The Keys To Creating A Thriving Relationship | Esther Perel EP 725

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show. Today's episode is designed to help you improve the quality of your relationships. When your relationships with loved ones and yourself are on good terms, everything else around you feels greater too. That's why I want to give you the tools to deepen your relationships.

0:31The experience of a love story. The word story is important, right? So the story of love is a story that I can fall in love with all kinds of people with whom I would never live a life with, that we come from completely different worlds. We have different aspirations, different values. But in the midst of that, something very precious unfolds between us in a very small container that is deeply intimate and often deeply erotic. It doesn't need how do we negotiate children, in-laws, economics, careers, the political environment around us, all of that. We don't have to talk about any of this. In that beautiful container of intimacy and erotic intimacy lives a love story.

1:21A life story is a negotiation with the whole world. A life story, first of all, goes through a developmental arc. I may meet you in my 20s and here I am in my 40s, 50s, 60s. So it's a developmental arc. It exists over time. It needs to include change. It needs to include the addition and subtraction of new people, the death of people and the birth of people sometimes. It needs to include how we negotiate with all our friends. A love story can live alone in a little room without seeing anybody, you know, because it feeds on itself very, very beautifully. But a life story must include other people, a social circle, a community, you know, activities, passions, hobbies, careers.

2:08There's a lot of other things. And those demand a consonance of values, of aspirations, of ambitions, the ability to not just foster the togetherness, but also to develop the differentiation. It's us and it's you and me. It's the together and the separate. And sometimes when people fall in love or when people have incredible sexual connection, they think that that also means that they can build a life together. And sometimes that's the case and other times it's not. It is not a guarantee. A powerful erotic connection doesn't necessarily mean that you can also straddle a whole set of life experiences.

3:01If you want to really take on the big myths, it's the notion that we are looking for the one and only. The one and only, my soulmate. Is my everything. Yes, my everything. Your soulmate used to be God, not a person. You know, the one and only was the divine. And with this one and only today, I want to experience wholeness and ecstasy and meaning and transcendence. And I'm going to wait 10 more years. We are waiting 10 years longer to settle with someone, to make a commitment to someone, for those of us who choose a someone. And if I'm going to wait longer and if I'm looking around and if I'm choosing among a thousand people at my fingertips, you bet that the one who's going to capture my attention is going to make me delete my apps better be the one and only.

3:51So in a period of proliferation of choices, we at the same time have an ascension of expectations about a romantic relationship that is unprecedented. We have never expected so much of our romantic relationships as we do today in the West. It seems like a lot of pressure. It's an enormous amount of pressure. So that's the first myth. And the notion of unconditional love that accompanies this is that when I have that one and only, I have what you call clarity, but translated into certainty, peace, and freedom, you know, or safety, which is the other side of the same thing. So that to me is if you want to set yourself up, Really, the idea that you're going to find one person for everything is a myth.

4:41The second thing is stop constantly looking at people as a product, where you evaluate them and you evaluate yourself. You know, in our market economy, everything has become a product we include it. And so love seems to have become the moment that the evaluation of the product stops. You have finally been approved when you have been chosen and when you choose. This is Eva Elouz, a sociologist who writes about this very beautifully. It's like love finally becomes the moment you can experience peace. You're no longer looking, selling yourself, proving yourself, trying to capture somebody's attention.

5:19It's exhausting. And once you are in that mentality, you also are continuously looking for the best product. You never say, you know, how can I meet a person who? People don't often talk about how can I be a person? That's so true. Okay, so it's what you're looking for in the market economy of romantic love rather than who are you? How do you show up? What do you bring? What responsibility do you take? How generous are you, etc.? Absolutely. Second thing for what I think sets you up for a better relationship. And the third thing is understand some of the things that are really important to you.

5:57and don't get involved with someone on the hope that some things will change. The notion of unconditional love is a myth. Adult love lives in the realm of ambivalence, which means that relational ambivalence is part and parcel of all our relationships. We have it with our parents, our siblings, our friends, which means that we continuously have to integrate contradictory feelings and thoughts between love and hate, between excitement and fear, between envy and contempt, between boredom and aliveness. You continuously negotiate these contradictions. That ambivalence and living with that ambivalence is actually a sign of maturity rather than continuously then evaluating.

6:52See, in the beginning, you evaluate, is this the right one? Is this the one and only? Is this the... Then it becomes, shall I stay or shall I go? How do I know I have found the one? Is the pre-marital or the pre-commitment relationship? And then afterwards, it becomes, is it good enough? So that's the unconditional love. No, we live with ambivalence in our relationship. There are periods where we think, what would life be like elsewhere? And then we come back and then we say I can't imagine it without it this is what I've chosen I'm good here but it's a conversation the idea that you will be accepted unconditionally is a dream we have for our parents when we are babies it's not part of adult love if you know that you don't want children or the reverse that the other person doesn't want children don't go in there hoping that they're going to change your mind their mind because that is not fair to you nor to them if you are with someone who says i do not want to marry and you do or if you are with someone who says i see love plural i do not see myself just with one partner and this is so clear to you that that's not okay or that you want it differently listen to yourself those are values that involve life decisions that you don't sit there waiting till they're going to catch up with I ask people all over the world, by the way, when do you find yourself most drawn to your partner?

8:23Not sexually attracted, just drawn to. When other people are interested in that more. That's one of them. That is one of the main four. When other people are flirting or giving them attention. Yes. When I see them with other people, when I see other people captivated by them, when I see the magnetism that they have over other people, when I see how others are drawn to them, when they don't belong to me, Now, if you are jealous in a feeling that is really crippling and painful, then you do not enjoy that. You feel uncertain. You feel insecure. You feel scared. You feel like they could leave you.

8:55You realize that maybe, you know, they're not attached to you. But if you are more grounded and if you feel more secure in your connection to your partner and to yourself, then when you see that experience, you have a tingling of jealousy. but it is a jealousy that actually increases your appreciation for your person. When I say the first four, it's just simply because I've gone around the world asking this question and I just began to see themes, right? The first one is when I see my partner in their element. Yeah, doing their thing, their best at. Competent, radiant in their element. It could be on stage, at work, on a horse, on a slope, you know, But it is basically when they are self-sufficient and when they are radiant and they're in their element and they're passionate about something and they are alive.

9:46And all of those things also mean that I am not needing to be burdened by a certain form of emotional caretaking. Just need me. They don't need me. That's it. And when they don't need you, you can want them. Not needing you clears the pathway for desire. It allows you to want. Because if you were needed and you need to take care of them, then you are loving, but you're not necessarily desiring. And what happens over time when people say this, and the admiration is extremely important here, because I think it's much bigger than respect. Admiration involves a certain idealization, and it means that there is a sense of otherness.

10:29She's different. She's other. She's her own thing. And in this space between her and you, Between me and the other lies the erotic elan. And when people ask about sustaining desire in the long haul, this is the place. A good relationship is a foundation with wings. So you feel the stability that you need, the security, the safety, the predictability, as much as you can, as much as our life allows us. And at the same time, you have the wings to go and explore, discover, be curious, be in the world, sometimes together and sometimes apart.

11:15I am so excited for you to finish the rest of your day strong. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description and it'll take you to the full episode of my other show, The School of Greatness. Make sure to come back tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.