#986 - Esther Perel - How Love Dies: The Psychology of Cheating & Attraction

29:39I have to say it is when they show up for each other. It's moving beyond. And sometimes I think of myself, would I be as moved if I saw women show up for each other? And this is to concur with what you say. I think of it differently because I don't see it as often. But I know it exists in the military. But I know it exists in different societies that are, you know, the girls can be perfectly cruel to each other at a level that is just unmatched as well. But it's true that we don't see it as often. Men reaching out for each other, holding each other, weeping on each other's shoulder. I have seen a lot of fascinating studies for the military about that, dealing with grief.

30:30If I mean risking one's life to save someone else who is wounded, I mean, I think fundamentally we raise our men to be prepared to die. And that in itself doesn't make it so easy then to see men who struggle. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Look, you're not going into business to learn how to code or build a website or do back -end inventory management. and Shopify takes all of that off your hands and allows you to focus on the job that you came here to do, which is designing and selling an awesome product. Shopify powers 10 % of all e -commerce companies in the US. They are the driving force behind Gymshark and Skims and Allo and Utonic.

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31:53If you're in an army, if you're in a sports team. That's correct. I wonder whether men don't have that shared sense of unity right now, which means, well, why am I going to show up for the guy that even lives next door to me, I have nothing in common with him. We're not on the same team. There was a great study, Tracy Vyinghall from Canada. You have probably seen this one. Female basketball players on the same team showed less physical affection to each other than male basketball players on opposing teams. And how did they explain it? How did they explain it? How did they study it? Yeah, what did they make of it?

32:32I think the issue that you have with women is that they're a status seeking and their status competition is covert, not overt. And if you are a man on the same team, if you've got a phenomenal player that you're a part of his group, you're kind of in the blast radius of his brilliance, right? You've got an amazing front man lead singer of a band, and you're just the dude that plays bass at the back. Well, you know, you're not the lead singer, but you get to go along with him, and this is pretty cool, and the same, you go on a hunt, and cestrally, you've got the strong guy, and you've got the fast guy, and you've got the smart guy, and you're just like the helpful guy.

33:07You go, well, I'm not the strong or smarter fast one. But I'm with them. I'm getting pulled along with them, isn't that great? The same, it is more zero sum in a covert way for women. I think, and they are much more conniving, much more sophisticated with the way that they play status games. And I'm thankful every day that I don't have to deal with that, because I'm totally not built to be a woman in many ways. And I think that the challenge that you have with guys showing up for other guys is, well, what have we got in common? Why should I show up for you? If I'm atomized and spending all my time on Netflix and on social media, unless I would bet, guys that go to the same church or guys that play in the same sports team or guys that do the same you almost need an excuse As a guy to support another guy whereas I don't think that you have that with women I'm thinking I'm really thinking that it's a very interesting observation What I would but I I will I will concur with you.

34:18You know, when it happens, something magical goes on. I mean, when a guy falls into, you know, just collapses onto another one who holds him up, especially around grief, especially around grief, because we always tend to talk about the power, the aggression, but I think the heart of feelings are not those. They're really grief, sadness, loss, you know, and the weep that comes with that. But I think we spent an enormous amount of time condensing the male repertoire around those issue feelings, like we condense the female repertoire are around issues of aggression for that matter. That's would be a classic one.

35:13So every gender has its licensed language for what it is allowed to want, for what it is allowed to express, for how it is allowed to express it. And I think this is a cross -to -glow. It's different in different cultures, but every gender has a license. Like I'll give you a license in couples, right? Because that's a classic. It is the license of man when you're not allowed to experience or to express the need for tenderness, for affection, for softness, for surrender, you know, what do you do? you have one language that men can use to express any of those needs, it's called sex. You translate it into a vocabulary that is sexual and through that sexual experience you get to experience many of the needs and the feelings that are forbidden or disavowed in the male code.

36:18If we will say all he wants is sex, they often are making a big mistake. All he wants is the things that sex enables him to experience that he doesn't have the permission to ask in other ways. What is the code for the woman? And another woman cannot ask for that. She needs to have five layers of relatedness to justify why she may want to have sex less. She would be just a slut. So she covers it and covers it exactly like the status games that you're talking about because her License is to ask for connection and for closeness and for intimacy and all that stuff and when she's got all of that and the right Conversation and the right Communication and intimacy of the moment then of course finally I can ask for sex You know and I think this has nothing to do with intrinsic men and intrinsic women This is actually the erotic scripts of men and women are not nearly at that different on this front, but the cultural code around it makes it very clear what is the language that each person is allowed to speak in.

37:24It's interesting when I think about this. It seems to me that the weakness shaming around men and the slut shaming around women then primarily come from their own sex, not from the other sex. I think that men are primarily the enforcers of guys feeling scared about being weak. And I think that women are primarily the enforcers of women being scared about being too open sexually. You know, if you offered most men on the planet the opportunity for women to be more sluts, I would guess that most of them would probably take it. Something tells me that it is a slut is a much bigger threat to a woman than she is to a man.

38:14She's a threat to a woman who is single and trying to find a mate. She's a threat to a woman who's coupled and has a partner that's trying to remain faithful. The same thing goes for guys that a weak man is maybe he's your co -eitional partner. Maybe he's the person that you work with. Maybe he's the person that you rely on in your sports team or the person that you might need to lean on at some point. And yeah, we're not good compatriots of each other all the time. But this thing that you just highlighted, that the pressure from within is often stronger than actually how you are perceived on the other side, is true for many, many things.

38:53You know, somebody said to me recently that the leaders of the main monotheistic religions Moses, Muhammad and Jesus were all betrayers. They all were unfaithful to their own group. And they paid the price. So it's a very interesting thing how we internalize the stuff and we become harsher. than the very people who on the outside have created it. I think that this is such a profound observation, but it really expands way beyond just the dating stuff and the love stuff. It's really, I am very interested in that. What do you make of this adversarial and tribal dynamic between men and women? You know, we can talk about the coal coming from inside of the house, the fact that guys aren't showing up for guys and that women won't touch their basketball players the same way.

39:59What's driving men and women apart in the modern culture? Do you think?

40:09I can only add a few thoughts. I mean, I think it's bewildering. I think I would, but I will say a few things for me because it hasn't been a part of my experience. You know, I'm a 70s person. There was not our story. You know, I'm the generation with the pill and before AIDS. That was not our story. What a time to be alive. Very free, you know, to be in your 20s. That was a total period of effervescence and exploration and all of that. And that was not the way we thought of it as camps. That doesn't mean that we didn't understand the reality of men. But there was more kindness, more empathy, more sympathy.

41:00But only now there was simply a lot more contact with each other. You know, I came here to the United States and I began to notice that they had women's night and men's night. And I just thought, why? Why don't you go at the night to do the thing with the people that you know enjoyed is the most? Why does it have to be segregated like this? I found this segregation really interesting. I found the segregation of the sports activities interesting. I found the segregation of the summer camps interesting. I noticed this segregation all along. Now that doesn't mean that this is uniquely US problem.

41:37But there is something here that in Anglo societies that is more intense about that. Latin cultures have their own issue around all of this. It's not like there's nobody has a price here. We haven't yet found a society that we can all model after. But it became then exploited. It became more and more, young five -year -old boys or six -year -old boys that had to hide that they were inviting girls to their birthdays. What is that about? And on and on like this. So I think it magnified because of the changes in society, because of the challenges of boys in school, because there is 50 years of a women's movement in which women have had the opportunity to redefine their identity as women, knowing that the lives of women will not change until the men come along.

42:33And the men need to take on their own way of redefining what it means to be a man and what this masculinity, but not necessarily to do it based on the rejection and the hatred of women. What I will add though is that there is throughout history a major

42:55coming together between tribalism, between the genders and rise of authoritarianism. Between the coming together of the genders and authoritarianism. No, no, No, gender split and polarized when authoritarianism rises or more reverse, when authoritarianism rises, you know, just gender split. The first question that Yuval Harari once asked me, when we had a conversation together is why does authoritarianism or fascism start with sexual oppression and repression? It could be homophobia, it could be anything that smacks the feminine part of what lives in a man. So weakness is considered feminine. The reason weakness is so scary is not because it's weak, it's because it's considered feminine.

43:53And the rejection of the feminine that is at a core of how masculinity has often reinforced itself throughout history. This is, we go back, back, back, to bring order, to bring strength, to bring structure, to bring, you know, that's the coming together that exists each time. Every time you see fascism rising, you see a complete split between men and women. You see men wanting women back into the house, you know, you see women, you know, playing a version of it as two units. We could have had a tried wife conversation as much as we have a man -teaping conversation. And it's an amazing thing to observe because each one has to go back into their kind of core box.

44:45The men go back into the box, the women go back into the box, everybody is in place. No messy does here of people coming together, creating non -binary things, creating things that are more loose, more messy, more, you know, shh, all of that. We can go back all the way, it's been happening over and over. That's what machine aids me. Are there any examples from history, any obvious examples from history? I mean, national socialism, as a close one, for sure. You know, the Aryan cold. It was, you know, every degenerate art that represented men and women dance, no, no, no, the beautiful paintings is that everybody is sitting around the table and she's serving the home -cooked food like a good frau online.

45:35You know, this complete, everybody takes back its place. It's nobody challenges the received order. It's neat, it's clean, it's divided and it's controllable. It's controllable by the forces above. Nice. You know, and throughout, throughout. It's a fascinating thing because what is considered degenerate is considered anything where masculinity softens itself and femininity gets a little bit too much power. When, you know, the men are long hair, the men dressing in certain ways, the men piercing in the ears, and, eh, this is all, where's the man? Show me the dude, you know. How would you... And the women reversed, sorry.

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47:33I don't know if that's accurate by the definition, but I certainly see lots of people talking about it. And I also see there is a pushback. There is a tried wife movement. There are people just increasing rates of church attendance, which I think is kind of a harken back to that. It's more traditional, it's more rigid. But at the same time, we also have more acceptance of gay rights than we've ever had before. we've got more LGBT people than we've ever had before, we've got more trans, youths and adults than we've ever had before. It seems like both things are moving in opposite directions at the same time.

48:10I wouldn't say that we're seeing a rollback in terms of acceptance, especially around some of the more progressive stuff. I mean, I don't know if you look at Russia as an example that is current, the homophobia and the rolling back of the LGBT presence and recognition. Now, I think that whatever has been acquired is actually what some people find is what has made society lose its compass. This is like messy, dirty, this man should be man, women should be at home, everybody should do what's expected. And what you describe is part of what is being seen as the problem. Now, why does it happen? Because I do think that whenever there is massive technological shifts read from agriculture to industrial, from industrial to technological, from technological to AI, the man experiences it as tremendously threatening.

49:19Of course, it shifts us so fast, and if you're just one generation above, it's really, really scary, because you don't know how to handle it, how to continue to provide, how to take care of your loved ones, etc., etc. And this plays into the usefulness conversation, because men need to be useful, they're going to be displaced by this new, more useful technology, more correct than women. When men are threatened in their ability to provide and to protect This whole system starts to go in place. That's one way of understanding it and the Tribalism is the mechanism for that, you know, it's not just Treadwife.

50:00It's a whole kind of a dress with a Pastoral thing and pinches Zero ambition. It's wonderful. Like the only ambition is to you know, Plakty Avocado and And it's very pastorial, it's incredibly old standing stories that when, you know, how many boys are raised by a hard working single mothers these days? I mean, and some of the biggest entrepreneurs we find, that's their story. And they said, I'm going to make it. I'm going to make it, and I'm going to take care of her, and I'm going to make sure that she doesn't have to hold two jobs. And the drive comes from the very witnessing of what it's been like to read.

50:46And I think that if there's almost a 50 % divorce rate, that means that there's almost a 50 % rate of boys growing up with moms alone. They're dads and everything. Let me give you this. You mentioned about some ugly examples from history. Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong all shared at least one thing in common. They hated their fathers. Remarkably all three seemed to have loved their mothers and Hitler and Mao saw themselves in alliance with their mother against their father. So good fathers may be able to stop world wars in that regard. I mean, basically what we're saying is that there is a real challenge for many men when they say, I don't want to be like this guy.

51:33Either this brute, either this loser, either this drunk, either this absent, I want to be different, I want to be better. And why not? They should be given this opportunity. Many women living lives, I mean, look at me, my grandmother, where was she? You know, I'm living two generations away and I have a completely different reality. I want the men to have that opportunity too. You know, I want, and that, by the way, has to take place in community. This is not something that men deal with alone, you know, at their computer. It's really demands solidarity, it demands reinforcement, it demands seeing people do this without thinking, you know, that's embarrassing, you know, it demands caring you, baby.

52:26many things that have, a lot of things have changed, you know. I remember the first times that men were brought in to watch the birth of their child. That didn't always happen? No, no, no, no. My parents' generation, no, didn't happen. I don't think every man should be in the birthing room, mind you, or at least should stand exactly where she stands, like most European countries, you know, make sure that you have the same view. But this was a beautiful revolution. Whoever wants it should do it. But what it said to finally invite, because it came along with the beginning of the thinking about modern fatherhood.

53:10The birth of fatherhood, which came of course at the same time as women became more independent and economically is that he didn't have to just define himself by his material contributions and he could also be an emotional unit. And it's great, I mean, according to me, for whatever that's worth. Yeah. Talking about, you mentioned divorce there. I read a piece from you recently where you said the real reason people cheat isn't always about what we assume. It's not just about lust or boredom or one too many margaritas. It's about something far more unsettling and sad, a sense of deadness in the relationship.

53:49What's deadness?

53:53What is deadness? Complacency? Neglect? Estrangement? Lack of laughter? Lack of play? Lack of curiosity? Management, Inc. 99 % of the time, criticism, indifference.

54:23If I'm here or if I'm not here, does it make a difference? Does it matter? Except you may not want to be alone, but that doesn't mean you really want to be with me. All of these are expressions of deadness, lifelessness, loss of vitality, loss of vibrancy, loss of imagination. It's a lot of things that that does. I mean, interestingly, and I wrote a whole book on infidelity after ten years of studying this, state of affairs, and the one word that I heard all over the world when people People would talk about their affairs and there's a ton of different kinds of affairs and I'm in no way romanticizing, no approving, no condoning, no encouraging.

55:10Just want to put that out there before I even say a word. But people just said I felt alive. And the truth of a therapist's office is that we don't work with the majority of the people we meet are not chronic philanthropers, nor sexual addicts, nor narcissistic tricks. We see people who have been on narcissistic pricats, if you want, on the other side, it doesn't matter. But what we see is people who have often lived, you know, rather committed monogamous lives for decades, 10, 25 years, and then one day they cross a line that they never thought that they would cross themselves. And so for a glimmer of what, why would people try to risk losing everything they worked for so long and so hard for what?

56:02And that's when I began to think there's more here, you know, what is this deadness that people are referring to that would make people act out acts of exuberant defiance to the point of really losing their pens and skirts, whatever. This is not a gendered story at all. And so I got very, very interested in what are relational betrayals and how do we address them and how do we create an approach that is more human and more helpful than the polarizing. And you're going to hear that theme for me all the time. It's like I, it's not difficult to yell at each other. That's a great point. It's very difficult to be patient with each other, though, to be understanding, to take a little bit of time, to take a breath before you respond.

56:59That's much more difficult. Yes, to tolerate the other person's pain, a lot of things, to really, you ask me, you open the conversation by saying, why do some couples succeed and why don't they? And what is the fundamental link of battyability? I think the most profound incompatibility is the ability to live with an other.

57:23Difference. Much of relationships is managing difference. An other person who stands there sees the same thing as you and has a very different experience of it. How can that be? You know, and the ability to really be and then be curious about this person who is other, different, not you, not an extension of you, not there to make you feel good about you. Just is whoever they are and how do you come to accept that? It's called differentiation, you know, in a relationship that, you know, that they perceive, experience responds to the same situation differently and that they'll not be threatening to you.

58:12What are the early signs of deadness or what are the ones that maybe people recognize?

58:24You know there's one that I often think is an interesting one right? You go, you have dinner with a bunch of friends, you talk, you partner starts talking about the movie they saw, the music they listen to, the book they read and you have no idea who's talking. You know, none of it. And especially these days, it's in the computer, it's in the phone, you don't even see a book on the table. So, you know, or not even a Netflix, you know, when you used to get a cassette, something culture was visible. Now it's like, so, but they talk and they have interesting things to say and people listen to them and then you're going to the car.

59:00And it's like, who's going to the supermarket tomorrow morning? Or who's picking up Joey? Or did you call your mom? Or like nothing? And you just say, why don't you continue the conversation that made this person actually interesting to you? You will arrive that, but your dad's here. Yes, curiosity is erotic. When I talk about erotic, I'm not talking about sex and turn -ons and excitements. I'm talking about a fundamental sense of aliveness. You can have sex and feel absolutely nothing. Women have done that for centuries. It's not the act itself. It doesn't tell you anything about the experience.

59:39So it's really how do people feel alive? And that means you can do very little and feel a lot. Just because you're imagining, because you're, you know, the kiss that you imagine giving, as Proust says, is as powerful as the actual kiss. Just use your imagination. So, what is deadness is when people have kind of nothing to say to each other. Don't engage with each other. It doesn't have to be conversation, but something that says, I want to reach out to you on the other side of the bridge, like knock, knock, who's there? I've seen that in relationships, my friends' relationships, where they've turned up to dinner, and they are one person when their partner's around, and they're another person when their partner's not there.

1:00:29Even the presence of their partner at dinner, and maybe part of it is that sense that, God, if I let myself loose and become my true self with my friends in the presence of this other person, they're going to feel like they're gonna know that there's something up, they're going to know that I don't feel that excited to speak to them, that I'm not that curious about them, that I have these thoughts and this level of energy that I just struggle to bring to this relationship. So I guess given that those are the early warning signs. So I sometimes say to people, if you brought 10 % of the creative imagination, or if people brought 10 % of the creative imagination that they bring to their affairs into their primary relationships, their life would be very different.

1:01:15It's very interesting how people become lazy. Is that a conscious choice? Is that something that people can consciously step in to do or is passion something which is bottom up and it's emergence and your, it sort of comes out of you? And no, because love is a verb that you have, you know, it's not a permanent state of enthusiasm. You practice it. This is an Eric from idea, you know, it's then I was in the original thing, and it's like, it's a verb. You conjugate it in multiple tenses and all the time you do things that express this. If I play a sport, if you play a sport, it comes with a whole ritual.

1:02:00You get what sport do you do? What do you do? Cricket. Cricket like a good British guy. Yes, yes. So you get you stick, you get you, you know, you have your clothes, you have your, there's a whole ritual that says, I'm going to play. And nobody says it should be spontaneous. It should be passionate and just kind of sweep you. It's a very interesting way that we have about thinking that there is a surge, there is a force. It feels like you're fearless in those moments and you're ready to embrace life with evangence kind of thing. but truth is that I often have said to people, the person who comes home to your partner, to your spouse, is absolutely not the person who is the other one, is meeting.

1:02:50And now you want to tell me that your wife is boring, or your husband is boring? I mean, seriously, you are boring too. Well, they were interesting enough to be able to get this person to sleep with them. You know, so it's a... I think we could have two hours only on the subject of infidelity because it's a very powerful and painful and destructive and also repairing experience in people's lives. I interestingly, after having spent four decades, pretty much, researching couples and families I began to think about other pairs. I got interested in other forms of partnerships, you know, friendship.

1:03:42And deeply interested in friendship these days, interested in creative partners, interested in co -founders, interested in parents and adult children. I am interested in the concept itself of pairs, because pairs are rarely just two. There's often a third one lurking somewhere. The third one can be the previous manager. It can be the parent. It can be, you know, it's not just in the concept of infidelity. Do you have thirds?

1:04:16I've heard you talk about this. I looked at the research as well and I couldn't work out what was going on. Women get bored with monogamy more quickly than men. Can you try and explain? Is that, is that born out? Is that born out in your experience? and what's the mechanism? Why is that the case if it's the case? I know I've said that sentence here and there just to catch people's attention. And because it's so counter -cultural, but it actually is quite true in the sense that here's how I to understand it. It comes from the research of Dr. Marta Meyana, who was one of the main researchers on female sexuality.

1:05:08And the idea was that we tend to look at male sexuality as untromed, always ready to go in search of an outlet, in perpetual motion, heart -a -steel, and during forever. Da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da. And as if, and this is, now I'm gonna say it for men and for women, as if the interior state of the man doesn't influence their sex life. If they're depressed, if they're feeling competent, if they're lonely, if they're anxious. I mean, of course, the inner life of men influences their sexuality. And so I debunked that. And then I said, but let's look at women. What do women do? They actually don't want things sexually that different from men.

1:06:01But we don't know what women really want, because throughout history, women haven't done what they wanted. They have done what kept them safe. And therefore, what kept them safe was to not ask for much, to just kind of take it whatever it was. When in fact, with female sexuality is often seen as more subjective, as more contextual. Not necessarily rooted in desire, per se, but often in willingness, in the story, in the romance, in the plot. less mechanical. No more contextual I think it's a story. It's more driven by the plot. This is why women can be 10 years with a man and then 10 years with a woman and back to another 20 years with a man.

1:06:49Because the story, the relationship, is what often will drive the attraction and the sexuality rather than something that is more fixed. In that sense, so it's more flexible. In that sense, it's more fluid. And therefore, it responds to the context, to the story. Is it interesting? Is it going to be different? Is it about me? You know, in my work with straight couples, I hear a lot of men who tell me nothing turns me on more than to see her turn down. It's great. I have rarely heard a woman say that to me about her husband. Oh, that's interesting. Nothing turns me on more than to see him turned on.

1:07:34Not occasion, that's her thing. No, what turns her on is what's happening to her. Not what's happening to him. If she's not into it, he can stand there with the biggest turn on under the sun. It doesn't matter to her. She's not into it. Isn't that interesting that's actually both the man and the woman appointing toward the woman? Yes. And that's true in watching point two. The man watched the woman and the woman watched the woman. So what Magda said was she needs more risqué, more imagination. It's not that she doesn't have an interest in sex, is that she doesn't have an interest in the sex she can have after 10 years or whatever with the same person.

1:08:17Because the same person who is extinguished in one place wakes up perfectly fine somewhere else. What she needs is the active engagement. She doesn't want to just do it. She wants him to not just want it. She wants him to want her. What turns her on is what happens to her. So, what is the main obstacle for her is the fact that she finds herself often in a care -taking mode. She takes care of kids. If she has kids, she takes care of him. she thinks about the well -being of others. And what really unleashes the desire is when she actually can stop thinking and worrying about others and focus entirely on herself and her own mounting sensations.

1:09:03Why does he say nothing turns me on more than to see her turn down? Because if she's turned down, he doesn't have to worry about the predatory fear. If she's into it, he's not hurting her. Oh, it's like an identifier that everything else is okay. Yeah, if she's into it, she doesn't have to, is not forcing her, is not hurting her, she's into it. That takes care of the predator to refuel. Most guys don't want to be predators. They want somebody who is totally into it with them. I suppose the reason that that doesn't work in reverse is that guys are much more mechanical, that it's not as much of a reliable signal that everything is okay just because I'm aroused as a guy because lots of things can be really not okay and I can still be pretty aroused.

1:09:53The same thing isn't true at the same level for women. So it's a reliable signal. It's a reliable signal from her that yeah, I feel pretty safe. I think this relationship is good. You, by virtue of that, are also good. But you are useful, you make me feel so and so forth. Yes, it's more than I feel safe. It's, I know I am not hurting her. I am, you know, we are playing together. It's extremely important. The predator -refear to me is one of the primary obstacles that men have to free themselves from in order to be able to let go and to be open and present. And the releasing the burden of caretaking is the primary obstacle for women.

1:10:40So when I say women get bored with monogamy, it means that for women to remain interested in sex, they need to feel that it's interesting, fun, different, surprising, and not the usual. Now, that doesn't mean she's not partly responsible for doing some of that, but it really says, when women stop being interested in sex, it's not just because their sexual desire is lesser for women. It's because they respond to the context and the context is not nearly interesting enough to remain interested in sex. That's the thorough explanation of this one line. No, it's very interesting. I saw a study that said women typically believe their marriages have around the right frequency of sex, whereas men wished for more around about twice as much sex as they were having.

1:11:30This suggests that many couples adjust their sexual frequency to the lower rate of desire by the wife. I thought that was really, really interesting. That is true. That is accurate. When I say true, I mean it's accurate. But I also think that we remember what we said before. Men often think that sex is the only way to experience certain types of intimacy, closeness, tenderness, affection, that therefore they want sex twice as often. I think they could experience it in other ways and abroad. They would need sex less. No, I mean, not need. They would just have a broader vocabulary. They would have a broader repertoire.

1:12:10It wouldn't have to be sex in order for it to... That, it's that. It could be pleased in many other ways, is what I'm saying, and felt good. You mentioned before about some of the changing dynamics, modern world stuff. Women being no longer financial prisoners of their husband being able to have a little bit more agency or a lot more agency inside a relationship before a relationship. We talked before about Title IX. Women in education, boys maybe struggling more. You've got to sit down and be quiet and do your homework and highlight like a good little boy. Sit. Sit. the whole thing. I mean, come on, you have testosterone.

1:12:51You need to move. I mean, it is a challenging time for everybody, but I think that what is demanded from the transformation for what men have done in terms of how they use their hands, how they use their physical prowess, how they use their bodies, how they move, and now they have to just sit there in class. It's a challenge.

1:13:16It's a is not an accurate way to pathologize normal boy behavior. This is exactly why this is laid to the feet of. But my point is another change that we've seen has been the introduction of women into the workplace. Yeah. The women into the workplace that men are in. What have you come to learn about how your perspective on understanding how men and women relate intimately? What is the perspective that you now have about how men and women relate in the workplace? What are the similarities that you're seeing between those two things? I think I'm going to actually answer it in a less gendered way.

1:13:59I think there are four primary pillars of relationships in the workplace, and they apply to all. And this is true in the romantic sphere as well as in the workplace. I think that what makes relationships possible is a sense of trust. So four pillars, one is trust. Do you have my back? Can I rely on you? Will you not betray me? Will you not lie? Will you not push yourself ahead of me at my expense? I can't think of this in a gendered way. I think this is true for anyone who works. And I like that. I like the fact that it is bigger. It's a dimension that just, you know, trust suffers from a lot of definitional vagueness.

1:14:51It's very hard to theorize about trust and to define it. Is it a condition? Is it a feeling? Is it an outcome? Who knows? But everybody knows when they feel it. And the next dimension that is also, is the feeling of belonging. You know, am I a part of this? Am I thought of when I'm not here? Do I have a place? Trust is also, can I disagree with you without having to fear negative consequences? So it also makes the trust is one of those selves against conflict and disagreement, not disagreeing, conflict. And then the third thing is recognition. Do you value me? Is my work valued? I'm a contributions valued, counting of it in gender terms either.

1:15:41I think women have certain issues around that that are different from men, but I think that the need in and of itself is an universal need. If you're going to do something contribute so up, you want to feel that somebody is noticing this. I'm invisible. So women think men get more of that. They get it easier. They have to prove it less. that, you know, a mediocre guy can often pass when all of these lines which we've heard left and right, I think to me what matters is not who wins, who has the title of greater victim, who suffers more. The thing is that these are human dimensions that are essential for relationships in the workplace.

1:16:28And the last one is collective resilience. And I love the fact that it's seen as collective resilience because I think mistakenly We often talk about resilience as if it's an individual person's qualities, traits that live inside of them and that they're able to draw upon in order to resist and to face adversity. Collective resilience is how does a group come together in the face of challenge, crisis, adversity, change, and know how to tap into the social resources together rather than fracture and start blaming each other. And I think what is interesting in the workplace at this point is not so much what is different for men and women.

1:17:11I mean, that is interesting plenty, but it's really how much relationships in the workplace have become no longer soft skills, but hardcore bottom line. This is related to AI and to the fact that this is the last frontier of what humans have that is different. So suddenly there's a surge of thinking about what makes relationships in the workplace. Of course what makes good relationships is connected to what makes a good culture. And what makes a good culture is related to what makes higher performance. So there's a straight line. And the way I developed this was in a partnership between my experience as a therapist and in my work with relationships.

1:17:51But together with Cultural Amp, which is an HR platform, and we had like 1 .5 billion data points. Like I've never had evidence like this. Like I'm therapist, you know, I can count the people in my office. I don't do evidence based. I do clinical evidence. This gave me a whole different entry into, give me to me on a global scale. What are the important pieces that everyone needs? And I love the fact that these were gender neutral dimensions that are experienced in gender -specific ways. Mmm. That's interesting. I mean, we're certainly seeing a change in workplace dynamic. The working from a home world that everybody thought was awesome because I only need to put pajama pants on in a shirt and I can...

1:18:39with my kitchens next door and no one really knows if I'm not on slack and I can just do Zoom calls. I think people are sick of that. I think people are so sick. So you're right. These soft skills are now going to be the hard lines that people rely on when it comes to growing a business because workplace culture is back. You don't have a culture on it. You're just going to have business. It's also, I mean, how do you start? How do you start when you start with doing online onboarding, with online interviewing, with online, you know, where are you going to learn? I mean, I'm thinking Anything, anyone of us who went from in person to online, we went retrofit.

1:19:20We had internalized all the skills. But every generation that comes and that has never known in person. The remote native worker. My God. Because it's not just if you work like that, you also don't go out of your house to shop for food, neither to exercise, neither even to meet friends. And you know, you become contactless. And when you become contactless, you become atrocious. And then you can do as much longevity exercises as you want in your basement. But why would you want to live long if you miserable and lonely? Well, this is the support that people used to get from a job. When they went into the office, this also is why office romances exist, that you're collaborating, but you already have some of these pillars, right?

1:20:14You've got some trust. Well, this person being trustworthy, that's something that almost everybody wants in a partner. Oh, that's awesome. Well, they make me feel like I belong. Oh, wow, that's pretty cool. I feel like I'm part of the truck. Oh, they recognize me. Oh, that makes me feel like I, you know, and - Yes, yes. Between a world where workplace romances were disincentivized and discouraged a lot, and then another world that came on top of it, not only had there been disincentivized and discouraged, but then you weren't even in the workplace anymore. So that was a real sort of one to punch, I think, of your new world of work looking at the workplace and your existing world of work kind of coming into conflict with each other.

1:21:00I mean, I think one of the words that is often not used, but that is an important dimension of human existence is the power of transgression. breaking the rules. You know, kids do it when they go into places they're not supposed to go and adults do it when they have romances in the office and people have, people have breached rules, people have transgressed people. I think that we can study office romance or we can study the power of transgression. To do what you're not supposed to do gives people a sense of freedom. And when it's done playfully, it's one thing, when it's done hurtfully, it's a very different thing.

1:21:44But the power of transgression has existed since humankind was invented, or came into orbit. It's not a new, you can disincentivize anything you want. The church disincentivized masturbation for a long time too. I've never seen that necessarily so. You know, they did it with more guilt, but you know, so when you go back and you ask me about these pillars, so then I thought, okay, if these are the things that really are important dimensions of relationships in the workplace, how can I help that? How can I boast, bolster that, boost it? Like what would be a tool? And that's when, you know, the thing we were talking about, what is one of the ways that we have helped not polarized has been through play.

1:22:38By playing with people who are different from you, as kids and then later on, play has often been a place where taking risk is safe and fun and fun. It's safe because it's contained. I'm sorry, within the rules of the game and it's fun. So I decided I'm going to create tools that are playful, that are going to boost people's skills relational. You made a card game, right? Yes, I did a card game. I also did the podcast where should we begin? I mean, everything I've done is been in that direction. I've had one thought, the quality of your relationships ultimately is what determines the quality of your life.

1:23:24You can have a very interesting job. If you're dealing with people who make it miserable for you and you can't sleep at night, it doesn't matter. I mean, the quality of your relationships, you want meaningful, driving relationships at every level and in every sphere. So what can I do to improve that, to support that, and to do it in a way that is not didactic, not scolding, not tribal, not even universal, but playful. I love it. Estet Paralle, ladies and gentlemen, Estet, you're fantastic. I really, really appreciate you. It's been a lot of fun. Where should people go to keep up to date with all of this stuff that you've got going on to play your card game to do everything else?

1:24:08Estet Paralle .com. Card game is where should we begin a game of stories, one for your life, for your friends, your family, etc. and one for work. So it's called where should we begin at work? But, cast, where should we begin? On every platform where you listen. And if you follow you and you tell them to come to me, then we will meet. Okay, that's the... I appreciate you. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Thank you so much.