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Do you know a single person who would treat their business the way that people treat their relationships? The business
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would be dead. Love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm that just exists. Why you shouting at me?
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A stare pel, the most famous relationship therapist on the planet, podcaster, bestselling author, and he had one of
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the most head talks of all time. In order to want sex, it needs to be worth wanting. So when women don't want
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sex, is it really that they have less desire or is it that they don't have desire for the sex they have? And this
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fear of rejection is one of the most important emotional vulnerabilities for many men. It's part of what is so
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alluring in porn, which takes care of three major dilemmas around sex. The first one is, and this leads to lying
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and cheating. Want to know how I avoid getting to that place? People end up in a rut because they're
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so lazy, so complacent. If you give the best of yourself at work and then you bring the leftovers home, taking out
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your phone and not present, slowly your relationship degrades because the more he refuses to be present, the more alone
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she feels. And the more alone she feels, the more she tests him to see if you're really not there for me. It's a figure
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eight loop. And whether it's money, kids, sex, every topic could become part
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of the loop. But the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships. Without it, we die.
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What do we do about it, though? Well, this is one of the best things I can offer to people is that
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every now and then I meet someone on this podcast that I classify as a wizard or witch. And I say that because the
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impact they have on me is so profound, so life-changing, so pivoting in terms
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of what I thought I knew that I look at them like a witch or a wizard. I just think, how does this
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person seem to just know everything? Esther Pel is one of those people. She's magic. What she knows about
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relationships, love, sex, and everything in between will both blow your mind,
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inspire you, and unlock a bunch of answers that I think the vast majority
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of us are currently looking for. I've spent 10 years thinking that relationships are slightly confusing.
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They're a bit of a black box. I've wondered why some people are needy and others are anxious in relationships. Why
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does some people in relationships run away and others chase them? All of these
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answers, these black boxes as it relates to relationships, love, and sex, Esther
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has the answer to. And I can't wait for you to listen to this episode. It might just change your life. And before this
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episode begins, one favor to ask you. You probably know what this favor is if you listen to this podcast frequently. If you hit the subscribe button on this
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podcast, which roughly 58% of you have, then I promise you we will do everything
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in our power to make this show better and better for you. That's the only favor I'll ever ask you. Do we have a deal? Thank you,
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[Music] Esther.
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What is the mission you're on? You know, we spoke before we started recording about a plethora of different subjects
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that you're innately curious about. If you were to summarize all of those subjects, what is Esther Pel's mission?
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The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships.
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And relationships are often not taken very seriously as a subject of inquiry.
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Why? Because um in various worlds it has a
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certain attitude, right? So in the easiest one would be in the business
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world, relationships have usually been seen as soft skills, fluff, feminine
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skills or feminine concerns. Feminine concerns you can always hold in high regard but then disregard in reality.
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I think that for so long relationships were structured,
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organized through social order, religion, communal structures and so people didn't really have to think about
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them so much. They were very very codified. They still are codified in most parts of the world. But in our
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western world where we have dismantled all the structures that used to define relationships,
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relationships are going through a massive transformation, a massive makeover and um and we don't necessarily
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have the skills of how to deal with all these changes that are literally happening under our feet. So my mission
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is to guide people to help people make sense of what their relational lives are
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about. friendship at work, romantic relationships, family ties, and to
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develop understandings, insights, skills to be able to handle what is probably in
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my mind one of the most important dimensions of our life. Without it, we die. Without it, we die.
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Mhm. Oh, we don't die a natural death necessarily, but you it's a death to the soul.
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You a life without relationships. I mean there are a few hermits but the
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vast majority of us are socially wired. We exist in relationships. We define
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ourselves in relationships. I know who I am by being with you. I mean who am I
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outside of that? It's like you know it's in the presence of the other that we discover who we are alone. There's no
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there's nothing to bounce off of. And so I am passionate about the relational
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lives of people, the challenges of relationships in the modern world and as we enter the 21st century and as
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machines are entering to replace people. I'm interested in how people heal from
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broken relationships or from relationships that broke them. Um that's the mission. And you've spent
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a long time working with people that want better relationships in a therapeutic sort of environment as a
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therapist, right? Yes. I I have been a psychotherapist
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for more than 40 years. I'm so compelled. I want to start where we all start, which is with our childhood and the role that plays in the
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relationships we then go on to have or not to have. I imagine most of the couples and people you see you can
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understand the way they are today as adults based on what they experienced when they were younger or what they
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learned a lot a lot. But we are not just what happened to us.
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We are also who we become. And sometimes we become on the basis of
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what happened to us. And when you ask people sometimes, what are some of your most important inner resources?
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Those very resources come from some of the miseries of their childhood too.
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So it's not linear. It's not bad leads to bad. It's that some absence, some deprivation
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can lead to an an acute awareness of something that makes you become the exact opposite. It's it's a dynamic
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dialogue with your childhood. It's not just the determinism the the determinism that your childhood
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will determine what's going to happen to you later. I think that all of us, you
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know, I mean this is one of there are many many frameworks around childhood, but the one that I wrote about in mating
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in captivity was to say that we all need security and we all also need adventure
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or change or freedom. And that some of us will come out of our childhood
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wanting more safety, more protection, more connection, more grounding. And
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some of us will come out of our childhood wanting more space, more freedom, more individuality, more
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personal expression. And that doesn't mean it's static. I mean, the beauty of us is that we are
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forever changing creatures and we can rewrite the story. We can't change the
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story as it occurred to us, but we can change its legacy, its meaning, its
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influence in in the most extraordinary ways. I mean, how many people have you how
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many couples have you sat with? Thousands. You must start to see patterns emerging
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when you're when you know your two couple a couple is sat there, they've got some dysfunction in their
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relationships. The guy or the woman starts saying describing their childhood and saying
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their their parents were never around. You must start to see some patterns in
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how that caused dysfunction and causes dysfunction later in life. Is there any patterns that we can use as stereotypes
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or hold on to with childhood separation about but I wouldn't even call them as stereotypes. I think there are a lot of
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patterns but the pattern is not just what you bring from your childhood and
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how it manifests now. The pattern is what two people create. That's the
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pattern. So a pattern could be okay let's say I grew up and I felt that I
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was left to fend for myself that all of it was on me that I was taking care of
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my younger siblings. I'm thinking of a recent episode of the of Where Should We Begin? And you know, when he's absent,
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when he doesn't respond to a request, she doesn't just think, "Oh, he doesn't want to do what I just asked him to do."
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She instantly goes into the, "I'm always alone. There's never been anybody there
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for me. I've always been alone. My life is never going to change. Why is it always me who has to do all of this? I
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carry the burden." And the pattern is
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what she asks that makes him react that makes her amplify. And it's what I do
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that makes you be and do what you do that makes me be what I do. It's a figure eight. That's the pattern. And
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the more he refuses or to just do it, let's say, and the more alone she feels
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and the more alone she feels and the more she tests him every time to see if the next time she asks for something,
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he's going to actually respond in kind. And since he feels the pressure and the
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test and he comes from a story that says, "Nobody's going to tell me what to do."
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That's a dance. So couples have dances and the dance is how you see one person
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trigger or evoke in the other a survival strategy. His survival strategy is
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nobody tells me what to do. And that survival strategy is going to then trigger in her the vulnerability of well
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if no if you won't do anything I asked then I'm again alone. And then when that person feels that alone, her survival
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strategy is to go and knock at the door and see, are you really not there for me?
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The dance between the vulnerability and the survival strategy is one of the most
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common patterns in a relationship. And what's really essential to understand is
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that what makes the difference is the form.
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It is figuring out what is this figure eight look like in this couple. Not the
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specific detail because once you've noticed the loop,
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it doesn't matter what they're talking about. Every topic could become a part
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of the loop. Whether it's money, kids, sex, in-laws, trips,
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it will look alike. If I always think I'm alone and I can't count on you and I
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feel le abandoned and let down, then that becomes the filter with which I enter most of these conversations. And
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if your thing is nobody pushes me and nobody imposes their will on me because
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I, you know, have been telling my dad for a long time that he's done being the
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boss of me. This is the the filter. So you look for those filters and then you
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begin to see, you know, it's like music. If you really listen to a sentence from
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a music to a phrase, after the first four notes, you have a good idea of what are the next four notes.
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Mhm. That's how you do pattern recognition in couples. Me and my partner are going through this. I think at the moment we've
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figured out what our figure of eight, our pattern is, right? Tell me. It's exactly what you just said. Which one?
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I'm the guy. She's the woman in the scenario. So you're the nobody tells me I'm the monster feels like everything's
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threatening my independence, you know, and my and I don't like to be told what to do as in
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and so you also interpret any request or invitation as a command
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as a threat on my independence. It's a command which you have to push back as an intrusion.
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Yeah. Like the walls are closing in, right? as a violation of your and so you do this.
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Yeah. And when you do that, then she she goes comes she uh it's almost like
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I'll give you an example. I'll be sat at home after work. I've come home. It's maybe 9:00 p.m. I'll quickly throw out
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my laptop and I'm doing some work. Um whatever. She says something to me and
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because I'm kind of busy here, I give like a half acknowledgement and because I've like not turned away from the
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laptop or because I've not given my full attention, she'll then start like asking me seemingly completely random questions
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that she wouldn't or ordinarily ask me. What do you think of this? Picking up something random in the house. Um, what
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what do you want to drink? There's literally a cup of water already in front of me. And you know what that does, right? The
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more the more. So the more she starts doing it to me, the more I can start giving the blunt responses. But what it means when you say the more
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the more is that we make the other.
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You are creating a knocker. Yeah. Yeah. And she's creating a withholder.
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The more she knocks, the more you withdraw or withhold. The more you
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withdraw half attention. Uhhuh. you know, artificial intimacy and the more
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she experiences you as absent and she comes looking for you in full force. And
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what that says is that we create the other person. We contribute to making
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them the very thing we don't want. If you wanted her to not do this, you
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could change this in a minute. How? By basically stopping for a moment
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saying this ritual of acknowledging each other at the end of a long day means a
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lot and actually doesn't just mean a lot to her because you don't have to deal with it because she makes sure that you
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don't get forgotten. If she would was not coming and she didn't and she disappeared for six days
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in a row and never came to check in with you, you would begin to wonder what's going on. So she holds the flame for
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you. Yeah. If you if you stopped actually and it's 9:00, you've had your long deeds,
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but you've been on your own, you've done all your stuff, and you actually said, "Come here." And you took literally 30
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seconds for a beautiful kiss, a hug, a gaze, a moment, and then you said, "I'll
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be done in probably 20 minutes. I'm excited to spend some time together."
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You would relax her nervous system. She would not be, you know, after you. and
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you would actually feel like your boundaries have been respected. But what happens in a couple is that you
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want her to change. You want her to stop annoying you and do what you do. Doesn't she see that I'm busy? I'm almost done.
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You know, why doesn't she wait? And so, we always think the other will change and then my life will improve. But if
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you actually want your life to change or your relationship dynamic to change, you could do it like this because you're the
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one who is you and her, right? It's the same. I would say the exact same thing to her. By the way, this is so
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symmetric. So I would say to her, if you actually want him to not push you away,
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here is what you can do. If you want her to not keep knocking, then here is what you can do. Because when you do what you
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do, you are increasing her knocking. I've noticed that this is fundamental to couples thinking.
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It says we are not essential creatures. We become someone as part of the dynamic
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that we are in with another someone. This is when people begin to understand
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that in couples therapy, things begin to change. It's like a light bulb goes on.
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I also really resonate with the sub point you made that if she stopped knocking, I'd be like, "What the hell's
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going on?" And I' and I'd eventually end up lonely and unhappy. And you're right, she is carrying the um as you called it
00:17:10
like the flame for the relationship. She's the pursuer. Yeah. You're the distancer. Yeah. And the distancer doesn't have to deal
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with his feelings of longing or desire for closeness because the other one is
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holding up the quota. Then why do we go do we go for people that are are opposites in this regard?
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No, you go for people who express the part of you that you don't want to deal with.
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Okay. meaning you're telling me I'm the person who who's from whom being intruded upon violated my independence
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my independence but we all have needs for independence and we all have needs for connection and dependence but those
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you have outsourced on her ah so we is
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taking care of the feelings that you are disavowing or the needs that you are disavowing inside of you
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as to why you felt vice versa even my finger on top of it.
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Was I? No, I'm joking. I'm joking. No, it's But it's so true. Do do you understand 100%.
00:18:14
We outsource. It's not that we find someone who's the opposite. is we find it looks like it's the opposite but what
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it really is is we all have needs for that's what I was
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saying for for the connection and for the space of the independence we all need both
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we need home and we need journey we need predictability and we need innovation we
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need commitment and we need freedom we we need both different degrees but we need both what happens in a relationship
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sometimes is that I assign to you. I outsource to you the parts of my needs
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that I am conflicted about and you are more conflicted about your dependency
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needs which are actually totally normal. You're much more aware of your independence needs. That's kind of your
00:19:04
persona and she may be exactly on the opposite of that. It changes when people
00:19:11
begin to actually integrate the part that the other one is playing. And this realization that if she wasn't coming
00:19:17
after you, at some point you would suddenly say, "Wow,
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where is she?" That is basically the giveaway. And I know I know this in our
00:19:29
relationship. I think, God, is she cuz when I'm over here, I'm over here in New York at the moment and she's in London doing her retreats and stuff. She's got
00:19:35
like a breath work.com. A breath work retreat she does. And when she's not
00:19:42
here, not around me, I fall into I can miss her better.
00:19:48
Yeah. Yeah. 100%. And also, I fall into really like I'd say bad
00:19:56
balance habits. I'm out of balance in my life. I'm I go all in on independence
00:20:01
and work. Right. But when she I've always referred to her, she's like a counterbalance in my life because she's
00:20:06
the one that says, "No, we need to go to the beach for 2 hours. I would never do that on my own in valition."
00:20:12
And and I appreciate it so deeply because I go, "I know what my life looks like when you're not around." And it is
00:20:18
a unsustainable life. And they often say opposites attract. I think she's she's Do you tell her so by the way?
00:20:25
Which part? of how much she balances you, how appreciative you are of it, how
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much you rely on her for that, how out of kilter you would be when if she
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wasn't doing so. Do you actually acknowledge that
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and show her the appreciation for it? Or is 90% of your speech to her the the
00:20:49
part of the I need my time, my independence, my this, my that? It's a very good question. Um,
00:20:57
I would say I don't tell her enough. And at the same time, if it's possible,
00:21:02
maybe this is a mistake, that she knows. And I say she knows for two reasons.
00:21:09
Reason one is because there are moments where I express that gratitude to her. And number two is because I'm so open
00:21:16
about it in terms of like publicly, which isn't always the best way to communicate with someone. Don't tell me off, but I'm so open about it on this
00:21:23
podcast. talk about and she listens to it and she listens to it and she she's a big fan of yours as well and but you're
00:21:29
right in the moment in the heat of the moment I'm all about defense so I'm like I can descend into blame a little bit
00:21:36
too much you know you know I once I I often like to ask
00:21:42
people you know what's the one thing I said that that stayed with you that made a difference and um it was a situation
00:21:50
where a person basically was talking about how um
00:21:58
when they are late, when they miss an appointment, when they miss an activity that the couple had agreed upon or a
00:22:04
game of the children or whatever it was, you know that they make a point of apologizing.
00:22:09
And I said to them, you know, if you're still at the computer at 10:00
00:22:15
and you know, and you're apologizing, that's you consider that being considerate. I'm aware and I'm apologizing. But when you apologize
00:22:22
about your absence, what you missed, what you didn't do, you're basically still saying, "I'm super important. I'm
00:22:30
that important, but I couldn't be there." But if you actually said, "I'm so thankful
00:22:37
that you're here because I could not have stayed at the office late. I could not have gone to that last minute
00:22:43
dinner. I could not have gone and so seen so and so if you were not here."
00:22:48
And instead of apologizing you thank then you are actually saying I couldn't
00:22:54
do this without you which means I am an independent person who is completely interdependent with you
00:23:02
and that interdependence is the part that the independent person is struggling with
00:23:10
it's whatever you are doing and this is when you said she balances me she tells me let's go to the be whatever you are
00:23:17
doing is bolstered by someone who is making this possible for you. And that
00:23:24
acknowledgement, it's not just to be nice and to say thank you. It humbles you. It says, "I could not do this
00:23:31
without you." That gives the other person not a sense
00:23:37
that they are superfluous or intrusive or annoying or choosing the wrong moment, but that they matter,
00:23:46
that they have a presence and a meaning in your life. And that is a secret to a
00:23:52
connection. Making the other person know that they
00:23:58
matter and have meaning in my life. Yeah. I couldn't do it without you.
00:24:04
I'm having a huge day at business or a huge day at work and I can do this and I
00:24:10
can stay late and because whatever you've taken care of 10 different things that would make it possible for me to
00:24:16
have my mind completely focused. I'm here I'm with a stair pel you know I'm
00:24:21
talking or whoever all the other guests are and I can do that because there's someone there that has taken care of all
00:24:28
of the stuff I don't have to worry about. And when you acknowledge that and you thank a person for that, you're
00:24:34
basically saying, "I couldn't do this if you didn't do that." That's the interdependence.
00:24:41
Our relationships, you know, I think we all certainly I think I have for much of my life. And I say that because I look
00:24:49
at my actions. So what I might say is different to how I think I've behaved over the last I don't know 10 10 15
00:24:54
years. We see them as kind of an afterthought to everything else in many regards. So, the amount of effort I put
00:25:00
into my businesses and to the podcast and to every little detail, the creativity, the thought, the
00:25:06
brainstorming, all of that relationships, we kind of all just think they're just they just happen. And if it
00:25:12
doesn't happen perfectly, then it's broken and I need to find a new one. Yeah, that's a terrible way to think. I
00:25:20
mean, and everybody knows it. If you give the best of yourself at work, if
00:25:26
you bring the leftovers home, if when you come home you say, "I've given everything I had. Now I'm just putting my feet on the table. I just need to
00:25:33
chill. I don't want to make any effort." You know, slowly your relationship
00:25:38
degrades. Period. And then there's all kinds of ways it ends. None of them are particularly joyful. And um basically if
00:25:48
people were able to put a little bit of creativity, attention, attention
00:25:54
into their relationships as they do with their customers or their guests,
00:26:00
relationships would be doing a lot better and my profession would be seeing a lot less people. I mean there's no
00:26:06
doubt. And why are people so lazy, so complacent, so unimaginative
00:26:14
with their relationships at home? I mean, I see so many people when you like here, you know, you're not taking out
00:26:20
your phone. You're not you're looking at me, you're paying attention on occasion, you look for your questions and where we
00:26:26
go, but basically you're you're with me. But at home, you're if you do this or
00:26:34
this, looking at my phone, you know, um and and then when the
00:26:39
person tells you something really important, you go, "Uh-huh." Uh-huh. You know, and you're kind of
00:26:44
there but not present. And that's the beginning of a kind of modern loneliness
00:26:50
actually is that this idea that you can share something really important to someone who is half there. Half there.
00:26:57
And I think that that's what's happening with a lot of younger people these days is that they experience a lot of half
00:27:03
dareness. And that begins to cultivate a real sense of loneliness that has to do not
00:27:11
with I'm physically alone. That has to do with do I matter? Who hears me? Who cares? Who pays attention? Who notices?
00:27:20
You know I I sometimes the advice is very banal, you
00:27:26
know. It's to tell people, "Put your freaking phone down. Take an hour and put your phone down and
00:27:33
but I'm busy." Huh? But I'm busy. Well, that you will be busy and there won't be
00:27:39
a relationship. Sooner or later, there won't be a relationship. It's not difficult. You can wait. You can wait
00:27:45
for the kids to grow up if there are kids involved things. But in the end, it
00:27:50
it there isn't just because someone was on their phone. Well, it's not just the on the phone.
00:27:56
It's on the phone means I am continuously saying something is more important than you. We come last. We're
00:28:04
a cactus. We don't need to be watered. We can survive in a desert.
00:28:10
It's called There's a term I've been using for this that is I borrow from something else. It's called ambiguous
00:28:17
loss. Have you ever heard of this term? Ambiguous loss. Yeah. No. Ambiguous loss is a term that was
00:28:23
developed by a colleague Pauline Boss. wonderful psychologist when she talked about what happens when you have some a
00:28:31
parent for example that has Alzheimer they are physically present but they are
00:28:37
psychologically gone they're emotionally absent and you can't really mourn them
00:28:43
because they're still physically there but you're caught in this in between in this ambiguous loss on the other side
00:28:50
you can have somebody who is deployed hostage
00:28:55
miscarriage. They are emotionally very present, but they are physically absent.
00:29:02
In both cases, it's an ambiguous loss. You can't Are they still there or are
00:29:08
they gone? Who knows? When we live with this phone thing when we are because
00:29:14
you've been at work, you've been at the computer, you come home, you think, "Ah, I'm so happy to finally let go of the
00:29:20
computer." Do you turn on the TV? You turn on the TV and then you turn on the phone at the same time. You're watching here, you're watching there, and there's
00:29:26
a person next to you. And most likely they often do the same thing in the end, too. And gradually, you know, there is
00:29:35
less and less of a thread of conversation, of connection, of joy, of sex, of intimacy, all of what you know,
00:29:43
that becomes ambiguous loss. Somebody is there, but they're not really present.
00:29:49
I'm I'm a I'm you know do I is there any difference between me and the sofa?
00:29:56
It's comfy. It's routine. You sit on me. But comfy and routine does do not give
00:30:02
us joy or meaning or relevance
00:30:07
or connection. And that's what we still seem to want. So it means saying to
00:30:15
people, you know, it's actually not very very complicated. What did people do for so centuries?
00:30:21
They took walks. That's one of the few times you can't click.
00:30:27
So take a walk. Don't sit. Don't try to do, you know, take a walk around the
00:30:32
block and just be in motion. Then you're parallel. You know, it's not face to face. It's side by side. And you be then
00:30:40
you can talk about the day if you instead of just saying stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop you just said you know
00:30:46
let's go for a walk it's London but still you can you can you know and let you do half an hour walk it will
00:30:54
you'll come back to me and you tell me what it will do but it it's amazing how these small interventions that are
00:31:02
playful creative not digging change the dynamic of the relationship
00:31:08
ship because she is only pursuing you
00:31:13
in part because of how much you are withdrawing.
00:31:20
You change, she change. If you want to change the other, change yourself.
00:31:27
Once you understood the figure eight and how we create the other, you understand that if you do something else, sooner or
00:31:33
later they do something else, too. So, if you want to change the other, change you.
00:31:38
This is part of the question you asked me right what are some of the essentials understandings of working with
00:31:43
relational systems. This is true at work in companies. This is true in intimate relationship. This is not just for
00:31:50
romantic love. This is foundations of relational systems
00:31:55
feedback loop it's called in cybernetics. So many busy couples can feel the
00:32:01
spark in their relationship waning away slowly. But work isn't necessarily the first place
00:32:08
you look. Like pulling out the phone at dinner isn't necessarily the place people look because that seems so small.
00:32:14
So they aim at bigger things. They'll say, I don't know, something bigger. But
00:32:19
do you believe are you saying that you believe a lot of it much of it often starts with those small moments of
00:32:24
disconnection where the person basically ends up becoming the sofa? The governments call them bids for connection.
00:32:30
Bids for connection. Bids. You know, it's the little things. It's the the difference between turning
00:32:36
towards someone or turning away. You know, when you read something, there's a
00:32:41
classic example they give. Do you read something? Do you actually say, "Hey, did you read this? Let me send you this
00:32:47
article." That's a bid for connection. It's not a big declaration, but it says, "We're in
00:32:53
this together." When I see something that's interesting that I think you would like to read as well, I share it
00:32:59
with I'm thinking of you. I know you exist even if I'm not with you.
00:33:04
Do you know what my partner said to me something about a year ago and I it always stayed with me because I thought that's such a strange thing to say. She
00:33:10
said to me when we were in conflict resolution, so we were talking about
00:33:15
things. Um she said, "Do you know when I send you things on Instagram in Instagram DMs? Like I'll be out here now
00:33:21
in New York." So she'll she'll if she sees something interesting on Instagram, she sends it to me. She goes, "You've stopped acknowledging
00:33:27
it." I used to just like double tap on it or make a comment back. She goes, "You've stopped. You stopped acknowledging it."
00:33:33
And I thought, "Why does that matter? Why does it like you send me something, I watch the funny video, I crack on with
00:33:40
my day?" Because it's like when you receive a birthday gift, do you think?
00:33:46
Yeah. When you buy a birthday gift, is it important to give it? Yeah. Okay, that's reason.
00:33:52
I mean, how would she know that you watched it if there is no acknowledgement? And the
00:34:00
acknowledgement is not about the video or the DM. The acknowledgement is we share something.
00:34:05
Well, it's even worse because it says seen on Instagram. So, it says that I've seen it. Yes. But I but the but the scene that
00:34:12
means that I have seen the video. The acknowledgment is we are in we are part
00:34:17
of a thread. We're connected. She's absolutely right. So in that sense when
00:34:22
you people lose the spark it is a lot of these small details that people say so
00:34:27
much in the beginning you know all the positive stuff that people lose and it
00:34:33
it's it's actually only more important with time rather than less important
00:34:39
with time. The the death of a relationship is when people take each other for granted. And when you stop
00:34:45
acknowledging those things, it is part of the mechanisms of taking for granted.
00:34:51
I had a really good friend of mine um sit with me a couple of weeks ago and
00:34:57
she has been married to a CEO. She's also a CEO herself and she's just going
00:35:03
through a divorce now. And I sat with her in America and she said to me, you
00:35:10
know, he was very busy. I was very busy. We had this kid and I just think I don't I don't really know what happened along
00:35:16
the way. It just seems like we fell out of love. And ever since she said that to
00:35:23
me, it made me think that it is often quite a gradual process, this drifting apart. And this kid coming into the
00:35:29
picture as well complicates that. What she said to me was, you know, we we were both had our businesses to take care of
00:35:36
and then we had the kid as well. So, the relationship was, I guess, the residual beneficiary. It got whatever was left
00:35:43
and that's caused this divorce now and the child is, I guess, going to have to live in two different homes.
00:35:49
So, I have two two thoughts about this. You know, the first thing is um this is
00:35:54
the first time in history that the survival of the family depends on the
00:36:00
happiness of the couple. If the couple doesn't nurture itself, there is no family. You don't stay
00:36:06
married because you have to. Women have an economic independence like in her
00:36:11
case at least to be able to leave. You have divorce laws. You can go. So the
00:36:16
only thing that holds the couple together, you don't get excommunicated. None of it is the relationship quality.
00:36:24
If you don't have that, there is no family. Here's your child. And the second thing is when she says we just
00:36:30
fell out of love, that's not the way it goes. Love is a verb and you conjugate
00:36:35
it actively in many tenses. It's a practice. If you stop doing all
00:36:43
those things that you're telling me, the acknowledgements, the the the hellos,
00:36:48
the thank yous, the um the sharing of the of the of the the videos, etc. All
00:36:55
of that cushioning when that thins out it means that you have not been
00:37:01
conjugating the verb. Love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm that just exists. Do you know a single person who
00:37:07
would treat their business the way that some people treat their relationships?
00:37:13
The business would be dead. This is the and every and and you know I
00:37:19
say it with kind of emphatically but I'm thinking I'm not saying anything somebody doesn't know. You have you to
00:37:26
take that kind of lazy attitude towards your shop. End of story
00:37:33
and therefore end of relationship. But it's not that it just happened. It's that they stopped doing, saying,
00:37:41
expressing, showing, feeling, giving, receiving, sharing. Those are the verbs.
00:37:49
Wanting, imagining, playing, experiencing, exploring. Those are verbs
00:37:54
that have to do with relationships and love. On that first point about this is being
00:38:01
the first time in history where the health and happiness of the relationship determined whether the family stayed
00:38:06
together, not the church or some some other external pressure. Could this go to explain why people are
00:38:12
having less and less kids as well because they don't feel as secure as they once did? I think this a little bit
00:38:18
about my rel because with my partner I feel like she's said or indirectly said
00:38:26
that she will be she'll feel happy and safe to have a child when she feels like
00:38:32
more secure in the relationship and you know imagine once upon a time
00:38:37
the sec you just knew that you were going to stay with them regardless and you also knew that if you had sex
00:38:43
you had a good chance of being pregnant. True. Yeah. That's the first and foremost big change that took place. So,
00:38:51
and sex was mostly a woman's marital duty not that long ago. So you know um I
00:38:59
think that many people the lesser they have the
00:39:05
more children they have because children becomes an expression of abundance of
00:39:11
care of more hands to help of the riches of a family. Um people who have less
00:39:18
food have more children. It's not people who are more insecure or
00:39:23
live in more precarious situations. I don't think that that is the reason. I think that there is a certain kind of um
00:39:32
attitude towards not wanting to give up the comforts of one's life,
00:39:37
the freedom, the comingings and goings that makes some people not want to have
00:39:43
children. And then there's also the fact that for a long time you didn't have a choice. And some people today want to
00:39:49
exercise that choice, you know, but you're talking about
00:39:54
the love that goes and you asked me before, you know, one of the subjects that I'm very interested in in light of
00:40:02
that is conflict. And I called the course that I just created turning
00:40:08
conflict into connection because it's easy
00:40:14
to look at your situation and then begin to see the strife and the arguments and the bickering and the conflict and to
00:40:21
focus on the conflict. But this conflict is occurring because there is a fraught
00:40:28
connection. There's a tear in the fabric of connection. And that too, if you say to people,
00:40:36
would you run a business that allowed for that kind of conflict and bickering to take place? Nobody.
00:40:43
And and yet you normalize it in your relationship. You think that that's that's an okay thing. It's like I mean
00:40:50
if I gave you an assignment at the end of our convers I would say of all the things we talked about I I would love
00:40:56
for you to choose three things that you're going to do differently change and that you know would improve the
00:41:02
relationship. You don't have to go look very far. You've already listed the half a dozen and and then you stay with it.
00:41:10
You you you commit yourself to it. You don't do it contingent on what she does. You don't say I didn't and she still did
00:41:16
the same. Give it a time and hold yourself to it. You will see
00:41:22
relationship is not something that happens out there. It's actually something that we are very much in
00:41:29
charge of creatively like a business. And by the way, a business is made up of
00:41:34
relationships as well. Products but relationships. Leadership is relationships. It's vision. It's
00:41:40
efficiencies etc. It's operations but it is also relationships. If those don't work, you can have the best product.
00:41:47
If I want to be a master in conflict resolution in my romantic relationships,
00:41:52
man and woman, let's just use that. Two men, two women, two men, everybody. Is there any differences between between
00:41:59
the way that genders typically approach conflict resolution?
00:42:05
Because there's stereotypes, right, that men don't want to talk and that women want to talk.
00:42:11
Yes. But when you have two women, there's often one that doesn't want to talk as well. Okay. I think there is gender, there is
00:42:17
culture, there is linguistics, there's a lot of different things that play
00:42:23
themselves out, but it's not in straight couples you will attribute certain
00:42:28
things to gender that in other couples you will attribute to roles.
00:42:34
Okay? Because the behaviors are not that different. So we there's a whole um I
00:42:40
think one of the most important thing is that instead of asking what are we fighting
00:42:46
about ask yourself what are we fighting for
00:42:56
like when you go into the bickering around you know you see I'm busy why are
00:43:01
you bringing up all these stupid questions now that you what are you fighting for What she's fighting for is
00:43:08
to connect, to have some time with you, to have attention, to to not just kind
00:43:13
of go through the day, do everything, and let this thing kind of die on the vine.
00:43:20
You know, there are relationships that are not dead, and there are relationships that are alive.
00:43:29
Tell me the distinction. Same as a business. Well, you can be, you can survive, or you can thrive. You
00:43:36
can survive and go through the motions or you can be alive, erotic, radiant,
00:43:42
vibrant, vital, creative, curious. It's those experiences, you know, now we
00:43:50
use eroticism in as a life force, not just in the sexual sense of the word. That aliveness
00:43:57
gives you energy for a lot of things that you do elsewhere. You would not be here the same way if
00:44:04
she wasn't there. And how do you cultivate aliveness? How do
00:44:11
you cultivate the erotic is essential. So when I say to people, what are you
00:44:18
fighting for? Usually people fight for about three things. They fight for
00:44:23
trust. They fight to feel like the the other person has their back. They fight for
00:44:31
recognition to be valued and they fight for control. They want to feel that
00:44:37
their needs, their beliefs, their expectations have priority, too.
00:44:44
Control, trust, recognition. Those are probably three of the main things people
00:44:49
fight for. But it doesn't look like that. it looks like they're fighting over, you know, money or time together
00:44:56
or how often they have sex or, you know, that kind of stuff. So, that's a big one
00:45:01
about how you deal with conflict. What is productive conflict and what is destructive conflict? Because conflict
00:45:08
in itself is intrinsic to all relationships. People fight. People want to have equity. They want to have
00:45:13
justice. They want to be heard. They want to, you know, so it's a useful thing.
00:45:19
But we all know what fighting looks like that is not useful and that is destructive and that harms
00:45:26
you and that you've seen when you are a kid and that troubles with you for the rest of your life. So we we know all of
00:45:31
those versions too. Um and I think that these days we live
00:45:38
in a society that is also more and more conflict avoidant. We really don't know
00:45:43
how to we have so less much less face to face with other people.
00:45:50
There's a question that I have loved asking recently that has to do with conflict. When you grew up, did you play
00:45:57
freely on the street? Yeah. Okay.
00:46:02
Do you know do you don't have kids, right? No. But you have friends with little ones.
00:46:08
Yeah. My my brother has three kids. He's under the He's only one year older than me as well. All right. How much do his kids pay free
00:46:15
play freely on the street? Um, they don't play freely on the
00:46:20
street. So, to me, this little piece of information
00:46:26
is so important because what happens when you played freely on the street? You had uncchoreographed, unmonitored,
00:46:35
unscripted free play with other kids with whom you learned friction, rubbing,
00:46:42
fighting, making up, competing, collaborating, being jealous, making
00:46:47
alliances, breaking alliances, recreating. You learned a ton of social
00:46:53
skills and dealing with conflict and disagreement and reuniting and all of
00:46:58
that. this entire universe of experimentation that children had gone
00:47:06
and you really don't learn it by playing games on a screen.
00:47:12
So we find ourselves a little bit socially atrophied. Then comes a
00:47:17
pandemic and comes the virtualization of our lives. There's a lot of things come come coming together here and we are
00:47:25
more and more unable to deal with conflict and we polarize. People keep
00:47:31
telling you how do you stay connected with people who disagree with you who have different points of view, different politics, different belief systems etc.
00:47:39
So we are conflict avoidant, we lack the social skills, we are socially atrophied
00:47:46
and we polarize. And what's the cure? I mean, I think that a major piece of it
00:47:53
is um and I hope Alpha Generation is actually showing us a little more of that is, you know, close the screen and
00:48:00
go outside and play and meet people in real in whatever version two groups, sports,
00:48:08
no sports, but it's about it's not about structure activities. It's about the
00:48:14
happen stance, serendipity, chance. Chance is an essential piece of our
00:48:20
life. Why is this so important? Because if everything is controlled, everything is predictable, every technology is
00:48:26
trying to give you a polished, friction-free answer to every problem that you have,
00:48:31
you learn to not tolerate uncertainty. And if you can't tolerate uncertainty,
00:48:37
you become increasingly more anxious. And if you become increasingly more anxious, we're going to talk about the
00:48:42
mental health crisis. And this mental health crisis doesn't come from nowhere.
00:48:48
It's connected to a whole bunch of things that are happening in the world around us. Let your kids go and have
00:48:53
sleepovers. Connect with other people. Don't just stay in your little nuclear system.
00:48:59
Are younger generations less resilient in your view because they didn't get to play on the street? They are definitely
00:49:07
less able to deal with um
00:49:12
with disagreement, divergences of opinions, conflict. They polarize, but
00:49:17
so do other pe older people too. There is definitely more polarization because it but what they do show is
00:49:26
a lot increased levels of anxiety um increased levels of all kinds of
00:49:32
other symptomatologies of around mental health from eating disorders you you
00:49:38
name it that start earlier and earlier difficulty experimenting making mistakes
00:49:44
not being so perfectionistic not attributing everything to themselves as I'm not enough I'm not enough there's
00:49:50
the whole manufactured insecurity going on. So those things, yes, I think that
00:49:56
you notice it. We notice it, parents notice it, teachers notice it. You know,
00:50:02
do I I think we could say that there is less resilience, but I I think that
00:50:08
that's a dangerous statement because there are plenty of kids who are extraordinary resilient in very very
00:50:13
challenging circumstances. I would not want to say younger kids these days, you know.
00:50:19
But I do think that they struggle with certain things. Uncertainty is essential.
00:50:27
You can't innovate without uncertainty. Without an appetite for it. Yes. Yeah.
00:50:32
You need to be able to take risks. You need to be able to take chances. You need to be able to try out certain
00:50:38
things. If it instantly becomes, you know, I'm afraid to fail. I cannot. I
00:50:44
have to know before I even try. I have to know in advance, etc., etc. We it it
00:50:49
doesn't just affect one individual. Why did you write this book mating in
00:50:55
captivity? You could have written about anything but for some reason you felt compelled enough to take on this subject
00:51:00
of unlocking erotic intelligence. Why? Why did you write about this
00:51:06
at the time? This book is 17 years ago. It still lives as if it was yesterday.
00:51:15
Um, I guess that that means it touched something that had a timelessness to it,
00:51:21
which was really how do we reconcile the two sets of fundamental human needs
00:51:29
that we have never wanted to reconcile in one relationship? Our need for security, safety, predictability,
00:51:36
dependability, and our need for freedom, exploration, change, risk. They have
00:51:43
traditionally they come from different sources. They pull us in different directions and we've rarely really
00:51:48
wanted them to be in one relationship. Today we want a passionate marriage or a passionate you know relationship
00:51:55
and those two things have never had to because they they demand different ingredients.
00:52:01
So I was very interested in that. What does it mean that romantic love has promised us that there is one
00:52:07
relationship in which we can have all of that? That was one really reason I was
00:52:12
interested in writing this book because I thought this is, you know, we used to have religion to experience belonging
00:52:19
and continuity and identity. And then we had family for security and economic
00:52:24
support and children and social status. But now we want the partner to be a best friend and a trusted confidant and a
00:52:30
passionate lover. And on top of it, I want you to help me become the best version of myself. And I'm going to
00:52:36
start calling you a soulmate. Soulmate used to be the realm of the divine, not a person. So this is an incredible thing
00:52:43
if we've never expected more from one relationship and asked one person to give us what usually an entire village
00:52:50
used to provide. That interested me. So something must be broken there. I mean it's just an incredible shift.
00:52:57
It's a unique thing. It's an it's a grand experiment in our in our life. And
00:53:02
then the third part was sexual. You know, sexuality went through major transformations. It went from duty to
00:53:09
desire. It went from, you know, being inexcraably linked to children to being
00:53:16
now, I mean, if you only have two kids, you have sex for the long haul for pleasure and connection. There's no other reason. So, what does that look
00:53:23
like? And why do people always say that sexual problems are the consequence of relationship problems, which is
00:53:29
sometimes true, but in many instances, sex and intimacy, they are they are a
00:53:36
parallel process. They're not just a metaphor of each other. And so I thought I've seen many couples improve their
00:53:42
relationship and it did nothing for the sex. But I've seen couples who when the sexuality changes between them, it
00:53:49
transforms the relationship. And so that demands a deeper understanding of what
00:53:54
is sexuality not what do you do you know and how often do you do it and how hard
00:54:00
and how often and how how many I mean the measurable stuff that is you know sex has had become this thing that you
00:54:06
measure rather than you know where do you go inside of you with another what is the
00:54:12
experience like you know what is the meaning of sex not what is the frequency
00:54:17
of sex and all these questions had not been discussed much, certainly not in
00:54:23
the field of couples therapy and not in in the general culture at large. And to
00:54:28
explain that dilemma seemed to have been something that till today people found
00:54:35
really there's no an answer by the way. There's a there's no answer.
00:54:40
No, the book tells you that because relationship issues are not binaries.
00:54:46
They're not black and white. They're not problems that you solve. There are paradoxes that you manage.
00:54:53
The strength of the book is that it didn't have an answer. The strength of the book is that it told you you have to
00:54:58
learn to live with some of these contradictions. People don't want to hear that. People
00:55:04
want people want to know the two steps to fix their sexless relationship in 60
00:55:11
seconds. Yeah. Well, they can they won't find that with me, but they keep finding something else with me. See, you want
00:55:18
your freedom. You want your travels. You want to be here. You want to do your podcast. You want to do the stuff that is interesting to you. But you also want
00:55:25
your girlfriend. You do want both. And you're looking for
00:55:30
how how do I not bring all my passion, all my energy, my creativity, my erotic
00:55:36
charge, my imagination, my curiosity, everything to this part of my life. And I let that other thing dry up. And once
00:55:45
you will find that not it's not so much a balance it's really you know um a
00:55:51
distribution of your resources you will experience a very different level of
00:55:56
satisfaction in your life because you won't half the time be guilty when you look back through different
00:56:02
cultures then is that true? Yeah of course it's true because you said it. So of course it's true. Not because I said it. No it's true because everything you say
00:56:07
is true. Oh no no absolutely not. I'm sound very confident, but I actually never think
00:56:13
I'm right. No, but I think you're right. That's what I'm saying. Um, on this contradiction point about us expecting
00:56:20
everything from one person, are you telling me that we just kind of have to live with the contradiction that
00:56:26
that creates? Because you're right, we want spontaneity and excitement and you
00:56:32
know all of these kind of erotic fantasies, but at the same time we want safety and belonging and familiarity
00:56:38
which seem like a contradiction. Is it is is it that we just have to live with the contradiction or are we meant to be
00:56:46
polygamous and a bit more I don't know reckless and
00:56:52
have lots of different partners and you know like some of the people used to
00:56:57
have throughout history and some people have in different religions I think it's two separate questions what
00:57:04
yeah one of them is about monogamy and the other one's about yeah well the other one is about how you keep a
00:57:10
relationship ship alive and um that's that I think we have somewhat addressed
00:57:17
right um it involves doing more things you the contradiction is
00:57:25
when you stand you know if you really want to stand it's actually about
00:57:30
constantly moving the weight from one side to another it's not about
00:57:35
neutralizing the two polarities it's about playing with these polarities so there are times of the day or times of
00:57:42
the year or times in your life when you know you want to bundle and then there are times when you want to explore and
00:57:50
play and be be creative and curious and do unusual things so I don't think that
00:57:55
it is inherently impossible to do it in relation but it demands activity look every system every relational system
00:58:02
every company straddles stability and change continuity and innovation if you
00:58:09
don't change, you fossilize and you die. So will your relationship, so will your
00:58:14
company. If you change all the time and you're running, spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning, you will disregulate
00:58:20
and you will be chaotic and you will be exhausted and you will forget what you're even running towards. So nature
00:58:29
knows that we continuously straddle these two polarities. That's what I call the contradiction, you know. But
00:58:38
monogamy is a different question about that. It's it has to do with what do we think are the viable relational
00:58:44
arrangements at this moment? For whom is this a model that appeals
00:58:50
and um and it has opened up a whole vista about what does consensual non-
00:58:56
monogamy look like or what does polyamory look like? for whom is this,
00:59:02
you know, an expression of liberation and and for whom is this actually rather
00:59:08
torturous? And it's and I think the what it says to us is that you can't have a
00:59:13
one-sizefits-all. And when it comes to love relationships, we have usually not
00:59:19
been the most innovative. You know, family models have changed, but couple
00:59:25
models haven't changed that much. Romantic. Romantics and realists.
00:59:31
Yes. You discussed this in chapter one of your book. How do you define a romantic?
00:59:39
Romantics are aspirational. Romantics are live in the realm of the
00:59:46
imagination. They live in the realm of how do you transcend the limits?
00:59:52
How do you project yourself outside of the narrowness of your own reality,
00:59:58
boundaries, consciousness, body, etc. When I say aspirational, idealistic,
01:00:06
um, longing, yearning, discovery, exploration, unknown, a kind
01:00:13
of an active engagement with the unknown and and a and a reverence for the connection. Realists
01:00:20
are more pragmatic. Realists un you know are basically you know instead of this
01:00:26
is not possible there must be more they say this is fine
01:00:32
as is. Why should there be more and um this is a conversation I just
01:00:38
used these two terms because they were handy. It's not because I had entire definitions of them but I understood
01:00:45
that in relationship you often have one person who says why you always want more
01:00:52
and then one person who says but there is so many possibilities and then the
01:00:57
other person says yes but so many minefields or landmines. Do you see a gender difference between
01:01:02
those two? No. typically at all. No, no, I think that what makes the gender
01:01:08
difference is the dynamic as well. I mean um no I I I I refuse to
01:01:15
just make it a a man women because I see the
01:01:20
dynamic in all couples and there it's less defined around gender and more
01:01:26
defined around childhood story or or or gender identification in the broad sense
01:01:32
of the I no I I mean yes in the you know the classic
01:01:39
old line that you could see in in a heterocoup is when mister says but it's like so that is cliche you know
01:01:46
everything's fine and if she was fine everything would be fine is speaking a man's strength though
01:01:52
is what speaking communicating about how they feel is that a strength that
01:01:59
depends how it's said you know because people think of um intimacy as verbal communication often
01:02:07
it's one of the things I saw in chapter three of your book that we So here's the I don't buy the thing that men talk
01:02:14
less. I do think that yes, men are often
01:02:19
uh emptied out from the vocabulary of emotions by age seven. It's like
01:02:26
siphoned out of them. The socialization of boys does not really prioritize
01:02:31
an an active engagement with one's emotional life and one's interiority.
01:02:36
Okay? It's much better to be stoic, to be fearless, to be competitive, to be, you know, those kind of values are more.
01:02:43
But when I sit alone with men, it's not because they don't have a vocabulary
01:02:48
that they don't have the feelings. And I've been a therapist of many men
01:02:54
for decades for it was actually something I actively sought. And when
01:02:59
you take your time and you listen and you support the the expression, things
01:03:05
will come out. and they when they come out. Here's the thing. When a woman talks to you many times, you know that
01:03:13
she's already said that to somebody else that which doesn't diminish it. But when
01:03:18
a man talks to you, you know that he's hearing himself for the first time
01:03:23
himself. But that's not because that's what men are. That's because that's what we make men to be. That's how we
01:03:32
socialize men. Um, I think that this notion that women
01:03:38
want more connection. Look, you were asking me about sex before. I think every gender has been given license to
01:03:45
what needs they're allowed to have publicly and officially and in what language they're entitled to talk about
01:03:52
them. So men will not necessarily talk about the need for tenderness,
01:03:58
connection, care, uh intimacy, um holding
01:04:05
um be because that is not the vocabulary that has been assigned to them. So they will talk about it in the language of
01:04:12
sex. Women have basically not been given the
01:04:17
license to say what they want sexually. That is really not what they have been
01:04:23
educated to develop. So they have learned that they are allowed to speak
01:04:28
about relational needs and wrapped in their relational needs are all kinds of
01:04:33
other longings for sexual intimacy, for seduction, for pleasure, for connection.
01:04:42
Every gender is allowed to ask for the same things but in a different
01:04:47
vocabulary. Men are allowed to talk about sex. Women are allowed to talk
01:04:53
about intimacy. But that's not the fact that is not the
01:04:58
same as saying men and women want other things. Actually, they are more similar than we think they are. And all research
01:05:05
supports that. But it's just the socialization is causing
01:05:10
a different a different uh effect.
01:05:16
Like we like to think that, you know, men's sexuality, it's autonomous, it's
01:05:23
unprompted, it's spontaneous, they don't need anything. They're always ready.
01:05:28
They're always looking for an outlet, you know, as and that, you know, men are creatures of nature and women are
01:05:34
creatures of meaning. Whereas for her, it's the context, it's the quality of the relationship, it's the that elicits
01:05:42
the desire, etc., etc. I mean seriously on what basis are we saying things like
01:05:49
this? I mean you want to know men have an a range of very deep emotions that
01:05:55
completely affect how they experience sex. You know the rise in um feminism and
01:06:04
equality of the genders in every regard. Do do you think that has had
01:06:10
implications for relationships and specifically sex in a
01:06:17
way that you've seen over the last decade? Cuz you've been working with thousands of couples over the last couple of
01:06:23
decades. So, is there any way that feminism or gender equality has
01:06:29
influenced sexual dynamics? I'll tell you why I asked it because one
01:06:34
of the chap chapters in your book from you know was it 17 years ago or something talks about how some of
01:06:40
America's best features the belief of democracy, equality, consensus building, um compromise, fairness and mutual
01:06:46
tolerance can when carried too bunctiliously. I'm so glad you knew what word you'd
01:06:52
written because I had no idea how to say that word into the bedroom result in very boring sex. Yes,
01:07:00
sex is not always politically correct. Sometimes we demonstrate during the day
01:07:08
against the very same things that we delight at night. If it's playful, if
01:07:14
it's consensual, if it's voluntary, that feels like a contradiction. Do you understand? But so do children.
01:07:20
Children play prisoners and children play firemen and victims and doctors and
01:07:26
patients. Would they understand that when they play they enter a universe of
01:07:31
as if nobody wants to be pinned down
01:07:37
and tied up you know for real as against their will.
01:07:44
Yeah. As in a situ, you know, non-conensually. Non-consensually and with the mean and
01:07:49
without the meaning that says this is for pleasure, this is for connection. This is for surrender. This is for this
01:07:55
very powerful ritual. You know when kids are tying each other up because they are the prisoners. They
01:08:02
are not tolerating it because they know that they are in the realm of play as if
01:08:08
make belief and it gives it the fun and different meaning. Nobody wants to be
01:08:16
trapped when it becomes real. You know, if you play hide and seek, the most amazing
01:08:24
thing is when you're hiding is to know that somebody's looking for you. But the minute you begin to wonder, are they
01:08:31
still looking for you? The thrill turns into terror. This is what happens in sex
01:08:36
too. You know, you have to it's extremely important to differentiate when it is
01:08:43
sexual, when it's a form of play, when it's a particular practice you enjoy and
01:08:49
everything around it is con is coming together to clarify that. But
01:08:55
are you seeing couples struggling though with these sort of newly defined gender
01:09:01
roles as it relates to their sex lives and as we said like feminism and the equality of the sexes and all? Is it is
01:09:07
it changed anything? I mean I think that one thing is to talk about sexual rights
01:09:13
and one thing is to talk about sexual pleasure and experience. I think you
01:09:19
know I was I was teaching this course yesterday. I think it's about 97% of
01:09:26
research on desire is about women. What does that say to you? That says that we
01:09:32
think women have challenges around desire. Men don't have to be researched
01:09:38
because the assumption is they're always interested just if give them an opportunity which
01:09:44
is so not true. Yeah. But the science is completely bored into
01:09:51
the bias. What's the difference though? Why does it matter whether if if all the researchers are you getting different
01:09:57
results from men and women? No, because because yes the the the the experiences are different. But what it
01:10:03
says is that the science has decided that women need to be helped around
01:10:08
desire. Yeah. Yeah. That that they have hyposexual desire disorder. You know, today it's that in
01:10:15
the past it was the opposite that we were researching and that men don't need to be researched because because men
01:10:21
don't have challenges around desire and be that is that first of all it leaves
01:10:27
many men unattended to. It puts an unfair burden onto the women. That is
01:10:33
not about feminism. That is about but science and political changes and social
01:10:38
changes they are in they intersect with each other. Have women, you know,
01:10:44
changed fundamentally around the fact that at least in the west in most
01:10:49
situations hopefully sex is no longer just a woman's marital duty, but that it
01:10:56
is also about her desire, her pleasure, their connection together. That is huge.
01:11:04
Yeah. I mean, we first separated sex from reproduction when we got contraception. Then we separated
01:11:11
reproduction from sex when we got artificial ways to conceive. And now we
01:11:16
are separated anatomy from gender. And those are huge revolutions that change
01:11:24
the way we conceive of the relationship. You know we used to think sex elderly
01:11:29
people that is the weirdest thing possible. But when is elderly people start these days? I mean, we understand
01:11:34
that there is a way to stay intimately, physically, sensually connected till
01:11:40
till the end of your life. Are you having more and more couples come to you? And this is difficult, I
01:11:45
guess, because maybe it's just more people talking about it now, but are you having more couples come to you that are
01:11:51
experiencing problems in the bedroom, sexlessness in their relationships?
01:11:57
Of course. But what does that mean, sexlessness? Because you know in a in in a in a
01:12:03
relationship or in a culture where the woman's experience doesn't really matter.
01:12:10
There may be sex, but that may be miserable sex. Do you think there's a lot of miserable
01:12:15
sex? Of course. You know, and when women don't have desire, is it really that they have less desire or is it that they
01:12:21
don't have desire for the sex they can have? In order to want sex, it needs to be sex
01:12:27
that is worth wanting. Well, my I've said this before, but it's worth saying now again. My partner
01:12:33
turned around to me one day and said, "I don't like having sex with you." And I
01:12:38
was shocked. I was like, "This was super early into our relationship." And as a very young man, I didn't understand what that meant. Very emasculated by it. I
01:12:46
thought there some must she must be broken in some way. There must be some kind of medical defect. Maybe she needs some pills or a doctor or something. We
01:12:53
ended up breaking up. We spent a year apart. She ended up doing some work on
01:12:58
herself. I did a little bit of work on myself. We got back together uh and went on a bit of a journey
01:13:03
together to find out what the actual answer was. And it turns out it wasn't that she didn't like having sex or
01:13:09
having sex with me. She very much enjoys sex, but there was a series of
01:13:15
blockages. And I almost describe it like I thought sex was one language, Spanish.
01:13:23
And it turns out she thought she was speaking French. And I just assumed because she wasn't speaking Spanish that
01:13:29
we couldn't have sex basically. Mhm. And at some point I started to view it as maybe there's 10 different languages
01:13:36
or five different languages of sex. And maybe my job is to learn the language that she is speaking. And I have to say
01:13:41
and I say this I give this conclusion because there's a lot of people that are in that situation right now. I know that because I'd say at one point about 20%
01:13:48
20 to 40% of my friendship group were. We have a great sex life. now. Um,
01:13:58
and I say that because I think couples often think they just can't turn it around. They think that when one partner
01:14:03
turns and says, "I'm not enjoying this," they think it's the other person's broken. We managed to turn it around. Um,
01:14:10
it's wonderful. It's a It's a It It's wonderful. And
01:14:16
what is not said often enough is that when people are able to change this, it
01:14:21
changes the whole relationship. Mhm. That's what I said before. I said you can change the kitchen, but it won't
01:14:27
change the bedroom. But when you change the bedroom, it changes the people who walk into the kitchen.
01:14:35
And it's very very important and and but it's you need to do things. You you
01:14:41
can't talk about not having sex. everybody differently. You you it's
01:14:46
difficult to want to have more sex by talking about not wanting to have sex. Yeah. You have to try new things.
01:14:53
Yeah. And that means you take chances, you risk, you explore together and when it
01:14:59
doesn't work, you try something else. And that is what people often find really challenging. They'd rather take
01:15:06
it as a criticism and then they defensive and then they counterattack and then you say to her there's
01:15:12
something wrong with you etc etc. Do you know what really struggle I struggled with was that first day when I tried to
01:15:19
initiate sex and then I basically got rejected that created this almost anxiety every
01:15:28
going forward. And then there was maybe about a year not even a year maybe less than that 6 months where if I if id like
01:15:34
tried to initiate sex I'd be like rejected and that kind of just totally turned me off. And it it was even when
01:15:41
we fix the situation, I almost had to do a lot of work on myself just to cuz then she starts initiating all the time when
01:15:47
we when we get out of the other end of the situation when we resolve it. And then that's basically a problem because I've learned this habit that she has to
01:15:54
initiate sex now because there was this periods for 6 months where I was just rejected all the time. And uh yeah, that
01:16:00
was difficult cuz I tell you I tell you what, when you've got to get an erection, the last thing you want to be
01:16:06
doing is thinking and thinking and thinking, am I going to be rejected? Is it D does she want to have it to you
01:16:11
know it's the last thing you want to be thinking. So this fear of rejection is probably
01:16:17
one of the most important emotional or sexual vulnerabilities
01:16:24
for many men. Um it's part of what is so alluring in
01:16:30
porn by the way. You're never rejected in porn. Shio never says not now. She
01:16:37
always says me too more. more more and that takes care of one of the very
01:16:43
important sexual vulnerabilities that many men grapple with. By the way, the next one would be um you're also never
01:16:50
incompetent. You never have performance anxiety. It doesn't matter. Whatever you do, you do
01:16:57
it's for you. So that takes care of the second vulnerability. And the third one is that you never have to wonder is she
01:17:03
enjoying it because she only screams and makes sure that she she lets whoever the
01:17:09
actor is know how phenomenal he is. So and also you've searched out the fantasy that you want. So you're getting
01:17:16
absolutely there's no rejection in the fantasy. So it's very interesting thing when you look at what does porn do for many men
01:17:22
is it takes care of three major emotional dilemmas around sex. It's it's
01:17:28
not that it just takes care of the sex. It takes care of the vulnerabilities, the emotional vulnerabilities around
01:17:35
sex. That's a real different way of understanding when you say to people, what are you looking at?
01:17:42
Are you not concerned that with artificial artificial intelligence on the way in virtual reality that we're
01:17:47
literally if if porn is taking care of those vulnerabilities that are standing in the way of many men,
01:17:53
so will bots. Yeah, exactly. So will machines ever more so. A machine I put a headset on. I buy the
01:17:59
machine on the internet, you know, and then it can talk to me and I have an augmented reality and they
01:18:05
never say no and they know exactly what I like and they accompany me everywhere and I don't have to feel like I want too
01:18:12
much or too little or I'm doing it wrong or anything. Yeah, absolutely. It's a fantastic idealistic world in which one
01:18:19
can enter. scary and understandable.
01:18:26
Especially as people are getting lonier, they they'll p they'll see that as a substitute for the real thing. Maybe a
01:18:34
better substitute for the real thing in some people's minds. Yes. Those who will seek it out will
01:18:40
want you to will want to believe that it is um a good substitute.
01:18:46
You look concerned. I I it's a world that I don't know yet that
01:18:52
I'm watching. When I say I don't know yet, I know I know plenty. But I I I
01:19:00
there are things that are changing where I say I'm excited. This is phenomenal.
01:19:06
And then there are things that are changing and I'm saying where is this taking us? And I'm a lot more cautious.
01:19:13
And this is one of them. When couples do come to you with sexlessness in their relationship, I can we have to define
01:19:19
what sexlessness is, but that they stopped having sex. It's been six months since they've had sex. Oh, six months. Why not 16 years?
01:19:26
You've had that. Six months. Yes. I mean, when we talk about a block,
01:19:33
some, you know, a a a breach, an impass,
01:19:39
a shutdown, we're not talking months. And by the way, this is not people. This
01:19:46
is you your best friends and you don't know. I asked them and I was shocked. You know, that's why where should we
01:19:52
begin became so people began to see that this is not just some others or just
01:19:59
them that it actually is very common.
01:20:04
Um and so sexlessness is not about frequency though at some point for some
01:20:10
people it means nothing nothing for years. And then you ask do you still kiss? Do you hold? Do you touch? Do you
01:20:16
rub skin? Do you is there any physicality still? Is there affection? That may not be sexual touch but that is
01:20:22
affectionate touch. So you you you you really look at a broad you know definition. And then you ask what what
01:20:31
you know what is it that you would want? Do you do you are you prepared to take
01:20:36
the chance? I don't want that. I don't I want to know how how I get
01:20:41
back from that place, but also I want to know how I avoid getting to that place.
01:20:47
It's two separate answers. I guess there's 16 years in no sex. How do we get back?
01:20:53
So, first and foremost, maybe this is a place to start. When I think about the
01:20:58
conversations I have about sex with the people I work with, individuals or couples, and and I think probably the
01:21:06
best way for you is is to to listen to it in in the podcast episodes, because
01:21:11
you you you you can hear how how one begins to have this conversation. It's
01:21:17
that sex is not about a five minute foreplay that is just in preparation for
01:21:24
the real thing. And the real thing in a straight couple is penetration and
01:21:29
orgasm and then you know it worked. That model that in the performance model
01:21:36
of you know with an outcome is so not what I'm talking about. This is what couples have had for centuries. People
01:21:43
have had sex. I mean you can do it and feel nothing. That's not the goal. So I
01:21:48
don't care how often. I'm care about the quality of the experience that the connection you have with yourself and
01:21:53
with another. And so it has we talk about touch. We talk about giving touch
01:21:59
and taking touch. We talk about fantasy imagination. We talk about how do you
01:22:04
ask for the things that you like. But that doesn't mean just touch me here, touch me there. It's how do you
01:22:10
communicate sexually? What is that translation from Spanish to French? You
01:22:16
know, how do you say to somebody, I enjoy this, I would enjoy that more? How do you create a vocabulary that isn't
01:22:23
negative and critical and castrating? How do you pay attention to how the
01:22:28
other person is responding and not just say, "Why don't you like this? Everybody else likes this." That kind of stuff.
01:22:34
So, it's it's very very rich, you know, and the definition of sex is really way
01:22:41
beyond this. And so you start to ask people about their their imaginative
01:22:47
life around what excites them around peak experiences that they have had
01:22:53
around the kind of touch that they enjoy around what what do you look for in sex?
01:22:58
Is it a communion? Is it a spiritual union? Is it an a free experience of
01:23:03
being dominated? of being of giving yourself over to someone, of being naughty, of not having to be responsible
01:23:09
and take care of other people which you do the whole day. What do you look for in sex? Where do you go? What you seek
01:23:16
to express there? These are conversations the a lot of people, most people have never had.
01:23:22
Sometimes one person in the relationship doesn't want to have that conversation, right? And the other person does. Then I meet with them alone.
01:23:28
Okay. I'm and because some things need to be sometimes articulated separately
01:23:34
first. You know what is it? Sometimes it has to do with smell and body and and
01:23:40
sometimes it has to do with trauma. Sometimes it has to do with lingering resentments.
01:23:46
Sometimes it has to do with a fundamental inequality in the relationship in which one person expects
01:23:53
and assumes. It it what blocks the sex can it's a sleuth work. It's you know
01:24:01
it's it's not just it's stopped. Do sometimes couples say to you in
01:24:06
private that I'm just not attracted to them anymore. Of course. And sometimes they say it flat out to each other too. People say
01:24:12
hurtful things. Yes. And sometimes it's I I can't believe somebody would be attracted to me. I don't find myself
01:24:19
attractive. I have been ill or I have struggled with weight or I have had
01:24:25
addiction issues or I lots the sex intersects with a lot of things. It
01:24:31
intersects with your health. The vast majority of couples 55 up
01:24:38
that stop being sexual is actually because of the men in heterero couples
01:24:45
because the men are often on medication for diabetes, for blood pressure, for
01:24:51
prostate, for depression and others. And all these medications have sexual side
01:24:57
effects. If you are a man who basically has focused your entire sexuality around
01:25:03
your penis and your erections and your ability to get hard and last and have
01:25:10
autonomous spontaneous erections and suddenly it doesn't happen and you
01:25:15
suddenly think now I have to ask for help you know what kind of a man this is I'm
01:25:22
no longer you know then you give up and the notion that actually you have an
01:25:27
entire body to make love with and that his penis doesn't make the decisions. It's a person who makes decisions for
01:25:33
the penis, that's a very different story. And that you actually can experience pleasure in all kinds of
01:25:39
other ways or that you have had all illnesses with which you have grappled with. So sex human sexuality is a very
01:25:47
broad topic that evolves in the course of your life that changes with your
01:25:53
successes with your illnesses with your children's lives etc. etc. And that is
01:26:00
one of the best things I can offer to people is that suddenly the conversation when you say the person doesn't want to
01:26:06
talk about it is because what they've talked about is that narrow. Why don't you want to have sex? You never want to
01:26:12
have sex. All you can think about is sex. That kind of thing. And once you've actually invited them into a whole other
01:26:19
conversation about what is pleasure for you, what is connection, what is the
01:26:25
difference between desire and arousal, what does it mean to start because you're in the mood versus to start cuz
01:26:31
you're willing. I've had partners before where I thought, you know what, if I laid out the full menu of what I find
01:26:38
pleasurable, they would think I was a weirdo. Listen, I'm not into anything extreme. like I'm not into, you know, I
01:26:44
have a very Look at me apologizing. Um I'd think, oh, they they wouldn't be into that, so I just won't tell them. Or
01:26:51
it might make them run off, so I won't tell them. And I think dawned on me a couple of um maybe about a year ago and
01:26:57
my girlfriend turned around to me and actually asked me the question for the first time about like what my fantasies were and I was like, do I give her the
01:27:04
vanilla menu or do I tell her about the That's where the card game comes in. This card game?
01:27:10
Mine? Yes. This one I have on the floor. It has a have a whole bunch of sexuality related
01:27:15
questions. And because you're playing, you know,
01:27:21
it's the pink triangles are the sex ones. But in play mode, you can ask this
01:27:28
question about fantasy in a way that is much less directed.
01:27:33
Yeah. Or loaded. Loaded, you know, confrontational. Yeah. it you you and and you know
01:27:39
there's 60 cards on that subject alone and that creates a very different kind
01:27:45
of conversation and I I really think that to put it in the context of play
01:27:50
and playfulness invites a very different kind of revelation and honesty.
01:27:58
Are you looking? Yeah. I mean this one says my guilty pleasure is Mhm. Give me the stack. They'll they'll
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podcast is sponsored by Hu. [Music] And I have to say, it's moments like
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this in my life where I'm extremely busy and I'm flying all over the place and I'm recording TV shows and I'm recording
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shows in America and here in the UK that Hule is a necessity in my life. I'm
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someone that regardless of external circumstances or professional demands wants to stay healthy and nutritionally
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complete. And that's exactly where he fits in my life. So if you're looking to try Hel for the first time and to get
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into it and to join the Hooligan family, I'd highly recommend you try this out. The most sensual sexual experience I've
01:29:50
had without having sex. Oh, that's a good one. That's a beautiful one.
01:29:57
It'd probably be being in the shower with my partner,
01:30:04
which is a very vulnerable experience, but it's there's something quite sensual about that experience.
01:30:09
Absolutely. That's the first thing that came to mind. And just read a few and then you can
01:30:15
decide. you're flaccid at that point. So you're not, you know, you're not looking your best. You're a little bit, you know,
01:30:20
and because one of the early sensual experiences that we have is when our parents or our caregivers wash us.
01:30:27
Oh, okay. Interesting. When they wash our head, when they wash our back, when they rinse off the soap.
01:30:35
I mean there are a lot of imprints in the best of circumstances of being washed as one of the most
01:30:43
initial pleasurable sensual without it being sexual at all.
01:30:48
Mhm. Little kids you sit in the tub and somebody puts the water over you and
01:30:53
rinses you. A lie I've told about my sex life. A fantasy of mine I'm conflicted
01:31:00
about. I've got a couple. I never forget the time I was seduced by.
01:31:06
You say that in chapter six. You say as um a a lot of your work is to do with
01:31:12
people who have shame and anxiety around sex as people withdraw from a lover as
01:31:19
they fear being judged or rejected by what their sort of sexual fantasies are. That's a piece. But shame and anxiety is
01:31:25
because a lot of people look if it's one in four women and one in six men have
01:31:35
experiences of unwanted sex or abuse or violation
01:31:41
or assault as a lot of people carrying a lot of very negative
01:31:47
experiences, traumatic experiences around sex. Let's let's start with that for a minute. So
01:31:53
we don't go in La La Land. Mhm. So people carry a lot of shame, a lot of
01:32:00
guilt around this whole dimension of their being. And then it's a subject
01:32:07
that we often are trained to be silent about.
01:32:12
And that means that suddenly now as an adult we have to be able to communicate about this out of where I did a thing
01:32:20
when I was in London recently and I'm doing this I'm going to ask this question again when I go back on tour.
01:32:26
It's extremely powerful. I ask people to please
01:32:31
let me know if sexuality was central in their family
01:32:36
growing up. And of course, the vast majority of people say, "No, it wasn't."
01:32:42
Why? Because we never talked about it. I never saw my parents being close with each other or affectionate with each
01:32:48
other. And then you begin and you say, "But if sex was hidden or obfiscated or
01:32:55
minimized or only hinted at with dirty jokes, does that make it absent or does
01:33:01
that make it more central?" And if sex was violated or misused or
01:33:06
abused, does that make it more peripheral or does that make it more central? And if there was infidelity in
01:33:14
your family, does that make sex absent or does that make it more in the end you
01:33:20
have 90% of people telling you sex was central in my life growing up
01:33:27
and 10% saying no, it wasn't. It flips the whole thing. Mhm.
01:33:33
And from there you begin to have conversations about sexuality. You don't plunge into the sexlessness.
01:33:39
You know, you ask people, "How do you avoid each other? What's the dance here? One of you goes to sleep two hours
01:33:46
before the other. You make sure you pretend you're asleep. You know what? What is how have you developed this
01:33:52
whole avoidance thing?" Or one person wants, one person doesn't want, one person counts the days. just read an
01:33:59
episode recently and literally he would have wanted sex every day and she is just out besides herself and and then it
01:34:08
becomes clear that a part of it is because he needs help to go to sleep but he doesn't need her necessarily. He can
01:34:14
also take care of himself if he wants and that he would have a much more willing partner if she wasn't just you
01:34:22
know an alleviation for him. And basically they have a system. She
01:34:27
counts. She knows two days is okay. By the third day it's not. And so she braces herself. And so she just gets
01:34:33
through it. And you think this is really not a good situation. Uh and they have a
01:34:41
fantastic relationships and they tell me this is the only thing that's been an issue between us. Now they have had four
01:34:47
children. So he waited patiently and he thought once the kids are a little older they're going to resume and and they
01:34:54
have not and she is not at all interested in resuming to that and he is so rejected but he has no
01:35:02
concept of how much pressure he puts on you and she does not necessarily understand how much he would love for
01:35:09
her to enjoy it and to to experience some of what he loves to experience and
01:35:14
she has no connection that it's a very powerful episode coming up. It it it
01:35:20
gives you you know they are not sexless but in some way I could see you know
01:35:26
having sex doesn't make you sex not sexless. I took all the most replayed moments from some of the interviews you'd done
01:35:33
and I looked at those moments. So I went through all the YouTube interviews you've done and there's basically the
01:35:39
spikes in conversation are the parts that people replayed over and over again and I've got them all written here.
01:35:44
Wow. Like what? I can give them to you after. People are so compelled when I tell them that we do that. The first one was about
01:35:53
cheating, but specifically this idea that even people in open relationships cheat as we can't resist what is
01:35:59
forbidden. The situation you were describing there seems stereotypically like a situation where the the man would then go on to cheat because his needs
01:36:07
aren't being met. Why do people cheat?
01:36:12
I mean, I because we we tend to think it's because one person isn't getting what they want or because one person's a bad person or
01:36:19
Look, people cheat for a host of reasons. Some of them have to do with
01:36:24
the relationship. A loneliness is probably the biggest
01:36:30
one.
01:36:37
And I was going to say, oh, the variance between men and women when they cheat.
01:36:43
Ah, all right. So, the first one is why do people cheat? The second one is, is
01:36:48
there a difference between infidelity in men and in women? So, um, let's go.
01:36:54
Let's start with the first thing. Okay. Um I mean I put much of this in the state
01:37:02
of affairs in the book because I had spent 10 years studying affairs and
01:37:08
infidelity. So when you ask me how many couples, it's a lot of couples. And um and I
01:37:16
really thought this experience is so shattering in so many relationships.
01:37:23
There must be another way to understand it. It is more complicated than and there's
01:37:30
so much suffering around it. I want to really delve into this deeper. So people
01:37:37
cheat because they're lonely. They cheat because they have been sexually frustrated for so many years. They cheat
01:37:44
because they are resentful. They cheat for vengeance and vindictiveness. They
01:37:49
cheat because they um need to constantly be affirmed by anybody that can make
01:37:56
them feel better about themselves. They cheat for a host of reasons that have to do with conflict and discontent and
01:38:04
disconnection in their relationship, but they also sometimes have affairs that
01:38:10
have nothing to do with the relationship. And that's what was one of the big
01:38:15
discoveries for me in the book. It was that sometimes that affairs happen in happy couples too. And that sometimes
01:38:23
it's not that you want to leave the person that you are with as much as you want to leave the person that you have
01:38:30
yourself become. And it's not that you want to meet
01:38:35
another person as much as you want to meet another self or other parts of yourself that have disappeared in your
01:38:41
life. And that at the heart of affairs you find betrayal and duplicity and lying
01:38:48
and cheating. But at the heart of affairs you also find longing
01:38:54
and loss and yearning. And the word that I heard the most and this brings us
01:39:01
right back to the beginning of our conversation all over the world. I've gone to 22 countries on this one.
01:39:09
is that when people would describe their affairs, they would say how they they talked I'm not talking about paid sex,
01:39:16
every night sex. I'm talking about affairs and you know in a more meaningful sense, but people really
01:39:22
talked about the fact that they felt alive. So affairs are erotic plots. They're
01:39:28
they're not just about sex. Actually, they're about feeling alive
01:39:33
and reconnecting with some with an essence of something for many people. But there many different stories around
01:39:40
affairs. For most of history, men have basically had a practically had a license to cheat. And it was explained
01:39:47
that they are more nomadic and rors and concistadors and that they are more
01:39:52
quickly bored and they are in need of novelty. I mean basically we gave them all kinds of justifications to explain
01:39:59
you know and to rationalize why it happens to them and not to women when in fact it didn't happen to women because
01:40:05
the consequences were far more dire on women than on men. So we said that when
01:40:10
women cheat it's because they are lonely and they are in need for intimacy and
01:40:15
you know we de all of these stories have been kind of rewritten from by now.
01:40:20
The biological consequences of a woman cheating were she would get pregnant back in the that's why she'd get destitute.
01:40:26
Yeah. She'd lose her children. She had I mean come on we're talking till the 70s women didn't have access to
01:40:33
their own bank accounts. On what was she going to survive? She would be working with the scarlet letter. She I mean
01:40:40
everything you want. So the consequences on women women have not necessarily had
01:40:46
different aspirations or fantasies than men but the women have done what makes
01:40:53
them safe more than what they would actually what makes them feel good. I felt like I was alive.
01:40:59
Yeah. You hear that from people who have cheated on their partner. Does that then infer that one of the causes of cheating
01:41:06
is that it felt like the relationship or us as a three, me, her, or me, him, and
01:41:12
the relationship we're dead or Yes. dead. Yes. An affair is often
01:41:20
experienced as an antidote to that kind of deadness. Yes. But of course my next sentence would be
01:41:27
if people were to put 10% of the creative imagination that they put into
01:41:32
their affairs into their marriages or primary relationships.
01:41:38
those relationships would be doing so much better if they put the planning in the
01:41:43
the planning, the attention, the creativity, the messages, the the hund texts, the flowers, the the the I mean
01:41:50
the whole thing, the production, you know, if people were bringing that full self, so to speak, that creative,
01:41:58
imaginative, effervescent self that they bring to their lovers, to their relationship, their relationships would
01:42:04
not be agonizing. Do we need novelty? Of course we do. And how do we get 40 years into a
01:42:09
relation? You're almost 40 years into your relationship, into your marriage.
01:42:15
You give me think once if you're trapped. You give me You look like you're trapped.
01:42:20
No, by far not. How do you keep the novelty 40 years in doing new things together?
01:42:29
If you do, this is the research of Eli Finkel in the all or nothing marriage is that if you do the things that you enjoy
01:42:35
but habitually we like to go to this cafe, to this mountain, this hike, this
01:42:41
restaurant, this beach, you know that that breeds a lot of friendship and
01:42:47
warmth and satisfaction. But if you want to experience desire, it is
01:42:54
wanting something that you don't yet have. It's exploring something that you don't yet know. And that means that
01:43:01
couples who do new things together that involve an element of risk, not because it's dangerous. New things together
01:43:07
could be a conversation that they've never had. New things could be
01:43:12
going to a hotel, something outside of the ordinary, you
01:43:17
know, that you don't do anymore when you are together for 40 years or 20 years, whatever it is. It's that that the the
01:43:25
regeneration of new cells, putting yourself into situations where you are not predictable to each other. And so
01:43:32
you look suddenly at each other and it's like what was that like for you and what was that like for you? And this we know
01:43:40
is one of the elements that creates aliveness in relationships. I mean that that is the distinction. Now not
01:43:47
everybody wants that and that's okay too. Is there a part of when you've been cheated on that you suddenly value your
01:43:54
partner more? I say that because it it highlights that someone else was attracted to them and then presumably you're kind of seeing them through not
01:44:00
as like Dave who just comes home and just lays like horizontal. Yes, that is one of the responses. There
01:44:06
are many different responses but when you ask people when do you find most
01:44:11
drawn when I can ask you when do you find yourself most drawn to your partner? Not just sexually attracted but
01:44:18
most drawn. What would you say when I one of the one of the times was
01:44:23
when I went and saw her doing her thing at work? So when I go and see her doing
01:44:29
her thing in the breath work studio, it's like looking at a completely I guess a new person in a in some way.
01:44:35
That's right. That's right. And what would be another one?
01:44:41
When other people know how be notice how
01:44:46
beautiful she is. Right. Right. Right. So you've just basically named two out of the three
01:44:53
most important answers I have heard for decades now about this one worldwide. By
01:45:00
the way, there's only, you know, I am most drawn to my partner when I see my
01:45:05
partner in their element. Oh, interesting. Passionate about something competent.
01:45:10
And it could be on stage, on a horse, on a slope, whatever it is, on a piano. It's when I see my partner as a separate
01:45:18
other person that is already so familiar but that is yet again somewhat
01:45:23
mysterious, somewhat unknown, somewhat elusive. And in that moment when they are radiant and in their element, they
01:45:31
don't need me. She's not pursuing you. She's doing her thing. And that space
01:45:37
between me and the other is where lies the erotic elo. This is the bar none the most important
01:45:44
one. The second one is when people talk about I'm drawn to my partner when we reunite, when we've been away from each
01:45:50
other. God, which is the second one you told me before when you talked about the other one. And the third one is when I see my
01:45:56
partner through the eyes of a third. And that allows me to see my partner not
01:46:02
just as my partner as Bob, but as a separate person who other people see
01:46:09
things that I no longer pay so much attention to. So, can we create that in our relationships?
01:46:14
Yeah, I can go watch her do her thing in her element. I can create some distance. We spend time apart. I travel. I do my own
01:46:20
thing. Whatever. And also, I don't know. I go and ask guys if my girlfriend's hot. I mean, you can do it that way, but um,
01:46:28
of course, she needs to have her breath work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There needs to be something that, you know, it can be breath work. It can be
01:46:34
what she's done with the house, what she does with with with other careers or or or with her parents or with her
01:46:40
children. It doesn't have to just be, you know, can't it just be lingerie? Can't it just be like a new
01:46:46
I have rarely heard somebody say that. And because also I wasn't talking about I'm attracted to. I asked you what I'm
01:46:52
drawn to. Okay. And that drawn to is a very particular but this answer when I went and I saw
01:46:59
her do her thing is bar none the number one. So interesting
01:47:05
and I I mean and the only one by the way that is gender specific is when women
01:47:11
say when he plays with the kids because it is not
01:47:16
you know when a woman plays with the kids it's called motherly. it's not drawn to and that's the only one that is
01:47:23
gender that is gender different or specific all the others I I mean I can't
01:47:28
tell you the the breath of different countries where the same answer there's something about this thing you know I'm
01:47:37
drawn to is an it's a movement towards and that movement towards is because there is an other and that other means
01:47:44
there's a bridge to cross and that bridge to cross is that erotic energy and that's what cheating is.
01:47:50
Yes. So, can people experience that in their own relationship? Yes. But of
01:47:55
course, it demands recreating it. I mean, you know, we are living twice as long. Not everybody's going to be
01:48:01
married for 60 years and we're working from home. That is recent, but yes, that Dave sat over there all day and is
01:48:07
Yeah, that was a pillar for a lot of people is to see you the whole day doing the
01:48:13
doing your thing. It's uh it it strengthened the friendship for many people and it lessened the erotic for
01:48:20
many people, you know. But I I think that seeing her
01:48:27
do her thing or her saying that to you or I I I find it a very beautiful answer
01:48:34
because it really says when I see the other as an other, it was like meeting her for the first
01:48:39
time. That's what it felt like the first time I went to one of her breath work sessions and I I was just kind of hiding
01:48:45
in the corner. I was completely irrelevant. It was like spying and she's got all of her, you know, her clients
01:48:51
there. There's 25 of them. They're all hypnotized so none of them even know I'm there. She's doing her thing. I'm like,
01:48:57
who is this person? And who are all these people and what's this place? Mhm. And it felt like I was I guess meeting
01:49:03
her for the first time in a in a way. Um it's beautiful. And also they have a different relationship with her. And me
01:49:10
as a partner, we become kind of encrusted in a certain way of being with each other. That's why the opening up in
01:49:17
the triangular gaze is so important. How others see her allow you to see her
01:49:22
differently again. And that is all generative. Those are all new cells.
01:49:28
I'll read you these most replayed moments anyway, just so you know them. And there's I mean, we've got a bigger list of them, but I just pulled off the
01:49:33
ones that I thought were pertinent. The things that all erotic couples do have sexual privacy foreplay is crucial. Have
01:49:39
an erotic space where they abandon their usual roles, responsibilities, and desire don't go together. The difference
01:49:45
between men and women cheating um is how to balance love and desire. And erotic
01:49:50
is being engaged and giving the best of yourself to your partner. Whereas most people give their best of their self to their friends, their colleagues, and
01:49:56
give their partners the leftovers. And then in our other guest that we had on that speak about relationships and love,
01:50:01
the five most replayed moments from those conversations were the best techniques for dating apps and different
01:50:06
attachment theories. So attachment theories is very popular. Um Paul talked about the importance of
01:50:12
longer engagement periods in being physically but not sexually attracted to someone. Marissa Pier is about sexless
01:50:19
relationships again and Tracy Cox who again is been talking about sex relationships for about 20 years. juicy
01:50:24
[ __ ] Oh, is what her most replayed moment was why hot sex stops after 2 years in a
01:50:30
relationship and the only way to keep going is by swapping in partners constantly and never finding long-term
01:50:36
happiness. It's a myth that you can keep hot sex in a long-term relationship easily.
01:50:42
That's true. You can have it on occasion here and there if you think about it as
01:50:49
hot like that. That's true. Um, and that's not necessarily the goal of many
01:50:55
people either. I think, you know, there are people for whom this is essential in
01:51:00
their life and it it it's the gate that opens them up to a lot of other
01:51:05
important experiences in their life. And then there are people for whom this is not nearly as central. They enjoy it,
01:51:13
but they they don't need it to be hot. They enjoy the
01:51:18
what is often called maintenance sex. Erotic couples have a lot of maintenance sex and on occasion they get suddenly
01:51:25
this really you unusual hot you know different wow it's been a while out of
01:51:32
nowhere but they have actually a lot of of maintenance and and they do have an
01:51:38
understanding of not just I'm drawn to this person who is different from me but also a person who has their own erotic
01:51:45
interiority of them of their own and they don't and they are okay with that they're not threatened by it because
01:51:51
because each of them have thoughts and fantasies that are not necessarily just about the relationship. Of course,
01:51:57
how do we conclude our conversation? Yeah. Like how do we conclude? We've talked about relationships, love,
01:52:04
connection, all of these things in between. Is there a throughine of advice, a conclusion that would help
01:52:10
people? Maybe something with a that is actionable, maybe something that feels somewhat easy or simple, maybe not easy.
01:52:17
We can go back to the things that we talked about together and about you as well. I said to you relationships is an
01:52:25
active engagement. It demands uh risk.
01:52:30
It demands vulnerability and it demands accountability which we didn't talk about them as much. Typically when
01:52:37
people are in trouble they want the other person to change and to do the work. And I said if you want to change
01:52:44
the other change yourself. Ask yourself, what can I do that would make it better?
01:52:50
And do it. And don't begin to say, but why me? And but but you know, just do
01:52:55
your thing because it's ultimately what you want. Because there is such a thing called enlightened self-interest.
01:53:02
Do it because it's the relationship you want. The relationship is the third. It's exactly the way you said it. So
01:53:08
when you are about to say or do something, ask yourself what will this do to the relationship if I do this now
01:53:14
or if I say this now or if I don't say this now and do things not because they
01:53:19
suit you but because they suit the relationship because ultimately the relationship is there to serve you but
01:53:25
it's a back and forth. Love is a verb. I think it's a very important thing and that means you you actively do a bunch
01:53:33
of things. I mean it's the same with food. You know, some people just are okay eating whatever is in their fridge
01:53:39
and most of the time there's nothing on the shelf. It's a but some people are actively searching the right
01:53:44
ingredients. They go to this market, to this store, they put it together. There's an art to that. It's an art a
01:53:52
relationship. And that art you can bring to your love relationship as well. I think a lot of people end up in a rut
01:53:59
because they're complacent, they're lazy, they're unimaginative, and they have a lot of imagination for a lot of
01:54:05
stuff outside but not with their partner. And then they say, "I'm bored." Well, then that it didn't, you know, do
01:54:12
something. Um, and and it's amazing how hard it is for some people to do it. One
01:54:18
of the things I think is really interesting, imagine instead of the DMs and stuff, you know, we just had a long
01:54:24
conversation and this evening when you go and wherever you stay and you just
01:54:30
basically write a letter and you write a letter to your partner and just say, you know, I had this woman there today and
01:54:36
we talked about all this stuff and and it made me think, it made me think about the first time when we met and I told
01:54:42
her about being there in the background watching you do this work and and I realized that it's been a long time
01:54:48
since I watched you do this work and I probably should show up again because I don't even know what you've been doing
01:54:54
since I don't do the same thing as five years ago or however long you are together can't imagine that you are and
01:54:59
I realize that you know I expect a certain kind of coziness but then I'm
01:55:05
thinking oh where is the novelty and I don't pursue the novelty but there is novelty I have been doing new things you
01:55:11
must have been doing new things why am I asking you know is novelty important it is and it's there but I need to go look
01:55:18
for it. And I was talking about the maintenance sex and I was talking about the shower and I was talking about so
01:55:24
many moments between us and I just thought I should share this with you. When people sit down with themselves and
01:55:31
they start to write, you know, I've been thinking about us and it's been a long time since I even said any of these
01:55:37
things. I mean, man, this is like filling up a tank of gasoline.
01:55:44
Why? because you say, "I value this and I
01:55:49
value you and I value what we've created and we matter and it's important and I
01:55:55
cherish it and I adore it and I and I sometimes don't pay enough attention to it and I just take it for granted and
01:56:03
and that is not a good thing to do. It's like food that stays on a shelf for months on end. Well, it rots
01:56:10
and there's something about something fresh and it's it bec it it breaks
01:56:16
through the calcification. It is a lubricant in the full sense of the word.
01:56:22
Speaking of something fresh, you have an online course called turning conflict into connection. We've talked about connection. We've talked about conflict.
01:56:30
Why did you make this course and who is this for? This turning conflict into connection course.
01:56:36
It's a one-hour course. It's very short. It's eight videos and a fantastic workbook. And it's for people who kind
01:56:43
of say, I could we keep getting into the same arguments. It's for people who say,
01:56:49
you know, how do we turn this thing around? It's for people who say, you know, we're in a rut and and who are
01:56:56
willing to try things without having to go to therapy necessarily. So it gives
01:57:02
you a very clear understanding of what's the difference between what is it they're fighting about versus what are
01:57:08
you fighting for in terms of what are the underlying unmet needs. What is the
01:57:13
you know behind every criticism there's a wish. What is it that you're wishing for rather than how do you turn what is
01:57:20
called negative sentiment override when a relationship becomes overly critical
01:57:25
judgmental you know spiraling you know how do you turn the tone
01:57:30
around? How do you remember the foundness for another person etc. Well, everyone needs that
01:57:36
and that's why I created it because I think people are lacking the skills. Therapy is not the only place to do it.
01:57:44
Um I think that we are avoidant in conflict. We don't have enough of that
01:57:49
free play practice. And I thought God the thing that I hear so much is people
01:57:54
who are not talking to their friend, people who are saying this is too difficult. We shouldn't have. And I
01:57:59
thought before you throw the whole thing, let's see if you can, you know,
01:58:05
the some of these things are changeable. Of course, you have to be accountable. If all you want to tell me is how you
01:58:11
are as a saint and the other is the villain, we're not going anywhere. So I thought, let me create a few courses
01:58:16
like this. I've done the conflict. I've gone one coming out on sex. the things that I've been talking about that I've
01:58:23
written about and I thought after that or even the thing you listen to on the podcast but now I want you to have
01:58:29
something where you can actually do and practice some some things that I think will help you.
01:58:36
We have a closing tradition as you know which is the last guest leaves a question in this book not knowing who
01:58:41
they're going to be leaving it for. Okay. And I don't get to see it until I open the book. Here we go. Oh. What is the one piece of advice you
01:58:49
received in the last decade that you think about most frequently?
01:58:57
I think whenever I'm thinking this way, the first person that comes up for me is
01:59:04
my father who was illiterate,
01:59:10
had gone to school for three years, and who basically would say to me, "My little
01:59:17
one, do not get impressed by the money, by the fame, by the education. Look at
01:59:25
the decency. And I was a hitchhiker for many years as
01:59:32
a young person. I traveled a ton. And that became the thing I took with me. I
01:59:39
was taken in by the kindness of strangers in various circumstances who
01:59:44
knew nothing about who I was, who probably had the most different political opinions from me you could
01:59:50
imagine, who had never heard about where Belgian could be, anything. They just were kind,
01:59:58
decent, caring human beings who shared whatever little they had, you know, and
02:00:05
sometimes they had no electricity, no nothing. They just cooked me an entire meal with a candle next to them. And I
02:00:12
think that that has really stayed with me. It's it it's look at the decency of the person and don't get impressed by
02:00:21
the accutraance and the status symbols and all of that. Um and I really thank
02:00:28
him for that. It it gives you clarity. It keeps you very grounded.
02:00:34
Um I love the message and I've actually passed the message on to my own kids as
02:00:40
well. Esther, thank you so much. It's a pleasure. Thank you for your brilliance and um everyone has been hammering me
02:00:46
for many a year on all of my social media channels in my team in London, here all over to have this conversation
02:00:53
with you and you exceed all expectations every single time. You're just a you're such an incredible human being that um
02:01:00
that I'm so I'm so glad exists because there's something so special about you that as I said it's like you can't
02:01:05
replicate that. It's brilliant. Thank you. So thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to meet you. I mean it with every word of every fiber in my body.
02:01:12
Thank you, Esa. Thank you very much.
02:01:17
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