Sex? After Kids? Tell Me More, Esther Perel - Revisit

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0:38This summer, half of my married friends have been texting me about the movie The Invite. I won't ruin anything for you, but it's about a marriage that appears to be going south. There's a moment in the movie where a sex therapist looks at the troubled couple, played by Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde, and asks why they're still together. and they both named their 12-year-old daughter. And the sex therapist character, played by Penelope Cruz, squints at both of them and just says something like, oh, and that's going to be so good for her growing up in this stew of resentment. It sounds like something the renowned couples therapist, Estera Perel, would say.

1:14And well, she consulted on the movie, so she probably had something to do with it. This is exactly why I want to revisit a conversation I had with Estera on the Good Inside podcast. She came on a while back to talk about what happens to desire and play to eroticism once you have kids and why the very things that make a family feel stable are often the things that quietly kill all those other factors. It's one of the most love conversations we've ever had here. And if you haven't heard it or you just want to hear it again because it really is that good, you're in for something. I'm Dr. Becky. This is Good Inside.

1:52Here's my conversation with Astaire Perel. If it's been a while, and you know what I mean, then this episode is for you. Eroticism, touch, sex. These things often feel impossibly far away in our partnership during the period of raising young kids. And who better to talk about these themes with than the preeminent expert on all things relationship and intimacy. the one, the only, Astaire Perel. Everything that family life flourishes on, consistency and routine, is often what kills the erotic. Eroticism thrives on this mystery, on the surprise, on the unknown, and it's as if people have enough of that coming just from their children.

2:46And it's like eroticism thrives on everything that family life defends against. You don't want to miss this episode, and I mean it. You don't want to miss this episode. We'll be back right after this.

3:07Hi, Esther. Hello, Becky. I am so excited to have you on the podcast. And when I told the members of our community that you were coming on, people, I don't know, a more sophisticated way of saying it, they freaked out. They just freaked out. They're so excited. and I joined them in that feeling. So I'm just so happy that you're here. It's a treat, really. So for anybody listening who is not familiar with you or your work, tell us a little bit about who you are and the types of things you're interested in. So I'm a couples and family therapist. I was trained particularly in working with families and with couples and I've had a predilection for working with people from multiple different cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds.

3:53I spent many, many years actually working with mixed families. Then I brought to that the subject of sexuality because it was also a cultural lens of how we look at sexuality in our relationships. And I am the author of two books, Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs. I have two podcasts, Where Should We Begin? and How Is Work, which both feature anonymous, raw, live couples therapy sessions, one in the romantic sphere, one in the workplace, where I invite you to come behind closed doors and see what really happens in the lives of couples behind closed doors. But this is what you do with parents.

4:39You do something very similar. You bring the parents out of their isolation, out of their shame, out of their, you know, this is just happening to me thing. Why can't everybody else have normal kids and handle situations well? And you create a community for the challenges of parenthood today. Like I try to create a global community for the challenges of modern love. And I love the overlap that we're entering into here because so many of the challenges in parenting are the challenges of partnership all parenting, maybe especially while parenting young kids. and when I think about the questions that come up the most from parents when I might say to them something like okay I hear all the stuff going on with your kids all important we'll get to it let's kind of just put that to the side tell me about what else is going on in your life tell me the other things are going on in your home the state of the partnership is almost always like the first thing to come out you know some version of oh there's so much conflict with my partner I hate my husband.

5:47You know, we have different parenting styles. I do everything. I'm resentful. You know, we're so disconnected. We're fighting all the time. Sex? Oh, sex. Oh, my goodness. None of that. That is so far from what's happening. And the relationship between how someone feels in their partnership and how their family system is functioning and the behaviors their child is, in a way, therefore displaying, are also interrelated. They're absolutely interrelated. but I will give you, I will even push it a level above, is this. This is the first time in the history of humankind that the survival of the family depends on the happiness of the couple.

6:28We used to get married, or that basically was the way to be in a committed relationship, and that was that. One time for life, it was stuck. Today you can leave. And so the only reason, There's no excommunication. There is women who have enough to take care of themselves economically. The only reason the family will stay together is because the couple is relatively content. That means that if you're going to want to give everything to your children, you really want to make sure that one of the things you give them is a relationship between two adults that is alive and thriving. Give everything to your children.

7:11Let me open that door. What do you see? Well, there is an unprecedented child centrality that has almost reached an apex of folly at this point. And it is living side by side with a high, unprecedented rise of expectations of our romantic partnerships. And these two are clashing on resources, time, money, attention, intimacy, connection, who's going to get it. So just tell me if this is right. I have higher expectations of partnership than we've ever had. While I'm pouring more of my energy into my kids than I ever have. Yes, that's exactly it. And those are really hard to coexist. Very simple terms.

7:54Well, it's a pull. For sure. It's a pull. So, and at the same time, if you really want to give more to your children, make sure to give more to the couple. Because otherwise comes a time when there won't be a couple for the children. So I want to jump into a specific, and I'm going to a little bit make this up, but it's a myriad of so many people's stories. And I just hear their voices, right? Hearing what you're saying. Put more into my partnership. My partner is someone I feel very angry with right now. My partner puts no energy into me or into the kids. My partner comes home and thinks they can just waltz in and play with the kids and doesn't think it's a big deal that I've been, you know, taking care of the family the whole day.

8:42How can I put more into my partnership when I feel like I'm owed more by my partner? Right. But that is one litany you just gave me now, which is, you know, I'm a couples therapist. It's often a drop-off center where somebody drops off another person to come and say to me here here's the problem let me explain to you I'm an expert on this problem and then you can go and fix it and much of what you start to do when you work with a couple is basically you try to divide accountability you know what is it that you do that you bring how is this what are you doing together that keeps this problem in place that's an ecological view how is the couple organized in such a way that you keep on being resentful and your partner keeps on being missing in action.

9:29So the first thing is, you know, does your relationship matter to you? That's just the first question. Now you can say, I don't have anything left to give to this relationship. And then it divides in a few different strains. So we need to break your question in small pieces. I like your first question, right? And I want to like allow the listeners to like sit with that as they're, I don't know, probably also driving or I don't know, in a pickup line or doing something else. Like that question really hit me. Just like, does your relationship matter to you? It's interesting how quickly it seems like someone say, but this, but this, but just to sit with the question.

10:13Like, does it matter? And like, if the answer is a yes, allow that, like allow that to be enough. No, that's the second follow-up. Then the follow-up is, and what is it that you do to express its importance? Because when you take care of your little smurfs, you are organizing activities. You are making sure that there is novelty. You go and make sure that they have new clothes, no friends, no explorations, no discoveries. You bring a tremendous amount of energy into that relationship. And so there is plenty to talk about, plenty to reflect upon, plenty of pictures to look at, etc. Now tell me, how have you manifested, how have you shown to yourself, forget even to your partner, that your relationship matters?

11:09What have you done for that? Typically, the kid has a play date every week, and many of the couples of the kind that you've just described have three dates a year, my birthday, your birthday, and our anniversary. And maybe we'll have sex on the anniversary just to make sure that we can still, you know, prove we are a couple, so to speak. So does it matter to you? And if so, what is it that you do that makes that importance visible? you know it's so uh so simple what you're asking and and this is what I was saying to you before we were recording like you have this way of reframing things with such simplicity but they're so it's so provocative at the same time is there like a myth out there or a fantasy like my partnership should work out in a way or without without this effort or why why is that so hard to put the energy into your partnership to say, yeah, I have to plan things too.

12:11And I also, just like with kids, I say, sorry, I repair, I reconnect, I, you know, do fun things together. We play. Why does that feel so unnatural in partnerships? When I wrote Meeting in Captivity, I try to really understand what happens to this, what I call the erotic energy, right? The creative energy that makes us feel alive, vibrant, vital. That's what you call to play, to roll on the floor, to laugh, to create, to tickle, to look at each other, to laugh together, etc. That's erotic energy. You're not just talking about like sexy time. No, no, no. I'm talking about that creative outburst, that energy that makes you feel alive.

12:58Everyone understands it with children. And the way that I understood why it happens, there's a few different things happening in the couple. You know, first of all, when you have kids, it's a revolution in the couple. It completely shifts all the resources, the time, the attention, the intimacy, the money. It all shifts. Why? Because when you are in a relationship, you negotiate continuously two poles. You negotiate your need for stability and predictability and reliability. And then you also negotiate your need for novelty and exploration and risk and change and movement, etc. But when you have a child, you become stability.

13:40You become security so that the child can become adventure. The child itself is an adventure that you're going on and that you are accompanying. And so you try to stabilize yourself. And as a result, when people say, actually, if you ask me about sex, people say sex in a couple, you must be kidding. And I say, no, let's not talk about sex, but let's talk about that erotic energy, playfulness, imagination, aliveness, curiosity, engagement, etc. It is alive and well, but it is eros redirected. It all goes to the children with the idea that the adults will kind of survive like a cactus that you don't even need to water.

14:24And on occasion you look at and it will give all its energy to the little ones. And slowly it will begin to gasp. And then one person says, what is going on here? Where are we at? We haven't, you know, whatever. We haven't gone hiking. We haven't been alone. We haven't gone on a date. When is the last time we went dancing? When's the last time we touched each other and looked at each other the way that we are constantly adoring each other's kids? And when's the last time that when you say, how are you? I didn't answer, how is Jimmy? But actually, how are you? And not what you did and what you got done and what is off the list.

15:03How are you? What's happening to this person right here next to me who is going through a lot of things? that is the loss that takes place. Errors redirected, all that energy goes to the little ones. And then there's the next tension, which is that everything that family life flourishes on, consistency and routine, is often what kills the erotic. Eroticism thrives on this mystery, on the surprise, on the unknown. And it's as if people have enough of that coming just from their children. And it's like eroticism thrives on everything that family life defends against. So those two poles, right? You're saying once you have young kids, like it's actually understandable that you lean more into the stability and predictability side.

15:56Like it's understandable. No one's doing anything wrong. And it used to be fine when we thought that family life should be about family and that we didn't really care if a couple was romantic. And parents slept in separate beds the day after they were done conceiving. And all of that worked perfectly fine when we had a different conception of the adult relationship. And in this day and age, right, where we are overwhelmed with information, I wonder also if that pull into the rigidity and the stability, right? Parents these days, it's like, this is how you have to do this with your baby. And this is what you have to do.

16:34there's so much rigidity, right? And so much focus on, you know, the right way. I feel like these days there's even more of a pull, you know, toward that end. Yes, because parenting and child-rearing practices have become very dogmatic in the West. Highly dogmatic with a sense of over-responsibility on the parents, under-responsibility on the institutions and the society. So the parents are literally filtering through all the unknowns and all the pressures and it's all on them. And every small movement can make or break the future of their little ones with a sense of complete overwhelm and panic.

17:17Yeah. So the system that is in place, when I say the system, I say the culture at large is really no longer saying child development is a natural process that you go to certain stages and the role of the parent is to shepherd you through those stages. No, today child development is an artificial creation on the part of the adults that are taking care of these children. And depending on how they respond to them, how they expose them, etc., they're going to create this creature versus that creature. So we are in a phase where culture is more important than nature. That changes, by the way. That changes every 10 years.

17:59Are we close? I don't know. But I know that every time that we get hooked on a dogma when it comes to parenting, 10 years later, the truth of today is the joke of tomorrow. A hundred percent. So we have to really be clear that these are not fundamentals. You have three. You know that what works for one is very different from what works for the other. And that what allows you to really flow is the fact that you can change because you see who is the other kid. I always say that, that my kids each require me to lead with a different part of me. Like they all require different parents. Very well said.

18:37That's extremely well said. And so that's required me to do a lot of work to build certain. Certain of those parts are more natural to lead with. That's right. And others, you know, weren't, you know, so. Which is super important in when people get into the I'm not a good parent. Yes. Of course, you seem to have been perfectly fine for child number one and two or one and three or whatever. And this one is more challenging because they call something in you a part of your leadership that is more difficult. Yes. But that has to do with the relationship and the fit between one temperament and another, not your competence.

19:13A hundred percent. I feel like it calls out one of the more underdeveloped parts of you. Yeah. Right?

19:22You ask your kid how their day was over dinner and they just say, fine. But when they're in the backseat on a long drive, suddenly your kid opens up. I've noticed this for years. Kids don't open up head on. Sometimes they need a side door. And traveling is full of these side doors. Something about being somewhere new, side by side, out of your normal routine. It just opens everyone up, including me. That's what I love about finding a home to stay in on Airbnb. You land somewhere that comes with stories and side doors built in. Maybe you're staying in a beautiful old house near the ocean, the kind where you can feel the history, wondering what life was like for the family who lived there 100 years ago.

20:02Or maybe you're staying in a cabin with a shelf of board games where your kid can find their favorite from home and a new favorite too. These are the moments my kids and I start telling new stories and asking new questions. And while your family is away making stories together, your home doesn't have to sit empty. You can list your space on Airbnb and give families traveling to your area the home away from home they're looking for. It's a great way to earn extra money to put away for your next vacation so your home works for you even when you're not in it. Your home might be worth more than you think.

20:34Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. I talk a lot about being present with your kids, but presence requires self-care. And in the chaos of summer, the basics of self-care are the first things to go for me. And for me, that is hydration. By late afternoon on a hot day, I have a headache, I'm a little foggy and so obviously I'm quicker to snap. And then half the time it's actually just that I forgot to take care of myself in a basic way. Because when it's hot and you're sweating you're not just losing water, you're losing electrolytes like sodium. So you can sip water all day and still feel drained because water alone doesn't put back what you sweat out.

21:11It's why I keep Element around all summer. It's an electrolyte drink with no sugar and flavors that actually make me want to drink more. My favorite is lemonade salt. If you want to try it, right now you can grab a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with any purchase through my link. It's definitely the easiest way to find your favorite flavor. Just go to drinkelement.com slash good inside. That's drinkelement.com slash good inside. So I'm going to push this back to you. how did you manage this all? Like when you had young kids, your parenting, your partnership, your, and the other thing that I know we both care a lot about is to be playful or have any erotic energy in a partnership.

21:57So many, especially women, have lost that in themselves, right? Like the ability to create space. But you know, I remember saying to my husband, there's a few things we're not going to do. I do not want us to one day wake up and just say, there's nothing here. Yeah. I worked with enough couples. I also understood that we are going to do these things very differently. And I'm going to leave every once in a while for a week and you're going to manage perfectly fine. And if that happens, then I should know that I need to trust you so that when I'm next to you, I don't need to constantly monitor you with a remote control.

22:36I made a lot of what I think are not particularly popular things in the American context. I didn't accompany my kids to their games every Saturday. I thought that this is bizarre. So I had a way of setting things by bringing in a cultural difference as a European and from many other places where I've lived. And I just knew that this is not the truth. This is just one way that people do it here. But people do other things completely different. And this was true from sharing the bed to letting cry to the bottle, to the, you know, from the beginning, I read child-rearing books in French, in Flemish, in Hebrew, and in English.

23:19And for everything that I was told, this is how you should do it, I then went to read and I saw that there is other cultures where they say the exact opposite. And I thought, oh, well, then I can go for my own intuition. If there isn't one truth, then I can figure out which one is the right that fits here. And that was so important for me. I always wanted to write an article about that very experience of what it was like from zero to three to read child-rearing books from different cultural contexts. It really gave me such permission to not think that I was doing it wrong. Later, we had our fights because I also came from a model of I thought we're going to be equal.

24:03And no, we fell into traditional gender roles and gender divisions that was just like, this happened to me as well. But what we did have is a shared desire to make sure that the relationship stays vibrant. Because I had seen too many couples die on the vine. And I was determined not to make that happen. So we traveled alone from the moment. They were very little, small little things. But we gave ourselves time away. we continue to go and listen to live music because we like that and it's an energizing thing or to go dancing every once in a while i mean we continue to do things that were not just in the identity of the parent there was we were two colleagues we would go to conferences together we would learn new things so we had new things entering into our system as well i wanted to socialize i understood that if you want a rich social life you invite people to your house They come to you, then the kids are there.

25:04They can meet these adults. They can develop relationships with them over decades. They're in their late 20s now. They know these people since they're born. And, you know, it became a kind of an extended family of sorts. And I was deliberate about a lot of these things, I have to say. It became a mission for me to arrive on the other side and to feel like I'm so glad now we have a few more decades, it's hopefully alone again, but not like, you know, I have nothing to say to this person. Well, here's something I want to say to all the listeners, because what I hear you saying, though, is being deliberate, being intentional.

25:44And there's a tension. There's like a little bit of a fight for being able to maintain your relationship and being able to have that vibrancy and that energy. It doesn't just happen. And I like your... You know how I say it. In a long-term relationship, everything that's going to just happen already has. It's extremely deliberate. Yes. It's deliberate to say, I'm going to put my hands on your hand, even though it's more hairy than on the little silky skin of the baby, because we need to stay connected. It's deliberate to say, let's go out and not to dinner and sit across the table from each other and finally talk about the kids because now we have each other's ear.

26:24Yeah. It's deliberate to say, you know, we are going to take a night away and not feel guilty about it, but actually think that this is extremely important to resource ourselves. It's willful. It's deliberate. It's premeditated, I would even say. And so is the physical connection. Sometimes you have to just say it feels good. You know, it's deliberate sometimes to go to the gym. Not every time you go to the gym, you just want to go there and you're running. but somehow in your head, you know that you have rarely regretted afterwards. So if the connection is good, it's deliberate to say, I want to invest in this, but it's equally deliberate to tell your partner, thank you.

27:07This is important. You see what feeds the system is the acknowledgement of the effort too. So when you have little ones, I think it's very natural in a family to have a role distribution. You asked me before what's one of my important core truths. This would be one of them. One parent, the frontline parent. This is true in same-sex couples, no different. So it's not always gendered, but there is a frontline parent. It's also the one that wakes up more easily, that has a different sensory threshold. It's the one that maybe is not working for the moment or works with more flexible hours and can attend more to the disruptions that children bring in the life, all of that.

27:46But everyone understands frontline parent. The frontline parent looks at all the stuff, the domesticity, the chaos, the needs of the children, the childcare, whatever, the doctor's visit, you name it. The other parent, you can blame them and resent them for not doing what you do. Or you can thank them for thinking about the stuff that you can't think about because you're too involved. So if you understand a role distribution Like what, though? Like what? Because I'm just hearing someone saying, like, sitting on the couch watching TV? No. Right. Like, one person says, shall we go for a hike while the other one is talking about what needs to be done?