The Sex Expert (Esther Perel): The Relationship Crisis No One Talks About That's Killing Your Sex Life!
Guests: Esther
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Transcript — part 1
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So I messaged my closest friends.
Can you tell me what question you have that you wouldn't ever say out loud?
Give me a few.
How can I be satisfied with just one sexual partner?
I have my partner.
Should I tell them?
I no longer find my partner attractive, but I don't know how to tell her.
We have a lot to talk about.
Are you going to record me too, then?
Okay.
All right.
Here's what I would suggest.
Esther Perel is regarded as one of the most sought-after relationship therapists in the world.
For the past 40 years, she's been helping millions of people with her brutally honest and wildly relatable insights.
People are having less sex.
Why?
Is the sex getting less interesting?
No.
Their life with each other is less interesting.
And what concerns me at this moment is the loss of social skills.
But they are vital to us.
And we have less and less opportunities to practice because we are pursuing connection beyond the human world.
People don't have partner sex.
They have sex on porn.
We also are surrounded by algorithmic perfections.
And that's creating warped expectations that we bring to our relationships.
Then there's...
Misery of the dating app.
Have you heard this story of the guy who swiped two million times to get one date?
Oh, God.
It appears that you have many options, but you'll swipe, swipe, swipe, and you're going to get frustrated because you don't get matched with anybody.
But don't make the app become the replacement where you can actually go outside, meet people, and also deal with rejection because it's a major feature to develop relationships.
But we've never been more free, but we've never been more alone and more filled with self-doubt.
So tell me how to fix it in order to have a great relationship.
There's a ton of really important things.
The first thing is...
Quick one before we get back to this episode.
Just give me 30 seconds of your time.
Two things I wanted to say.
The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week.
It means the world to all of us.
And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.
But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.
And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app.
Here's a promise I'm going to make to you.
I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.
We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Back to the episode.
Esther, with all that you know, and with all that you study, and with all that you research and write about and think about,
What is it that concerns you most?
What is front of mind for you when you think about mating and dating and human connection?
What concerns me most, I think, is the fact that there is a unique moment in history at this moment where we are...
Redesigning our communication, our ways of connecting, our ways of answering the big questions.
But specifically in the realm of relationships, it's a social atrophy.
I think we are losing.
Social skills.
And the word atrophy for anyone that doesn't know is decay.
Atrophy is when you don't use muscles.
They go numb.
Social atrophy is when you no longer know how to speak to people.
And what is the cost of that?
If we do lose that social ability to connect and to have happenstance, what price do we pay?
Why does life get harder and how does it get harder?
Because we are social creatures.
We are wired for connection.
If we live longer because we are connected, we don't live longer because we are master biohackers.
We need those connections.
They are just literally vital to us.
So it's not that we have replaced this, you know, and our skills are still honed in.
We don't.
We have less and less opportunities to practice.
If you do sports and you don't practice your sport,
You wouldn't be asking me what is the price.
You would know that if you don't play and it's been years of not playing, then that thing is out of your life, done.
But you can do other things, whereas you can't live without connection.
So many people are really dissatisfied with the choices they have for connection.
Now, I'm sure we're all to blame, but when I scroll through my feed on social media, one of the things I've seen lately, I saw it just before you arrived and also a couple of days ago, was people so angry at dating apps.
And I've got friends close to me who are furious.
Yes, that they're only a parent option to meet someone these days.
That's not true.
Go outside, go walk your dog, go run, go with a bike group, go do life and you will meet people.
I mean, you create situations.
It's not, you know, where are the available situations?
Where are the options for meeting people?
You create options.
You know, you're at a coffee shop, you're ordering a coffee, ask the person next to you if you can offer them one.
Couldn't do something that actually invites relatedness.
And I know the anger at the app.
I get that, you know.
I'm actually quite connected to this whole world of dating apps.
But I think that...
It's a tool.
Use it.
But don't make it become the replacement for the multitudes of situations.
Yesterday I sat on a plane.
I spoke for three hours with two people just because there was no Wi-Fi.
It was just an amazing conversation.
And all of us, at the moment we landed, said to each other, wow, if we had had Wi-Fi, we wouldn't have talked to each other one bit or five minutes and then be done with this.
It's all these situations that we don't take advantage of.
We used to always talk to people.
And I think if you just rely on the app, you will go through a loop.
You'll go on it.
You'll swipe, swipe, swipe.
You'll respond with the least amount of effort possible because you've so burned out already from doing this that you don't really want to give much of yourself.
If you don't give much of yourself, you're not going to get the kind of responses that you want.
Then you're going to get frustrated because you don't get matched with anybody, but you don't look at your own laziness that is not particularly invited for someone to actually want to match with you.
And then you say, now I'm tired of this.
So now you get off the app for six months.
You take a break.
You say, I'm done with the apps.
And then six months later, you say, I don't want to meet someone.
And what do you do?
You go back on the app instead of thinking of the multitudes of situations where you can actually meet people.
And it's become so weird to talk to somebody.
You know, you can sit next to someone at the counter and it's like you're a weirdo if you start talking to me instead of, you know, why not?
Because even in the situation of your plane ride, if there had been Wi-Fi, those people wouldn't have wanted to talk to you.
So really, regardless of your attempt, you would have been met with, you know, rejection to some degree, social rejection.
Maybe, maybe.
But, you know, the original app.
If you really want to understand the gamification of that, it was really done as a way to not have to put yourself out and have to deal with rejection.
But rejection is a major feature of relationships.
Learning to live with people who say no to us.
Is a sense.
Have you heard this story of the guy who tracked his Tinder swipes?
And the story is that he swiped two million times to get one date.
And you can kind of see, this is him here.
This is the image of the swipe.
So it says, this guy swiped two million times.
58,000 times.
He got 2,000 matches from that, which turned into 1,200 chats, which turned into one date.
Such a system is failing a huge percentage of people.
This is the chap.
On what app?
On Tinder, I believe it was.
Here he is.
I'll put him on the screen so everyone can see.
And you can kind of see the photos that he led with on his dating profile.
He probably shouldn't be holding a massive fish.
I'm not sure many women are into that.
Oh, he's got the fish picture.
Yes, yes.
For people like him, what's the honest advice that someone like him needs?
Because, you know, clearly dating apps aren't going to work for him.
Which is a lot of us, from what I read.
Well, how many hours?
He should also have put on the amount of hours that he spent.
Oh, yeah, it does have that.
He has the hours too?
So it has the amount of time he's been a member of the apps.
Right.
Just over five years, almost six years.
Yes.
I mean, the first thing, if you sat in my office and you told me this, I would not spend my time discussing what you're doing on the app.
I would discuss what you're doing off the app.
And if you ever are even off the app.
I mean, have you, the amount of hours of swiping that you're
you've done.
Obviously, this is not yielding anything.
Why are you continuing?
Five years is an enormous amount of time in your life.
I feel sad for you.
You know, have you tried any other ways?
Have you been with your friends?
You have friends.
Have your friends introduced you to people?
Have you gone to places where you are more likely to meet people?
I don't know what you're interested in, but if fishing is one of those things, you know, maybe even at the fish market you could meet.
But I mean, more of it isn't going to give you more of it.
It's just going to make you more frustrated.
So if you were sat down with him...
There's a rigidity to this.
It's like, what are you trying to prove?
You know, go try something else.
If you're trying to park in a space that you can't get in, at some point, don't you go look for another space?
Is there an element of this where, you know, from what I heard from dating apps, there's only a small percentage of men that could basically get all the opportunity.
I'll put the numbers on the screen.
Yeah, I know the holes.
Yeah.
And a large proportion of women get lots of opportunity because lots of men swipe for...
But opportunity for what?
To be swiped?
And then what?
The main thing is, can we have a conversation about emotional capitalism?
You know, I go, I try, I try to get the best.
I try to shop.
You know, I try to maximize my chances.
But fundamentally, the app originally was broadening your circle.
It gave you...
you the opportunity to meet people that you would otherwise not meet.
There was something very beautiful about that.
§02Transcript — part 2
From that, it became a commodification.
People treat each other like shit.
People ghost each other left and right.
People tell each other things and then disappear.
People don't have to say, I'm not interested in seeing you again.
They just close the shop.
And the misery is not because they haven't met someone.
The misery is the treatment that this kind of semi-anonymity enables you.
You don't have to be polite anymore.
You don't have to treat people with minimum decency.
And that's what hurts people.
That makes people bitter, angry, doubting themselves.
A lot of things like that.
It's part of the challenge that I have so many apparent options now as someone on these dating apps.
It's kind of like going to a, when you go to like Asia or Thailand and you get the menu and that menu is so big, they'll like make anything you want.
So you find it hard to choose.
And also any choice you make, you realize that it's come at the cost of so many other things you could have had.
So it's less special.
It's less scarce.
And in a world of Instagram and dating apps, it appears that I have 100,000 options.
Yes, it appears that you have many options and it appears that you have a paradox of choice and it appears that you constantly are dealing with the FOMO of what else is around the corner.
But the interesting thing is when I work with people, I spend a lot of time reading, reading what they actually post.
Even a peacock is more creative.
And us, you know, in how they attract people, in what you say, in what, but hey, what's up?
Want to hang?
Is that giving you any energy in your body?
Okay.
I mean, this is half the messages.
I'm watching.
I'm chilling.
Okay, well, keep chilling.
It's like, where is the energy?
You know, there's something about called flirting, attracting someone, showing an interest, et cetera, et cetera.
What's a better thing for us to say?
Oh, man, you know, show interest.
I saw something in your picture.
I'm wondering, you know, if we went to listen to music, what's the first band we would go to listen to?
Something that says you are a person with a life, with interest, with curiosity.
Show curiosity.
It's probably the first thing that you do when you are drawn to somebody.
I guess if I've been rejected so much, as you said, I've been kind of demoralized.
The energy has been taken out of me.
So now it's just become this sort of cycle of just nothing.
Well, then don't do it.
Then do something else for a while.
Don't stay in that pattern.
It's really depleting.
But the thing about the choice...
Is that we also are living surrounded by algorithmic perfections and predictive technologies that are trying to deliver us always, you know, on demand, delivery of our every delight, always on, without any friction.
And that is creating warped expectations that we bring to our relationships.
same expectation for perfection and for sycophantic responses, you know?
So the more we are interacting with AIs and the more we are receiving a different kind of response, the more challenging it will be for us to actually deal with real people.
And to face what you call rejection.
Not every refusal is a rejection.
I mean, this guy didn't write how many times he wasn't interested.
He only tells you what's happening to him.
He gives you the victim story.
It's a statement of this thing doesn't work for me and men don't get answered on the app.
And you get this whole plight, but there's no context.
I can't give you, and I don't think anybody should actually respond to this.
Without knowing all these other details.
Is there an issue when you mention men that, is there an issue that gender roles have shifted?
And when we think about the plight of men, they are, you know, I think the single biggest killer of men over the age of 45 is themselves.
And the gender roles have shifted so much that often men have less purpose, feelings of purpose and worth now than they used to have.
Women and men have gotten closer to a point of financial equality.
They've gotten closer than the past.
Which now kind of also means that the role of a man, if we think historically, is less clear than the role of a man maybe 50, 100 years ago.
To understand masculinity, you have to understand the broader...
Spectrum of relationships.
So relationships used to be about duty and obligation, loyalty and community.
And happiness came not from what you do for yourself, but happiness came from having fulfilled your role and your mission and your obligation to the people that you owe to, your family primarily.
That model is still the prevailing model in most parts of the world.
We shifted that model from duty and obligation to option and choice.
And so now we have zero clarity and a lot of freedom.
And we've never been more free, but we've never been more alone and more confused and more filled with self-doubt.
How long have you been working with...
Men and women in a relationship, love, connection.
40 years.
40 years.
Yes.
So what have you seen change in the conversation around men and masculinity?
Like what are the different problems that men are talking about when they speak to you that they weren't speaking about when you started your career?
I mean, you can start with the subject of loneliness.
Loneliness, which is a general societal issue at this point, is definitely a major affliction, even more so for boys and men.
Okay, loneliness was not the story of men in the 19th century.
Men hunted together, men hiked together, men gathered together, men went to the bar together.
Men had conversations with other men.
Men met, you know.
So there is nothing in...
inherent about men that sets them up for more loneliness and isolation.
That is really important to understand.
Men, boys, till the age of four and then till the age of seven are highly emotional.
They can articulate.
They can...
So...
These are cultural phenomenons.
These are social developments.
This is not biological.
This is not intrinsic to man.
One shift that's taken place, which I'm keen to get your perspective on, relates to sex.
One in three men under 30 in the US reported no sex in the past year.
That's triple the rate from 2008.
Millennials and Gen Zs are having less sex than any generation since records began, despite more access to the dating apps we talked about.
Yeah.
In Japan, over 40% of young adults are virgins, and many say that they have no interest in sex.
And lastly, married couples in the UK and the United States report a steady decline in sexual frequency since the early 2000s.
Yeah.
I wrote about that in Mating in Captivity that came out in 2006.
That's 20 years ago.
Yes, because in order to have sex with a female partner, if that's the man you're talking about, you need to be able to approach her.
And so social atrophy is directly connected to what is often called the sexual recession.
I mean, in mating 20 years ago, I have an entire chapter where someone basically says to me, I'd rather have the security of an MBA than of a relationship.
Okay.
And at that point already, you began to see that adolescents in the United States, it's not everywhere in the world, but suddenly in the U.S.
And we're more and more going in groups and having less and less pair bonding and less and less romantic relationships that accompany you through your adolescence that develop with you.
And you basically develop sex as part of a plot and not as something that at some point your hormones force you to do.
But a story, a story, a relationship is a story.
And then suddenly you arrive at a certain age and now you're looking at this other person with whom you want to have sex.
And it's like this unknown continent that you have to conquer.
But you've never spoken with those people.
You have very little female friends who are just friends who help you understand what happens with your girlfriend.
You know, there's an entire social map that has dissipated.
So the sex is the last thing on the list of all these disconnects that then, of course, lead you to have this kind of statistic.
And that means with partners.
They have plenty of sex maybe with themselves and others.
But it's partnered sex here that is involved, right?
They have sex on porn.
They have sex.
They don't have partner sex, you know.
Do you understand when I say to you, you can add that to your statistics too, that the majority of men who come to sex therapy today for erectile dysfunction,
Sexual dysfunctions are young men in their 20s, not old men after prostate issues.
Really?
Yes.
Why?
Because they spend an enormous amount of time with themselves.
Watching porn and masturbating?
Yes.
Because in order to be able to maintain erections with a partner, it's an attunement, right?
It's a resonance.
It's grooving together.
But if you've always just been by yourself, then you only know how to kind of be connected to your own physiological responses.
I've worried about this before.
I've worried that if I watch pornography, that I will, like, desensitize myself to the real thing.
Depends how much.
Depends if what else is their new life.
I mean, it's not an all or nothing thing.
But what I'm saying is social atrophy.
The gradual disconnect of the multiple touch points between people
leads to then the challenges that are also sexual, leads to the kind of social isolation, leads to people confusing friends and friendships so they can have a thousand virtual friends but no one to feed their cat.
You know, it's all para.
No one to feed their cat.
Yeah.
Who would pick up a prescription at the pharmacy?
Who may pick me up at the airport?
Who will go check on someone I care about if I happen to not be there?
Yes, who shows up for me?
Because it's foundational to trust.
Who can I lean on?
Do you have my back and I rely on you?
So do you think the partnered sex is in decline because they're still having sex, but they're doing it on their own now with...
Why the sex is in decline?
Because social connection is in decline.
Because people have less friends, because people, the statistics on who you call to when you are in trouble are really terrible.
People have no one to confide in.
So how does that impact my sex with my partner?
Well, you won't have a partner usually.
What this statistic says is that there is no partner.
Young men between the age of 30 don't have sex with partners.
This one here from the British Medical Journal says that married couples in the UK and US report a steady decline in sexual frequency.
Yes.
Since basically the internet.
Yeah.
So here's how this works.
How much time do you spend in front of a screen during the day?
Nine hours.
All right.
And then you sometimes think now I'm going to go home and I finally can close the screens.
Yeah.
But then you're so tired that all you can do is watch TV.
Yeah.
And then while you watch TV, you're also scrolling on your phone.
Yeah.
And then while you're watching TV and scrolling on your phone, there may be somebody sitting next to you that does the exact same thing.
Yeah.
All right.
And then somebody may even say something to the other person who goes, uh-huh.
Doesn't look at them.
Uh-huh.
Very interesting.
And you really wonder why people are having less sex?
It's hard.
It's hard.
I'm going to say it is hard.
Right.
So people are experiencing at that moment what I've come to call ambiguous loss.
Ambiguous loss is when I'm actually with somebody, but I don't feel the closeness, the intimacy, the connection from actually being with that person.
I don't know if you're here or not here.
And biggest loss is actually a term that was developed by Pauline Boss, a psychologist who talked about it when you have a person who has Alzheimer's or dementia.
And they are actually physically in front of you, but they are emotionally or psychologically gone.
Or people who are deployed or have disappeared or miscarriage where people are no longer physically there, but they are emotionally very, very present inside of you.
§03Transcript — part 3
In both cases, you don't know, are they here or are they not?
Do I say goodbye or do I hold on?
When I am doing this...
Looking at your phone.
And I have like a still face and I'm barely responding to you who said something that may be quite important.
You don't know.
Are you here?
But you're not present.
I'm with you, but I'm not experiencing any of the things that one experiences from the closeness of being with you.
Alzheimer's, dementia, physically there, but psychologically elsewhere.
Because it's not just that you're not here, it's that you're in another world.
You're gone somewhere.
You may be talking to who knows.
And I guess this is the, from reading your work, this is the crux of many an argument.
The argument might sound like, oh, you didn't put the toilet seat down, but it's actually linked to something else, something deeper under the surface.
I just see, you know, specifically when me and my partner have been away from each other for a long time and then we come back together, I always know we're going to argue for the first, like, one or two days.
It's not even going to be an argument.
It's going to be...
there's going to be a problem.
And the problem is usually around expectations, which is I come in and my head is still, I come still a million miles away, maybe on a different frequency, thinking about lots of things.
And I think she comes into that space expecting connection and I let her down.
And we've tried to like call it out and say, listen, when we come back together, let's just, you know,
both make an effort in that direction.
But going back to your point of ambiguous loss, it's almost like she's trying to test if I'm connected to her.
And I sometimes don't do a good job of that because of how I come into that space.
Like, for example, right now I'm filming Dragon's Den, which is a TV show in Manchester.
And so I film three or four days a week, morning till night.
The minute I get off from it, I'm back with her.
So you can imagine everything hits me at once.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Yes.
Like all of my team, all the to-do lists, everything.
Steve, we need you to sign this off all at once, but then I'm back in front of her.
Mm-hmm.
So she's experiencing that ambiguous loss.
And the expectation was that we haven't seen each other for a while.
So this is, you know.
So the question is, can you carve out?
A half an hour, that's clean.
An hour that's clean.
To connect.
Yeah, but don't do that just for her.
You have to imagine that when you do what you do and it all is bleeding into each other and all your roles collapse into the same space, that it actually is doing something for you.
To you, not for you, to you.
And that to actually close the phone, tell people to call you in an hour, you won't miss a thing.
And to actually drop in is going to give you a level of energy, of oxytocin, of well-being that is...
Way more important or as important as every supplement you may be swallowing.
Yeah, because it's true.
It's not just for her.
Yeah, I am excited to see her and I am excited to connect in here.
I just, you said it correctly, like I just multitask, I try and multitask.
Yes.
I let everything down.
Yes.
The boss, the podcaster, the this, the that, and the boyfriend is all in the same thing.
It's an indigestion.
So you're a fan of scheduling clean time?
To do things.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
You can call it scheduling.
You can call it demarcation.
You can call it delineation.
We are social creatures who really orient ourselves in time and in space.
When everything happens to us at the same time, we get headaches.
They're not always experienced as headaches, but in fact, we get a confusion inside.
We're not here, we're not here, we're not here, we're not here.
Okay?
So you can call that scheduling or you can call it that, you know, when you go to the gym, you basically put on certain clothes, you prepare yourself for that.
It's an activity that comes with a role, that comes with a set of things, that comes with a delineation of time that makes you go to a certain space.
Where you're going to go do that thing.
And this happens when you go out at night, when you go out for dinner.
The same thing is for home.
If you are going to spend a moment with her, however short it is, if it's clean and present, not just kind of semi there, ambiguously present,
It will change a lot of things for you, for her, and for the two of you.
Before we sat down today, I messaged a group of 10 of my closest friends.
I put them all in a group chat, and I told them I was going to be speaking to you today.
So I said to them, can you tell me what question you have for Esther Perel?
These are all my 10 of my best friends that you wouldn't...
Ever say out loud.
How can I be satisfied?
With just one sexual partner.
I have been unfaithful with my partner in the past.
And I feel guilty about it, should I tell them?
I no longer find my partner attractive, but I don't know how to tell her.
I love her, but I don't find her attractive.
Those are probably the most interesting ones.
I think the one that I would probably address is also about the infidelity and about your guilt.
And also to this person, read State of Affairs, because I spent many years writing this book about infidelity and trying to offer...
A very nuanced perspective on this very subject.
But here's the thing.
To tell somebody something just because you don't have a clean conscience and you feel guilty isn't always the kind thing to do.
Ask yourself what will happen to your partner or to your relationship for that matter if you speak about this now.
And who are you doing it for?
I think honesty sometimes is extremely caring and at other times can be very cruel.
It cleanses you and it destroys another person.
Deal with your responsibility and deal with your guilt and face the consequences of your behavior and treat your partner with all
the good things that actually say, I now am willing to really invest in here and make up for what I did without having to.
Destroy the narrative of the relationship.
Because everybody has a story about their relationship.
Everybody has a set of shared assumptions about their relationship.
And you are going to come in and just say, last year or two years ago or five years ago, I did X, Y, and Z.
And from that moment on, you rob the other person of their narrative.
You may think you did something that was honest.
And sometimes that is the case.
But many times you actually create an enormous amount of hurt.
If you feel guilty, it's not bad.
Deal with your guilt.
Face it, take your responsibility, and make your relationship the best relationship you can, and honor your partner in that way.
Don't honor them by putting your dirt onto them.
That is a different way of saying, and that is not for everyone.
But I think that it is an important perspective to include here because we live in this era where transparency supposedly is the best model for everything and people dish stuff out on other people that destroys them.
In the name of.
And when you're no longer attracted to your person, you know, ask yourself, what is that about?
You know, is it, are you paying attention?
Are you, I think people often just think that attraction is something like I look at you and I should just instantly have a response.
You know, and sometimes it's also because I haven't really taken a good look.
And sometimes it's because what I'm looking at isn't necessarily anymore what draws me in.
And sometimes it's not, you know, attraction is a very fluid thing.
It comes and go.
When I'm angry at you, I'm not nearly as attracted to you as when I'm looking at you being so kind to someone.
And I say, what a great person you are.
And I just want to come in and I run over and I want to hug you and I want to hold you.
That's attraction too, right?
We're not just talking about the attraction to have sex with somebody.
Attraction is part of a story.
It's part of a context.
You know, if you think that you're just going to watch Netflix for three hours, scroll on your phone for another two, and then turn around and say, oh, you're so attractive and I'm so turned on by you, you're off.
This is not the way that it works.
And then...
It's easy to replace the person and to just think, you know, new shiny object, we will be very attracted again.
But attraction is a part of an interaction.
These two words have the same etymological root.
If there is zero interaction.
Now, if you have a partner who neglects themselves, a partner who, you know, there's lots of things that people also do that diminishes them.
There was a woman in an event I just did.
You know, there had been some hurt in the relationship.
And so she said, I'm no longer attracted, which is not the same as I have no desire.
Basically, she had no desire.
And she said, but I've worked, we've talked everything out.
We've discussed it.
I said, yeah, you may have discussed it, but your body shut down.
Your body carries the anger.
Your body carries the hurt.
Your body carries the feelings.
And your body doesn't want to open.
So obviously it's not over.
You know, so that too is attraction.
It is one of the most...
Popular things that men whisper to me in silence, which is they can't seem to get there.
And listen, I'm saying men because the majority of my good friends that whisper to me are men.
So it might be the case for women too.
I just can't speak to that, is that they are unsure how they could possibly be faithful for a prolonged period of time.
And have one partner for a prolonged period of time.
I think that would be an interesting thing to tell your men friends.
Women get bored with monogamy much sooner than men.
Really?
Yes.
That's not what men think.
No, men think she's not interested in sex.
And what they should probably replace it with is that she's not interested in the sex she's going to have.
In order to want sex, it needs to be sex that is worth wanting.
For women to remain interested, it needs to be interesting.
And so the fact that women don't necessarily experience the same liberties, at least historically and culturally all over the world, that men do,
so they remain in their homes and they are not as unfaithful because there's been a double standard around infidelity forever, everywhere in the world.
For this particular friend of mine, where is that message?
What should I say to him when he says, how can you be satisfied with one sexual partner?
That's literally, just so you know that I'm not just...
I believe you.
But some people at home might think that it's like me as a proxy of a...
But maybe you're not.
Maybe you're not.
Maybe you want to have more partners.
Maybe you want your partner to have other partners too.
That's not always so the case, right?
He doesn't want to lose her.
That's right.
They've been together, I think, 25 years.
So, you know, it won't, you may have sometimes frustrations.
If you, there's a few options, right?
You either say, we have a relationship that can welcome other people.
We're not exclusive.
But she's going to leave then.
Because she doesn't want that.
Yeah.
Okay.
So then the next thing is, as best as you can, make it as interesting and as...
fun and as pleasurable as it can be.
And my first question to you is, have you been doing the same old for God knows how many years?
And with that in mind, I wouldn't be surprised that you're not that attracted or that she's not that interested for that matter.
So if you want to be satisfied or more satisfied,
I mean, you have a dialogue, you know, and the more satisfied means bring more of yourself and make this experience more erotic, more pleasurable, more playful, more fulfilling.
You may remain frustrated and you may say, I would love to have other people.
And for that matter, maybe your partner would want it too, but that's not the kind of relationship that she wants.
That doesn't mean she hasn't thought about other people.
And it certainly wouldn't mean that if she fantasizes, she fantasizes about you.
So everybody is keeping their secrets here, you know.
And then the next thing is, are you putting more emphasis on the fact that you're not as satisfied having one sexual partner?
Or are you putting more focus on the fact that you're going to make this sexual experience with your partner as pleasurable and rich as can be?
If you find yourself more on the complaining side, then you're going to be constantly more dissatisfied.
§04Transcript — part 4
I think much of it is actually he and many others want the best of all worlds.
And in life, we're not willing to accept trade-offs.
Yeah.
So you're saying, you're saying, make a decision.
If you want that life, then be honest about that life.
If you don't want that life, then make it spicy and invest.
But I'm also saying invest in that thing to make it better.
Yeah, that's the other alternative.
If you're bored with the food you eat, go buy other food and cook at home and make it more rich and more interesting if you don't want to have the same dinner every night in the house.
The question is, what are people doing to make their relationships more vibrant, more erotic, more alive?
I mean, this is really, by the way, it's not about having more sex.
You can have more sex and not feel much.
It's about making it more alive and vibrant.
That is what much of my work is about, is cultivating the eroticism and the aliveness in relationships.
On the personal front.
And you ask people, what do you do to make it rich and interesting?
And you find the laziness, the complacency, the constant same old, same old.
And then the complaint about it.
And then you say, that is really self-defeating.
Are you frustrated with people, Esther?
No, I smile at it.
It's the same.
I just, I smile at the way that we can lie to ourselves.
I smile at the way we can complain about others and as if we have no implication.
I smile at the way we don't want to take responsibility for actually getting the things that we really want.
You must see the same patterns over and over again.
Those ones I do, not all, but this kind of pattern, which is actually why I've brought this.
expanded from only working in the romantic sphere to working also in the workplace, because relationships are richer than just this.
And I think that this friend, I would have a five-minute conversation with him, and I would ask him these very questions.
I would ask the partner also those very questions.
And I would have a few ideas.
It's not uber complicated.
You're going to record me to him?
No, I'm just...
Okay.
What would you say to him?
What's his name?
I should probably...
Or a name.
Let's call him John.
John.
So, yes, John, we are not necessarily curious only about one partner.
Many people would like to have other partners.
In the context of your relationship, that is not an option for you, as I understand.
So if that is the situation and you really deeply care about your partner and your relationship with her, then the next question is,
What do you do to energize your relationship, to bring playfulness, curiosity, imagination, eroticism, as in life force, as in aliveness, not as in sex, to your relationship?
Are you bringing the leftovers home and the best of yourself goes to work?
Or are you also bringing your creative...
your energy, your curiosity to your relationship.
My sense is that if you do that, there is a good chance that you will actually have a more satisfying erotic connection with your partner.
That doesn't mean you won't have interest, curiosity, fantasies about others, but it will free you from this position in which you just kind of say,
I'm bored.
I'm not satisfied.
I would like a little more diversity and all of that.
And just for you, do not imagine that you're the only one in your relationship who thinks this way and wants this.
It's just that you may have a partner who doesn't want the consequences of it.
That doesn't mean she wouldn't fantasize about it.
The plurality herself.
I'm going to send that.
Please listen.
To the ad hoc intervention.
Yeah.
Just need a honest response.
Have you ever done that?
On your podcast.
And Perel said, women are often more quickly bored with monogamy than men.
And that is the secret that people do not understand.
That means that in order for her to remain engaged, it has to remain more engaging and interesting and fun and pleasurable.
And if it's just to get it done and just to do it for the sake of doing it, then she really can often...
Spirit.
And while men are much more able to remain, actually, contrary to what he describes, to remain interested.
That doesn't mean they don't want others as well, but they can remain more interested in their partner without having to change it like that.
And it is interpreted as women are less interested in sex rather than women need more in order to remain interested.
They need more of the emotional stuff, right?
Not necessarily.
Not only.
They need more imagination, more risque, more connection, more attention, more of a lot of whatever is her thing.
Right.
Okay.
It's one of the most important things I learned, actually, that kind of turned it around for me.
Because once you begin to look at it like that, it plays with this classic gender division, men want, women doesn't.
It's boring.
It's like it becomes true just because we say it all the time, but that doesn't mean it is.
This is true for a lot of these gender things.
So my friend replied, and the essence of what they said.
Yes.
He said, she's right, full stop.
The intimacy in our relationship has died, and it died so long ago that I think part of me doesn't feel like I can revive it anymore.
We're so used to the relationship being off.
Okay, put the mic on.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right, John, here's what I would suggest.
I think that you can just simply say, you know, Steve approached me and I...
asked me if I had a question for Esther Perel.
And I just threw out this thing.
At first, I was just kind of flippant about it.
I just thought, what do you do when you, you know?
But in fact, when she answered, I realized, you know, that this is a bigger thing between us.
And this is an emptiness and a gap that we allowed to create and that I have contributed to.
And I don't just want to leave it at that.
So I thought, I'm going to sit down and actually write to you.
I want to just write some of my thoughts because I think when we sit, we avoid the subject.
We circle around it or I avoid it or I'm defensive about it.
Anyway, whatever it is that I've done, I don't know you enough, John, to know the details of that.
And then you just really say, you know, something died a long time ago and I feel awkward about it, but I miss it and I miss you and I miss us.
And I would like to know if you are willing to re-engage with me and for us to rekindle.
It's desire goes through intermittent eclipses.
It's like the moon.
It disappears, but it can reappear.
And I would love to invite you to re-engage with me to bring back the light, the spark inside of us.
Because we can do it.
We are more than just this.
And because just living side by side, I don't think it's going to be enough for either of us.
And I'm prepared to do my part.
Would you be willing to do yours?
That was beautiful.
That was beautiful.
And then let's see if he still answers us before we end.
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Your next move could quite frankly change everything.
Are you hearing a lot of couples in your practice increasingly say, either member of the couple, that they don't like having sex?
Not more than before.
I wrote a book 20 years ago that was all about the dilemmas of desire.
You've always heard it.
I always heard it.
No, I don't think that there are fundamental changes around that.
I think the changes are the fact that people are spending less time together where they are actually attentive to each other.
They're half there.
Their attention is fragmented.
They're multitasking all the time.
That's what is changing.
And if you have less connection, less attention, less intimacy, why do you think that people are suddenly going to be turned on?
But is the sex getting less interesting?
No, their life with each other is less interesting.
And this last time when I spoke to you like this, you told me, what are you shouting at me?
Their life is less interesting.
The sex is the consequence of seven other things before.
God, they haven't said anything interesting to each other.
They haven't laughed.
They haven't kissed each other.
They haven't looked at each other.
They haven't barely touched each other.
And suddenly they text, the sex needs to be, you know, all hot and passionate.
On what freaking basis?
Their life is not interesting.
Their communication, their interaction, their conversations, their attention to each other, the fact that they matter, the fact that their presence means something in each other's lives.
That's what is all connected to long-term sex.
Long-term sex doesn't come just because I look at you and I'm all hot.
It's a different mechanism.
So you're asking a question that happens here.
And I am telling you, if all of this is rather boring and unengaged,
It's like at work.
You know, I'm doing a lot of this stuff around work now.
It's like if the engagement is low, on what basis do we think people are going to perform?
The performance is here, but the performance is a response to the engagement, which is a response to the culture, which is a response to the quality of the relationships between the people who work together.
It's the same in the personal realm.
What element of responsibility do I have in making sure that my relationship with myself is great in order to have a great relationship with someone else?
Because a lot of people like to blame.
I think the premise is inaccurate.
Okay, fix my premise.
The premise is that it's time for us to begin to question the intense level of individualism and self-thinking, self-love, self-care, self-fulfillment, self-awareness.
It's all about the self in front.
And the presumption is that if all those levels of the self have been attended to, we will be better able to attend to other people.
So what do you think about this culture of self-care and self-love?
I think it's gone overboard.
I think it's a distortion.
I think it feeds consumerism.
I think that there's a lot of elements of it that are highly important, but we have completely lost the fact that what actually
is at the root of well-being, happiness, longevity, meaning, is in our relationships and our connections with others as well as with ourselves.
When you give to others, you will, that's depressed.
When you feel like you make a difference in other people's life, it makes you feel better, chemically too.
If you go on the street and you give compliments to people and you tell them that they look really great or this is beautiful what they're wearing and you've made a smile on someone's face, your oxytocin...
Levels go up too.
Doing for others makes us feel better about ourselves as well.
Not all the time, not every circumstance, but that voluntary connecting and being engaged with other people.
Whereas being engaged with oneself.
Have you seen at the gym how people are super engaged with themselves, lifting, but nobody's interacting with anybody?
And many of these people go home and there's nobody there.
It's not like they're doing this for someone that's waiting for them.
Relating to yourself is not a goal in and of itself.
It is a step to something, but it's not in and of itself an achievement.
The goal is relating to others.
The goal is, yes, is having meaningful relationships, meaningful connections with other people and other causes that are beyond yourself.
Part of why we are so miserable and so unhappy and so is because we are so constantly focused on ourselves.
There's the world, there's nature, there's politics, there's climate, there's people, there's poverty, there's a ton of things to be interested in.
There's art, there's creativity, there's a lot of things that are beyond us, that is beyond maximizing and optimizing and hacking and focusing on myself and navel-gazing.
And I am a therapist and I work with individuals who I am helping to have a better relationship with themselves and deal with what stands in the way to relate to others.
What stands in the way to feel good about me?
Period.
With gender roles reversing, have you seen men get increasingly emasculated by the success of women in your practice?
And have you seen also the woman get sort of frustrated with the man because he's now not the breadwinner?
§05Transcript — part 5
There was this stat I saw that said, again, rough numbers, 70% of women expect the man to be the breadwinner.
But then there's this bigger social narrative that actually no 50-50 or, you know, equality is the case.
And I was sat here with a guy who runs the men and boys clinic.
I think it's called the Men and Boys Institute or something.
Richard Reeves.
And Richard Reeves was a stay-at-home dad.
And then...
His partner, you know, and doing all of this work about men and equality that, you know,
a self-proclaimed feminist, I believe.
And then his wife turned around to him one day and was like,
You know?
And I've heard this quite a lot.
I've heard from my successful female friends that part of the reason they think they can't find a man is that men feel emasculated by their success.
And on the counterpoint, I'm wondering if it goes the other way.
Can I take this a little differently?
Sure, please, whatever.
Emasculation is a word that doesn't exist in the feminine.
It's always been a masculine concern.
Which is part of why I said to you that masculinity is an identity that constantly has to prove itself.
If it was so solid, it wouldn't have to constantly have to show you that it really is serious and it's the real thing.
There is, you know, those things do not translate on the feminine side.
The word loser doesn't exist in the feminine either.
And this is historical.
This is not new.
That men have had the challenge with powerful women is not new.
That women have wanted men to be both powerful and nurturing is not new.
That fathers have often been as tender toward their...
I think that there's a...
For me...
The engagement with some of your question is that it plays into a whole discourse about men and women that at this point somehow puts them completely apart.
Each one kind of more and more angry at the other side.
And I don't really...
I want to participate in that.
The women are talking about the useless this and the men are talking about the bitches that.
And I don't find that helpful.
People, I don't think it's true.
I think there are fathers and men all over the world doing everything they can to save their family, their wives.
You know, it has nothing to do just with how much they earn.
The world is filled with people who want to give a better life to their family and to their children, men who work day and night in order to provide.
And I think that to turn this conversation into that section that we are referring to,
it's true, it exists, but it is not a fair rendering of men, of masculinity, of fathers, of brothers, of husbands.
And of wives.
That there is a group of women who are out-earning the men, yes.
Women have out-earned men for a long time in all kinds of industries, not just at the higher levels.
That men have not been home as primary parents.
I think gay couples have shown us a whole new range.
It's like it's time to kind of move on a little bit.
Do you know when you say that we need to know how to relate to each other?
And I think you said that it starts with being aware of ourselves.
Is that roughly what you said?
That it starts with having sort of a self-awareness of...
Yourself?
I think that it's a constant combination because what I'm...
saying is that in order to have self-awareness, you need to understand your connection with others.
Your self-awareness is not developed here alone by myself.
You get to know yourself through your relationships with people.
It is in the presence of another that we discover ourselves.
And this is in part why I'm asking these questions, because I think for a lot of men, we've understood who we are by how we relate and the role we play for others historically.
So like I kind of understand much of who I am when you see me with my partner.
Yeah.
Because I will grab the door.
I will grab the bags.
I will help solve problems in a more logical, like I'm very like, tell me how to fix it.
And you understand, I understand myself by being how I relate to her, taking care of her is part of my identity to me.
So in such a world, I think the question becomes like, what is it to be, what is it to be a man?
And if I don't know what that is, I find it harder to relate to others.
One of the things I love to do, but that's not on a societal level, that's me in my work, when I do retreats, relationship retreats, like we have one that I'm going to do in October in Greece, and
I do fishbowls, and I put all the men in a fishbowl, or all those who identify as men for that matter.
And I have the women just listen to people around.
And for an hour or more or two, they talk about everything.
You just brought up their challenges, their frustrations, their hopes, their aspirations, their losses, their self-doubt, their shame, their shadows.
And people listen without judgment, without opinions.
Just receive the gift of having somebody be willing to expose themselves like that.
It's extremely moving.
It's very beautiful.
And you learn a ton.
And you learn how much of your projections are, you know, standing in the way, how much you make assumptions without really knowing, how hard it is to truly listen.
That's when it becomes, to me, beautiful, worthwhile, and things change.
Things become softer, and people start to weep.
In front of total strangers, and you realize humanity is bigger than gender.
Gender is important, super important, but there is another layer that is just our humanity.
And at this moment in our society where there's tons of uncertainties, that connecting on a human level to me supersedes some of these gender wars.
There's lots of it.
And I leave it to others to comment on that.
But my work is to create alternative conversations, better conversations.
Are you hopeful?
In those moments, I'm very hopeful.
But are you hopeful when they leave the retreat and they go back onto the algorithms?
I hope that some of them will do that.
And some of them will actually experience a profound change.
But in the moment, I feel like I can do something.
I'm hopeful when I can do something, when I can contribute, when I can create something that's really special.
I'm not hopeful when I'm helpless, when I'm passive.
So in those moments, I am hopeful because something really...
Beautiful is happening.
You know, when people connect at a deeper level, it is very, very meaningful, be it at work or be it at home.
I mean, it's anywhere at this point where I can create these connections.
People, I mean, it's a sentence that I take with me all the time.
It's the quality of your relationships will determine the quality of your lives.
And my work is about helping you have better relationships, be more confident, be more connected.
I can analyze a lot of these statistics, but I don't know what to do with it.
Be more confident.
Yes.
What is confidence in that regard?
Confidence is when you are able to see yourself as a flawed person and still hold yourself in high regard.
That's from my friend Terry Real.
But it is a great definition of confidence.
It's not when I know and I'm sure.
It's none of that.
It's actually when I see myself as flawed.
But I still hold myself in high regard.
That means I'm confident.
And is there work one can do to get to such a place?
Yes, of course.
Work and life experience and maturity.
But for a lot of people, their work and life experience knocks them down to make them think they're just a flawed person.
Yeah, that's what I thought when I was in my 20s and 30s too.
And if I made a mistake, I could obsess about it for three weeks.
Now it's three hours.
Sometimes three days if it's really bad.
But, you know, you learn to accept.
You make mistakes and life goes on and you try again.
So there's no shortcut to confidence.
No, no, no, no.
Is there anything that accelerates it?
No, it builds on itself.
The nice thing about it is that it builds on itself.
It adds layer by layer, step by step.
Is there anything one can do to accelerate that process?
Why?
So that we can become more confident quicker?
No, that's called arrogance.
When a 22-year-old, you know, sometimes it's arrogant.
I mean, listen, there are things you can feel confident about very early on.
And you've tried them.
And then there's other things.
It's also not, I am confident.
I'm confident.
about certain things.
You can trust me on some things.
You should not trust me to get you to a certain place, neither on time, neither without getting lost.
So I have zero confidence in that area, but I'm quite confident in some of the things that I do.
And confidence doesn't mean that I know or that I'm right.
It's that I'm prepared to do things and be mistaken and not know and try again.
Two different people can go through the same experience and one of their confidence can build and the other one can lose confidence.
Yes, that is the biggest mystery question.
Why two people with the same story?
For one, it becomes what brings their resilience and what gives them the drive and what makes them.
Be people that are engaged with life and the world.
And for the other person, it's what broke them.
It's what crushed them.
It's what makes it so impossible for them to actually put one foot in front of the other.
And if you can ever tell me why this and versus that, you know, why this person, it is one of the great mystery questions for any therapist, for that matter, and in general, why the same circumstances.
Build the strength of one and become the weakness of the other.
There's clearly some kind of a pair of sunglasses in between what happened and how I perceived it or something.
There must be some kind of...
You know, there's a lot of things.
But what we do know is that for many people,
people who have major adverse circumstances, but managed to use them and turn them and really make a beautiful life for themselves.
Usually there was one defining factor that differentiates them from everybody else who had similar circumstances, is that they had somebody who believed in them.
A coach, a teacher, a neighbor, not necessarily a family member, actually, because the adversity is often in the family.
So somebody who believed in you when you didn't believe in yourself and didn't give up even when you were fucking up.
I had a lady called Dr.
Lisa Feldman on the podcast recently, who's a neuroscientist.
And one of the things she said to me has really stayed with me.
And I think about it a lot and I talk about it a lot, which is she said to me, she told me the story of a young lady who grew up and had some...
An aggressive uncle who would like beat her.
And this young lady, she was good in school.
She slept well, everything was fine.
And then many years later, this young lady was watching Oprah Winfrey's show and it was about domestic abuse.
And there was women on there crying and talking about their trauma and all those things.
And essentially,
this young lady suddenly started to experience the symptoms of trauma.
Unproductive in education, couldn't sleep as well, and visibly traumatized.
The trauma hadn't appeared, wasn't symptomatic up until she watched this show with Oprah.
And it made me think that is there a possibility?
ability that some of our trauma, not all of it, but some of it is like contagious, i.e.
We give meaning to it when someone tells us the meaning of what happened to us.
Like, are we giving meaning to the things that happen to us?
And it goes to what we were saying here about you can go through the same two things, but interpret it differently.
Do we inherit the meaning externally from somewhere?
You know, it's interesting because I think about this a lot with things like anxiety.
I'm like, it feels like, you know, I know the world has changed and we're less connected, but it does feel like...
Had I not known that anxiety existed, I probably, I'm unsure whether I would have personally experienced it.
I think that the anxiety culture actually kind of made me anxious.
It made me label the feeling.
And I'm just wondering if you have a perspective on this idea that we like give meaning to...
our experience and then that.
Yes, of course, all the time.
We give meaning to everything.
We are meaning-making machines.
And if you don't do an individual meaning attribution, you get a collective, cultural, social attribution.
In our society, we may call it anxiety.
In another society, we may call it the ancestors are unhappy.
Somebody is, a spirit is knocking at your door.
Somebody has not been properly mourned.
Somebody is being degraded.
So there's every ill ease, every disease has a story, has a meaning, has an attribution.
The words change.
That's on a cultural level.
§06Transcript — part 6
I think it's very important to not just individualize these things and think I give meaning.
We give the meaning that our culture has taught us to give.
So you've kind of become, you're part of the anxiety generation.
So you give words of anxiety, stress, burnout.
There's a whole lingo that didn't exist 40 years ago, by the way.
I mean, those words existed, but they were not nearly in the vernacular of the moment.
They were not part of the therapy speak of the jour.
You know, they were not on TikTok.
So there were other words that people used.
And, you know, every century.
Has certain names.
Hysteria, we don't hear much about hysteria these days.
That was a 19th century thing.
It's mental health now.
You know, so we change the words, but we still are trying to give meaning to our ill ease.
I guess this is a question of identity as well, which is, who do I think I am?
And who I think I am will probably become who I am, at least as it relates to relating to people.
No.
No?
Who do you think you are is part of who you are, and how other people see you is also a part of who you are.
We are constantly looking at ourselves from the inside and from the outside.
We do not exist without the integration of also the gaze from the outside in.
And it's a two-way street all the time.
So if I think I'm a late person, you said, you know, get there on time, then I'm likely to be late off more because I've identified with that.
Becomes part of my character, it starts to become how I predict my future.
And Lisa Feldman was saying to me that the brain is this prediction machine.
So it's like predicting what it will do next based on the past.
So my identity is like a prediction of what I'll become.
And, you know, the same, I think of this, maybe the same in relationships.
Your behaviour.
May be a prediction, but that doesn't mean your identity.
Don't confuse identity with behavior.
They are connected, but your identity,
Is a lot more than your behavior.
You know, at GFK, there are three lines at the airport.
Yeah.
One is for the tourists, one is for the American passport holder, and one is for the resident alien.
The tourist may have been living in the States for years, but they don't have the papers.
So the internal definition.
Is not recognized by the external.
The American, you may have been living your whole life abroad, but you were born in the U.S., so you have the papers, you have the external recognition, but the internal one doesn't match.
And then the resident alien is the one who has been there a long time, but doesn't have the...
Is a guest of some sort, right?
And I find that a fascinating moment to understand identity when you stand there.
What is internal?
What is external?
What is seen from how others recognize you and think and how others define who you are and how you define who you are?
And these are conversations.
The question that you're asking about trauma is a whole, it's a different question.
The trauma is not the event itself.
The trauma is often in the experience of the event without an empathic witness.
Without an empathic witness.
Yes.
What makes an event traumatic is often the fact that you experience something without an empathic witness.
Well, it's not the fact that the, it's not the event itself.
And so what happens is she sees the Oprah show and it's not just that she sees the women tell their stories, but she sees Oprah with her unique kind of empathy respond to the women.
And give value to their experience and acknowledge it and express the sadness that comes with it and the devastation that they may have experienced.
And she is the consummate empathic witness who gives not just meaning to your story, but because before you can give meaning, you even have to acknowledge it.
You have to recognize that it even happened.
And in many of those situations, it's the lack of acknowledgement that is the most traumatic, not the thing itself.
Or not only the thing itself, it's the fact that nobody even admits that this took place.
So as she's watching this empathic resonance in front of her,
something opens inside of her that allows her to finally weep, cry, do her...
own acknowledgement and realize what was done to her.
That's a different way of interpreting.
And I have no idea if that is true.
But just to give you another reading of what may have happened to this woman.
And for a while she will not sleep.
And for a while she, because suddenly in order to finally come to admit something, you need to feel safe to let it happen.
And when you watch the opera show with those women, this is, I just did the opera.
So I had the people and I see how it's an amazing moment of being held.
And experiencing a container that allows you to experience the pain that you've been holding in.
Interesting.
I was, it's a very interesting alternative perspective, especially this idea of the empathic witness.
And the minute you see empathy shown to your experience in such a way, maybe you have permission to feel in a way that you didn't get to feel.
But also in that environment, I imagine there was a studio audience.
And they were providing empathy.
And there was Oprah and they were providing empathy.
And then you had someone she could relate to who in that scenario was being held and had a label, like an implicit label attached to their experience.
But she does it without audience now.
And it's just, it's...
I think it was a long time ago.
So when she used to have her show many decades ago.
I was my first time on the opera show in 87.
87.
With a studio audience?
Yeah.
How was it?
It was a very powerful experience for a woman, a young woman as I was back then.
It was just like, wow.
This is quite embarrassing for me to admit, but if you know me well, there's something that you know about me, which is a function of my personality, and that is that I lose everything.
I've lost my wallet, I've lost multiple passports.
I now actually have two passports because there's a high probability of me losing one.
And when you lose your wallet overseas, as I have many times, it's a particular inconvenience because you also lose your driving license and your credit cards and those kinds of things.
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I think B2B marketeers keep making this mistake.
They're chasing volume instead of quality.
And when you try to be seen by more people instead of the right people, all you're doing is making noise.
But that noise rarely shifts the needle.
And it's often quite expensive.
And I know, as there was a time in my career where I kept making this mistake, that many of you will be making it too.
Eventually, I started posting ads on our show sponsor's platform, LinkedIn.
And that's when things started to change.
I put that change down to a few critical things.
One of them being that LinkedIn was then, and still is today, the platform where decision makers go to, not only to think and learn, but also to buy.
And when you market your business there, you're putting it right in front of people who actually have the power to say yes.
And you can target them by job title, industry, and company size.
It's simply a sharper way to spend your marketing budget.
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So if I made you president of the entire world and your job was to prevent the social atrophy, this decay of social connections and relationships, and you had to take three steps on a global basis to, they can be drastic steps.
You can delete mobile phones.
Oh, God.
They can be any drastic step you want to take.
I think that things are lived in the details, not in the big things.
Okay.
You know, where was I recently?
I went to a place and I remember making the comment, everybody says hello.
People said hello.
People were friendly.
When you went into a place, when you were on the street, when you went, I was just like, I said, oh, my God, I have not been in a place.
It felt small enough, but it wasn't small, where people kept saying, hello, have a nice day.
This looks very good.
You know, so it's that basic.
So you'd make it a law that you have to say hello?
No, I don't legislate these things at all.
I think it's more of a...
It's a cultural shift.
It's a return to practices that still are prevalent in many other parts of the world.
Talking to strangers.
Yes, talking to strangers.
Okay, so you're going to make it illegal not to talk to strangers.
It's an incredible thing to talk to strangers.
So Esther Perel makes it illegal not to talk to strangers.
Illegal.
No, no, I said don't bring the law into it.
It's much more art than law.
Anybody who these days can make people laugh or sing together is doing holy work.
So go sing with people or go...
Because when you sing together, you create a collective resonance.
You actually are bringing that resonance that is very empathic.
It's very kind.
It's compassionate.
It's caring.
It's playful.
It brings out a whole set of other things in people.
And the third thing would be teach people how to have conflict.
You asked me before when you argue with your partner.
I think that the majority of our arguments are about three basic things.
This is based on Howard Markman's work, but, you know, it's not the issue you're fighting about.
Actually, what you can often ask is, what is it that you're fighting for?
And what people fight for when they argue whatever thing they're having a spat about,
They fight for power and control.
Who makes the decision and whose priorities matter most?
They fight for trust, for care and closeness.
Can I trust you?
Do you have my back?
Can I lean on you?
Can I rely on you?
Will you show up for me?
And they fight for respect and recognition.
Do you value me?
Do I matter?
And does this all translate to work?
You've now started doing a lot more work with businesses and companies around sort of their working culture and connection and relationships in the workplace.
All of those things you just listed there, are they also the reasons why our relationships are successful or unsuccessful in a work environment?
Absolutely.
So I actually have been working with corporations and in the business world for quite a while and have been talking and speaking with corporations and companies.
But what is new is that I became an advisor to a number of companies.
Particularly in this case with Culture Amp.
And the reason that became such a wonderful collaboration is because I brought my clinical expertise and they're bringing massive amounts of data science, people science, 1.5 billion experience survey points.
I mean, it's just like, so it's no longer just my intuitive sense.
It's backed.
It's...
And we created this card game because my original card game, people wanted, the corporate was demanding for it.
But every time they had to take out the cards with the pink triangles, which were the sex questions, in order to make it work safe, safe for work.
So I said, okay, let's create a game just for the workplace that will create meaningful relationships at work.
And what's fascinating is that what the research showed is that there are four major.
Relational pillars that actually sustain this quality of relationships in the workplace.
And they are directly connected to these three things that I said we fight for.
So one was trust.
One was belonging.
Okay, so on trust, how do I know, what is trust in specific terms?
What does that mean?
Trust is a leap of faith.
Trust is a sense that it's an active engagement with the unknown, says Rachel Botsman.
It's like...
Trust is not I know for sure.
Trust is I don't know for sure and I'm willing to believe it.
That's the definition of the word trust.
§07Transcript — part 7
And in a work context, what does that mean?
It means that I can rely on you, on my team, on my manager, that you have my back, that you're not going to betray me.
You're not going to put your interests ahead of mine.
You are not going to take credit when it's not yours.
That you care about me and that we are part of something together.
So trust then connects directly to a sense of belonging, that we are part of a group, of a company.
And I get a certain sense of who I am by virtue of my sense of connection to this group.
And the group defines me and gets my contribution.
So it's a mutual experience.
Mutuality is essential to living organisms, be it in nature or in social ecological systems.
And there is recognition.
It means that there is respect, that I feel valued, that I feel that I contribute, and that it is recognized.
This is essential because I could achieve and perform and meet the productivity goals and all of that, but if nobody pays attention to it, it doesn't really meet the needs.
But the biggest one is the collective resilience.
To me, that's the one that really stands out.
Because resilience isn't an individual matter only.
It's not just a set of traits that exists inside of you and that you need to tap into in order to face adversity and all of that.
Resilience is how we, at this point in particular,
are able to respond creatively and adaptively and flexibly to all the changes that are happening.
The workplace is in massive flux, massive flux.
And from a relational point of view, it's huge.
And it is basically at this point becoming no longer just the soft skills.
It's becoming the new bottom line, basically.
Esther, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for the work that you do.
When I've met you the first time, I was convinced that you're in fact an alien from another planet because you have an ability to understand situations at a deeper, more intuitive level than anyone I've ever met, specifically as it relates to just like the human condition and the way that we are, the excuses to make, the patterns of a human.
And it really like shocked me.
You were able to see through me in a way that I did not like.
But I appreciate it.
And it's really remarkable.
There's very few people I've ever met that are like that, that have that ability.
It's a really, really special thing.
And it's been the cause of so much.
Healed and cured and fixed problems for so many of us.
We have a tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing.
who they leave it for.
The question left for you is, how are you going to adapt to a world of AI and robots?
I am going to...
Use AI as a tool, as I just did an hour before I came here.
I was in a meeting and we were generating ideas.
And one of us asked the AI exactly this.
What would you see is the next step in the collaboration between, what would be bold collaborations between Esther Perel and Culture Amp?
The very company with whom I created the cards.
And the AI gave us incredible ideas, but it was both.
We had AI and we had the people.
The people could use the AI.
The AI became way more relevant because it had the people.
So as long as I can use it as a tool,
to foster the communication and to generate ideas between me and others, I think that...
I am still shaping it and it is helping me.
I would hope that it doesn't just begin to shape me or us all and make us into a species that none of us can yet imagine.
Some people are very much looking forward to that new species.
I kind of like the ones we've been.
We are imperfect creatures.
We're unpredictable.
But there is something fascinating about human beings that has been the core of my work.
Thank you.
Again, I'll link the cards below for everyone to go and get a pair.
I think I'm going to use them at the very start of the week with my teams.
So just to kind of create a bit of a space where we can connect with each other before we get into more difficult work.
But also there's other sort of work environments when I have new investments and stuff like that.
It's really, you can do it one-on-one, you can do it onboarding, you can do it off-site.
But there is something about the weekly meeting, all hands on deck kind of meeting where we do a card.
One person each.
And I can tell you, and especially when it's remote, which you are not, but everybody knows the lackluster attention that you can get in a Zoom meeting with everybody doing five other things at the same time.
You just need to track the eyes.
But once people start to tell stories like this,
People get, the others are interested and are listening.
It changes the whole dynamic.
So it's a beautiful ritual to have your weekly start with a few cards.
Esther, thank you so much for all that you do.
You're welcome.
It's so wonderful to see you.
I feel like you help correct me in an important way.
What was one of the...
Them today.
When you were talking about the dementia and the Alzheimer's and the word ambiguous loss, I felt, I felt that because I think sometimes, sometimes I, um, I create that impression.
And one of my ex-girlfriends said that to me, she said, even if you're sat next to me, I feel like you're a million miles away.
And I remember thinking, it's such a horrible way to make someone feel, you know?
And my girlfriend, what a wonderful thing it is for someone to want your attention and to want you to hug them and to want you to care about them and to look at them.
What a wonderful privilege that is.
And to like insult that privilege by being a million miles away, I just thought it was a horrible thing.
It is that, you know.
How often during the day do you send just a little sweet nothing?
I know, I need to do that more.
Do you know how much it changes a person's...
Yeah.
Just to say that you're thinking about them as well.
Because I do think about them, but I just don't, you know.
So you're saying it to me.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm going to say it to her.
I'm going to tell her now, Esther, okay?
Life is lived in the details.
It's all these small things.
It's not, it's like when you ask about the changing of the world, I don't think in these big things.
And this, you know, when it's done authentically, it's not big.
And it, yeah.
Okay.
That puts energy into a relation.
She said, oh, with a little heart face.
She said, sweetheart.
And she's typing.
Okay, you got it.
No, I don't.
The hardest conversations are often the ones we avoid.
But what if you had the right question to start them with?
Every single guest on the Diary of a CEO has left behind a question in this diary.
And it's a question designed to challenge, to connect and to go deeper with the next guest.
And these are all the questions that I have here in my hand.
On one side, you've got the question that was asked, the name of the person who wrote it.
And on the other side, if you scan that, you can watch the person who came after who answered it.
51 questions split across three different levels, the warm-up level, the open-up level, and the deep level.
So you decide how deep the conversation goes.
And people play these conversation cards in boardrooms at work, in bedrooms, alone at night.
And on first dates, and everywhere in between.
I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below, and you can get yours at thediary.com.
This has always blown my mind a little bit.
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If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free, simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button.
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We'll listen to your feedback.
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And we'll continue to do what we do.
Thank you so much.
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