people go around telling you i'm monogamous in all my relationships and it makes perfect sense to me okay all of that in a very short amount of time the fact that i choose you to marry or to live together doesn't matter commitment because i'm attracted to you because you give me butterflies in my stomach and the fact that i think that if i

don't have these butterflies anymore maybe i don't love you anymore and the fact that sexuality in long-term relationships is rooted in wanting only desire i feel like it i want to not i have to not we want many kids after two kids the only reason to continue doing it with you is because we feel like it right hopefully it's pleasurable we connect it feels good it runs our relationship the whole thing that's it and hopefully it's at the same time and for each other because plenty of desire continues but it's not always at home right

exactly so this is an amazing revolution sex that's confusing all of us and how do we sustain it so that's why i became fascinated in the nature of erotic desire and how do we sustain desire because it is the first time ever that we have a grand experiment of the human kind where we want sex with one person in the long haul that is fun and connected and intimate and playful and we live twice as long go figure right exactly for 60 years you're going to be with him or whatever it is yeah it's an

amazing idea so how do we navigate this if we're going to choose one partner and be with them until you know we're both gone how do we navigate the challenge of keeping the desire continuously i think both men and women because the woman probably sees other men who are attracted to her and you know vice versa so it's like how do both parties do this look we know that women get bored with monogamy much sooner than men wow it's a factor that's research okay that's not just fact that's uh that is men's desire in long-term

relationship goes down gradually he actually is much more able to remain interested and maybe just because he's interested in the experience itself and he has a partner there women's desire post-marriage really wow and it's always been translated as well that's because women care less about sex rather than it's because women care less about the sex that they can have in their committed relationships which is often not interesting enough for them and it often has to do with the fact that the story the character the plot is not in is not seductive the romance which is

an essential ingredient of turn on for the woman often disappears in the long-term relationship it's like people look at each other at the end of the day and you want to fool around you want to do it you're up for it tonight now this is really not this is not very much of a turn-on for most women and the idea that foreplay often starts at the end of the previous orgasm you know and not five minutes before the real thing right which for her is not the real thing the whole the real thing is everything

else so it's essentially the game yes it's creating a game seduction it's a plot it's a coming close it's a team mystery it's what animals call pacing it's that i come to you but i don't overwhelm you i come just a little bit so that you can come a little bit toward me and then i don't immediately answer i actually go back a little bit too have you ever seen animals they do this kind of pacing and it is an essential playful ingredient of seduction and excitement so women's desire plummets but we interpret it as

women are less interested in sex rather than women are interested in probably just about the same kind of things that many men are but women have always known what to choose above what turns them out which was what gives them stability and security security family right someone to protect be there right so what people do look this is we want one partner today to give us everything that involves stability and security and everything that involves playfulness and mystery okay that's the grand ideal okay i want to be cozy with you and i want to have

an edge and i want you to surprise me and i want you to be familiar and i want you to give me continuity and i want you to give me novelty that's it as if it's uh right and no victoria's secret is gonna solve that yeah right so then it becomes what is desire desire is to own the wanting if you ask people a question that goes like this i turn myself off when i turn myself off by not you turn me off when and what turns me off is you're gonna hear i turn myself

off when i do emails when i spend too many time on the phone when i overeat when i don't exercise when i have bad bad days at work when i don't feel confident when i numb myself when i feel dead when i don't feel contriving when i'm not alive you will really hear that it has very little to do with sex and when you ask people i turn myself on when or by i awaken my desires not you turn me on when and what turns me on is which is i you responsible for my wanting

right what people will talk to you about is when i'm in nature when i'm connected with my friends when i get to do my sports when i play music when i listen to music it's stuff that gives me pleasure that is alive that is vibrant that is vital that is erotic in the full sense of the word as life force and from that place people remain interested in having sex with somebody else for the long haul not because they've scratched their arms for two seconds right it's i feel good about myself the biggest turn on

is confidence right confidence you ask people when do you find yourself most drawn to your partner every description has to do with when they're in their element when they're on stage when they're with when when when they're doing their sport when they when they are radiant when they are in their studio on the piano on the horse you name it it's when they are in their element i.e they don't need me to take care of them they're not depressed and down and lonely and sad they're not needy they don't need me because desire is about

wanting you love is also about needing you caretaking is a very powerful experience in love and it is a very powerful anti-aphrodisiac so how do you experience love and desire at the same time you calibrate it so sometimes you're it's the same as when you walk you have to move from one foot to the other a balance is not about staying on one side a balance is the ability to see right now we don't need caretaking we can be mischievous we can be naughty we can be playful we can break our own rules we can

stay home and not go to work at eight o'clock right and now we are in a playful zone now we are feeling that we are bringing our own little transgressions home we are alive we're not just being dutiful responsible good citizens right it's that it's very small you know i mean i always think when i go and i see people at lunch and you see them talking and they're well dressed and they're awake and all i think who is here with their partner because you can see them they're engaged they're giving the best of themselves

that's erotic no the majority are not there with their partner they're there with their friends with their colleagues their partner is going to get the leftover when they come home at night sorry you know what forget the night date meet at lunch when you actually have energy you know when you and and in the middle of the day like that when you're awake when you have something to offer it's a very small thing but they don't do it they don't do it and you say why not why not why don't you stay an hour extra

at home in the morning and not just because when you have a headache and just say this matters to me all in all you know committed sex is premeditated sex it's not just gonna happen because whatever is gonna just happen already has so you're gonna make it happen because you say we matter we're important let's do this let's doesn't mean if you're going to make love or have so it just means we're going to take this hour and there's nothing else that matters in this moment but just you and i to be together to check

in and then we'll see what unfolds that's the erotic space in which sex may happen probably will doesn't have to but it is the place from which it is much more likely to emerge but people don't do that they do the responsibility that's the love right the citizen the commitment the caretaking the burdens the safe and then they say i'm bored i would be too okay exactly there's no mystery there's no risk taking right exactly there's no risk-taking that's the word if you want desire it's risk and the risk is an emotional risk it's not

about sexy risks it's really a risk on the emotional front is that i bring something else to you today differently from um differently from from the way i typically present myself sure you know how can i do this something what can i do today that would be different from the ways that i've done it until now how can i do something that i think would actually improve our relationship me right not something that i want or that you want but that i think would be actually good for us that third entity the us right and

you check every time you know how often do you just go on the tried and trodden as in you know it works sex that just works for most people is really not interesting enough right so because what does it mean it works generally right what about the people listening or saying man that sounds like a lot of work that every day you have to change do something different and unique and be not every day not every day not every day but what you can do every day is just a quick check with yourself you know

is there something that i should notice is there something that i can be thankful for is there a little note that i could write is there you know just a way that i can show up at time it's small it's really small here's the thing there is work and then there is the creative work you know i'm talking about a level that is creative and that elevates you and that actually gives you you feel you feel taller you just feel like you're engaged you feel awake rather than this this is the other seated position it's

comfortable it's great but nothing happens here sure this this is alert here's the essential word is curiosity when you're curious you lean forward and you watch you're open to the mysteries of life this is please don't bother me with anything because i don't want any stimulation i've had my share i've been you know and this is the position that most people have at home so when people say it's too much work um [Music] i basically say look you you if i was to say this in your business would you say this is too much work

right oh you would say that's very good advice this is high rate consulting fees it's like excuse me but you don't think for a minute that your business would thrive if you let it languish like that never you have a reward system you have incentives bonuses bonuses but there is no incentivized system as in in the private domain so people just think why bother right and that's the difference is that the ones who have good relationships are the ones who created their own internal incentive incentivized system what are some of those incentive systems that you've

seen over time that really work or effective for long-term relationships i would say the first thing is almost one of the first things that our parents teach you please and thank you to know how many people stop thanking their partners thank you thank you for doing this for me to thank you for picking up the shirts thank you for you know you feel appreciated yes appreciation appreciation is huge uh gratitude acknowledgement of the presence of the other in your life not did you do this did you call did you pick up do this you know

half the time expectations expectations of course you know expectations is often a resentment in the make with the expectation comes the fear of it's not good thank person first of all and because it also makes it feel like this is not a given nobody owes you squat you're not owed anything you're not that important you're actually quite replaceable right and with the divorce rate that we have um what's the rate at right now up 50 on first and 65 on second 65 on second wow it's not good right it's really you know it costs a

lot of money it's not good for the health i mean it's just like you know it's not good for the jobs it's it's just it's like okay now you could say maybe people should marry but it doesn't matter if it's marriage legally or the idea is that we can do better we can do better in general i really think that the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our relationships i mean nobody's gonna write you know uh you worked some 60 70 80 90 hours a week and you know no they're going to

say he was there for people when they needed to he was there at every game he was there at the party he's the guy who when you were in his presence he had charisma not because he could stand in front of a huge crowd but he had charisma because when i was in his presence he made me feel special it's a different charisma so appreciation gratitude thank you little things to go out of your way rather than just to do the minimum a lot of people start to do the bare minimum just so that they

can't be scalded right go an extra thing on occasion just do something for the other person just because it matters to them even if you couldn't care less right rather than i do i don't it's not important to me i don't i don't need this or i don't care about this uh give each other a lot of individual space not everything needs to be shared people have different passions different interests different friends and they need those separate spaces to exist um admiration i think is huge because admiration is also that you kind of really see

the otherness of the other person um don't try to make your partner into one person for everything there is no such a person find multiple sources of connection of intimacy of friendship so that you can have a group of people support you and don't have one person who has to be there for you for everything especially when you're in the dumpster we used to have a village of people to do that now we just expect one person to be the villager yes yes yes one person for the whole village that that is that is a

unique it is and and then we're upset when they don't fulfill the mandate and that's the more like i can't talk to you you're not supportive of me you're not excited for me excuse me find other people right you know i can't be everything for you no exactly no i think it's really wonderful to integrate all parts of ourselves to stare at our shadow to at least bring our shame into the light of day and to find venues to connect with other people where we can show up perfectly authentically raw vulnerable ourselves and have reflected

back to us i see you and i still accept you yes