The Key To ALL Successful Relationships | Esther Perel EP 319

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:10Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection, I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful, transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Jospree Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero, and many more. You'll also be able to dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials.

0:53So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com slash summit 2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there.

1:13what are the core reasons or the core things you see over and over that either end or make a relationship challenging to be in the longer and what are the what are the challenges that come up over and over that you see i think there's a number of things in a relationship that that uh that become the cornerstones of the demise okay and i'm not going to leave them in order, but they all are part of each other. Indifference and contempt and neglect and violence are probably the four most important. I'm not talking about big violence. Microaggressions are plenty. Indifference, when you start to feel like the other person fundamentally is not really caring about you anymore, or you don't care about them, what they feel, what they think, who they are, what they're about.

2:00You just don't care. You've lost interest. But it's more than losing of interest. It's also when you are indifferent, you degrade the other person. They're less important to you. They don't matter. And ultimately, what we feel in relationships is that we matter. That is the essential reason for connecting to people is that we are creatures of meaning. I matter to you. I'm someone. You care about me. You want my well-being. You're proud of me. You want good for me. You're benevolent. All of that. When you are indifferent, the whole thing goes. And then you start to, there's that coldness that creeps in, that sense of estrangement, that complete disconnect.

2:37The second one is neglect. Neglect, when people just basically take each other for granted. You know, they take more care of their car than of their partner. Their dog. Or their dog, anybody, anything. Their yard, anything. Anything gets attendance. Their business. Their business for sure. Their business for sure. You know, everything gets priority. Everything gets reviewed, evaluated, attended to, 360s, you name it. You know, new input. People have this idea that they put it all in when they were dating. And then once they tie the knot, it's like now they don't have to do squat anymore. And they go into this kind of complete sense of complacency and laziness.

3:16It's an amazing thing. They think this thing is just going to live on its own, like a cactus. Violence. Violence. the abuse, the level of disrespect. I mean, most people talk nicer to anybody else than their partner when a relationship degrades. Why is that? Because you can't get away with it. Because if you talk like this at work, you're gone. Because if you talk like this with the police, you're gone. Because if you talk like this on the street, you're being punched. But with your partner, you have that sense that they're going to be there anyway. They're just going to take it because it's family.

3:47And family is this kind of, this thing that doesn't dissolve so easily. so you can just lash out at them and talk to them with a tone and a dismissal that is phenomenal so that kind of violence i'm not talking physical violence and all the other big big things you're talking about aggression or resentment or all of that all of that you know passive aggressiveness all of that contempt i think is the top one the contempt is the killer of them all because in the contempt there is a real there's the degradation of the race is that that complete this you're nothing you're nothing i can kill you with that one gaze that one eyebrow that goes up who do you think you are what and that's it you you're done you're done so how do we even get to this place of these these places after having been so in love and so romantic right is desire reflect that or if we're not desiring the person anymore then we start to feel one of those categories.

4:45There's only two relationships that resemble each other. The one you have with your parents or the people who raise you and the one you have with the people you fall in love with. People can sit in my office all the time and say, I have this with no one else. I don't have this with anybody at work. Nobody among my friends ever thinks like that. You're the only one who speaks like this or thinks this about me or with whom I do this. No, you're the only one. And now we go back in history and i'm sorry to be the psychologist but that's really right it is the place where we often learned about closeness trust loyalty commitment sharing taking receiving asking all these essential verbs of relationships we learned that at home we also learned jealousy and possessiveness vengeance you name them the beauty and the not beauty yeah we saw it all as children right we saw the fights we saw the love we saw the we saw the coldness the lack of intimacy the intimacy yes and we bring that with us and we often promise ourselves i'll never be this one i'll never be this way i'll never talk like this i'll you know and we find ourselves often much closer to the apple and then resenting ourselves we resent ourselves we're like how do we do that well why did we get to this place and then we feel ashamed about it and since we don't like to feel ashamed about it.

6:06We hide it. And one of the way we hide it is we blame the partner. That's just one of the ways. We are very resourceful in not owning our shit.

6:26Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

7:16Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

7:31Thank you.